When onboarding new salespeople, it’s important to keep them engaged. While that can be achieved through a number of methods, compensation is a big part of it. Ensuring that new sellers earn while they’re onboarding will keep them motivated and start them off right.
Rewarding onboarding milestones with incentives keeps new sales hires engaged and motivated.
Many sales organizations simply add new hires onto their existing commission plans and expect them to hit the ground running. Forcing brand new employees into an existing but unfamiliar structure could cause frustration. It can lead to turnover before you’ve even had the chance to train them properly.
Why Incentivize the Sales Onboarding Process?
As brand new employees get started, commissions on sales alone won’t guarantee wages. A new salesperson needs time to familiarize themselves with the products or services as well as the customers. It’s unlikely they’ll hit predetermined on-target earnings as easily as they would months down the line.
However, those early months are key to setting the tone for a sales role. If a new hire starts off feeling frustrated about their wages, that’s not likely to disappear as time goes on. In fact, left unchecked, that frustration could fester and turn into a larger moral problem. So providing a guaranteed way for new salespeople to take home a competitive income right away can alleviate those concerns.
How to Incentivize New Sales Reps in Training
As we’ve recently discussed, some commission plans incorporate behavior incentives. Taking that a step further, incentivizing onboarding for sales would provide much-needed earnings while training salespeople to perform. This requires employers to understand all the levels involved in onboarding and determining how to reward milestones.
Pairing onboarding incentives with commission increases the incentive to not only get trained up but also perform. By combining two methods for a period of time during a salesperson’s training, you’ll condition them to be prepared for the grind. They’ll learn while they continue to earn money for themselves and for the company as a whole.
Occasionally organizations offer draws or guarantees to salespeople as they start off. However, draws can open employees up to the possibility of chargebacks if they don’t hit quota which can reignite that frustration. Additionally guarantees often fail to motivate performance.
Best Practices in Onboarding New Salespeople
When approaching any new commission plan or changes to any commission plan, communication is the top priority. In the case of a new-hire commission plan, that point counts even more. Salespeople going through an onboarding process are already absorbing a ton of information every single day. Making time to fully disclose the details of their earnings and provide them with resources to understand it ensures that they know what they need to do to get paid.
On that note, it’s also important to be absolutely clear about what new hires must do to earn incentives. The milestones or goals need to be represented by clear goalposts, e.g. exhibiting a solid understanding of services offered. Another goal may be completing a system training, like a CRM system, or completing an orientation curriculum.
However you choose to incentivize your growing team, we can help you automate the entire process. Contact us or schedule a free demo with us and we’ll walk you through the whole process. We can’t wait to simplify the commission cycle for you and your entire team.