“As you get more experience as a salesperson, more deals close, you’ll get better and better. But only if you seek out feedback and you apply what you hear back. Try to take a learning from every single meeting that you have.” – Andrew Barbuto in today’s Tip 1802
How can you effectively onboard for a new sales job?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast, and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Andrew Barbuto. Andrew is a seasoned digital media sales professional with a proven track record of winning new business and building long-term customer relationships. Over the last 8 years, he has been a top-producing salesperson at two leading digital media companies, closing hundreds of services and software deals to agencies and advertisers worth over $250 million in revenue. Here he is:
Andrew Barbuto: Today’s tip, I’m going to talk about how to effectively onboard for a new sales job. The first thing that you should do when you’re about to onboard is set up one-on-one meetings with your manager and with your fellow salespeople. Come prepared with interview questions to really understand everything that you need to know about the job. Ask them about what’s the most difficult part of the job, what are our major differentiators, and if they were in your position, what would they want to know. Talk a bit about who your main customers are, what your main competitors are, and really understand the full sales cycle and anything that you could be running into that you should be aware of.
After you meet with your fellow salespeople, see if they’ll send you examples of successful deals that they’ve done so that you could take a look and review all of the back and forth that happened between them and the client. And see if they’ll let you sit in on any of their calls. It’s always helpful to be able to listen to other salespeople’s calls so that way you can see what works and what doesn’t work so that you can use in your own pitches.
After you’re done with that, I would meet with your fellow support team, the people that you’re going to be working with directly. Come prepare with questions about the best way that they like to work with salespeople like you. It’s very important to establish some expectations upfront when you’re dealing with your support team because they should know what you expect from them and you should know what they expect from you. This will help you get ahead of any potential communication issues that you could run into.
It’s important that you have a clear understanding of the roles and responsibility divide between you and your support team so that way you can use your time as effectively as possible with bringing in new business. Then after you’re done meeting with your direct support team, I would set up-time with cross-functional roles. So everyone from marketing to finance to legal to any other departments that you’re going to be potentially working with, maybe not on a regular basis, but as a salesperson, you’re going to likely be working with every major role within the company. And it’s good to get a 360-degrees angle view about the different parts of your company, what goes into it, so that way you have a thorough understanding.
It’s also important to establish those relationships because chances are at some point you’re going to need something from them. It’s better to have a good, strong relationship with everybody that you could potentially be working with, so that way, when the time comes and you need something from them, they’ll want to do it for you. After you’re done with that, I would set up mock sales pitches with your manager and/or your sales colleagues. Roleplay different scenarios that are bound to come up on your sales calls. I always record my mock sales pitches and listen to them later on to see what I could be doing better. Always make sure to ask for feedback. Let them know that you welcome it. That’s the only way you’re really going to get better.
When I first started in sales, I sounded very robotic. I would not ask enough questions. Whenever I heard something, sometimes I would cut off the prospect, and that ultimately wasn’t leading to results. Once I got that feedback from my manager, sure, it was difficult to hear at first, but I was able to make those adjustments, and it was much better as a result. After the mock sales pitches, it’s very important that you are setting up as many initial meetings as you can.
When you first start, if you have no book of business, you should be spending roughly 90% of your time on outreach. It’s critical that you are filling your calendar up with meetings because you’re going to need to set up as many qualified meetings as possible. But what this will do for you is;
One, some of these will ultimately turn into deals down the road, usually a few months down the road.
Two, it’ll give you some very important experience that you’re going to be able to use to help make sure that every meeting is better than the last.
As you get more experience as a salesperson, more deals close, you’ll get better and better. But only if you seek out feedback and you apply what you hear back. Try to take a learning from every single meeting that you have.
Here, I would seek out a sales mentor. Try to set up regular meetings with your sales mentor, somebody who’s going to give you some harsh truth and also give you something other than the company line. I have several sales mentors, and it’s been a game changer for me. I go to them for different advice, and they’ve gotten some really important pieces of information that have significantly improved my sales process.
Scott Ingram: To learn more about Andrew, join the waitlist for his book, and receive a script to secure next steps in meetings, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1802. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back here for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!