How long should sales rep onboarding take?

Plan for 90 days: the first 30 week by week, with real calls by week two, then 60 days of full call blocks with a weekly 1:1 and call reviews. Some bigger companies train new reps formally for up to a year.

What should a new sales rep do in their first week?

Learn who you sell to and how a deal goes, listen to recorded calls, sit in on live ones, and explain what you sell in their own words by Friday.

What are the four stages of onboarding?

Compliance, clarification, culture and connection, in the SHRM Foundation's guide: the logins and rules, the job and its numbers, how the team works, and the people a new hire needs. Almost every company covers compliance; the other three need a plan.

How do you know if a new sales rep will succeed?

Watch the early numbers, not the first deal: calls made, meetings booked and the rate between them, week on week. Falling activity is the first warning sign.

Should new reps shadow other reps?

For a few days, yes, and after that they learn more from making their own calls with someone listening than from watching someone else make theirs.

What goes in a sales onboarding checklist?

Accounts set up before day one, a call list, a written plan, a buddy, a welcome note, daily check-ins in week one, weekly call reviews, and targets agreed at day 30 and day 90.

Sales rep onboarding: a week-by-week plan to day 90

What good onboarding gets you

Sales rep onboarding is everything between a new rep's first day and the day they're selling on their own. The time it takes has a name, ramp time, and on a small team every week of it is a week you're paying for a seat that isn't selling yet.

The usual first month is a pile of reading, a week of sitting in on calls and a vague "get comfortable with the product", and only then the phone. New reps come out of it knowing a lot and having done very little, and the first real calls in week five feel like week one.

Most new hires get something like that. Gallup finds that only 12% of employees strongly agree their organisation does a great job of onboarding new people, and says a poor start gets in the way of the bond that keeps someone in the job. The clock is short too. The SHRM Foundation's onboarding guide says research and conventional wisdom agree that "employees get about 90 days to prove themselves in a new job."

A better plan swaps some of the reading for doing, early and in small steps, with a number each week so you both know how it's going. It starts the day you make the offer, and it runs to day 90, not day 30. If you're still choosing who to hire, how to hire sales reps comes first.

The four parts of onboarding

Talya Bauer's guide for the SHRM Foundation names four parts of onboarding, the Four C's. Here's what each one means when the new hire is a rep:

Part	What it means for a new rep	When
Compliance	Logins, the rules on what they can promise, who approves a discount	Before day one
Clarification	Who you sell to, their weekly numbers, what a good call sounds like	Week 1, then every 1:1
Culture	How the team works: the Monday meeting, how fast you reply, how deals get logged	Weeks 1 to 4
Connection	A buddy, the people in other teams they'll need, a first win the team hears about	From day one

The guide says almost every company covers compliance. Only the companies at its top level plan all four. On a small team nobody else will plan the last three, so the plan below does it for you.

Before day one

A few things to have ready so the first day isn't spent waiting for logins:

Their accounts: email, the CRM, the phone or dialler, the shared folder.
A list of 50 to 100 real leads or past clients they'll call in week two, chosen by you.
A written 30-day plan, like the one below, with their name on it.
A buddy: a rep on the team who'll take their questions so every one doesn't come to you.
Time in your diary: a short check-in every day for week one, and a weekly 1:1 after that.

Introduce them before they start

Send the team, and any clients the new rep will take over, a short note before day one. Three parts are enough: who they are, what they'll look after, and how people can help.

Subject: Meet [name], who joins the team on Monday

Hi all, [name] starts on Monday and will look after [type of buyer or area].

[Name] comes from [last job], so they already know [one thing they're good at].

If something helped you in your first month here, tell them. They'll be on calls from week two.

Handing a client to the new rep? The introduction email templates include one for that.

The 30-day plan, week by week

Week 1: learn the buyer and the product

Read the playbook, or sit with you while you explain who you sell to and the steps a deal goes through. If you don't have a playbook, the sales playbook template is short to write.
Listen to five recorded calls: two good first calls, two that went badly, one that closed.
Sit in on live calls with two different reps.
End of week: they explain what you sell and to whom, in their own words, in two minutes.

Week 2: first real calls, with help

Practise the opening and the first-call questions out loud with their buddy, twice a day.
Make their first 10 to 20 calls from the list you prepared, with you or the buddy listening to some of them.
Log every call, and write one line on what happened.
End of week: a 30-minute review of three of their calls. Pick one thing to change next week.

Week 3: a full call block, on their own

Build up to the team's daily call number, or half of it if the full number is a stretch.
Book their first meetings, and bring you or the buddy to the first one.
Keep logging calls, meetings booked and follow-ups owed.
End of week: check calls made against meetings booked. If it's lower than the team's usual rate, listen to more calls together.

Week 4: their own pipeline

Run first meetings alone, and send their first proposal.
Keep a follow-up list with a date on every item.
Start the weekly 1:1 you'll keep for as long as they're on the team.
End of week: agree the targets for the next 60 days, and write them into the 30-60-90 day sales plan template.

How to tell early if a new rep is on track

Closed deals come too late to tell you anything in the first month. Watch what comes first:

Are they making the calls? Activity is the first thing to slip when a new rep is struggling or nervous.
Is their meeting rate climbing week on week? Week two will be low. Week four should be closer to the team's.
Are they logging and following up without being chased?
Are their questions getting more specific? "How do I answer X when they say Y?" in week three is a good sign.

Made-up example: Lena's first month. Week 2: 15 calls and 1 meeting. Week 3: 80 calls and 4 meetings. Week 4: 110 calls and 8 meetings. The team usually books one meeting for every 12 calls.

By week 4 her rate is one meeting for every 14 calls, close to the team's and still improving. She's on track, even with no closed deal yet.

Another new rep has 60 calls in week 3 and 40 in week 4, with 2 meetings in each week, so the calls are falling, and that's the conversation for Friday: what's making the phone hard to pick up, and what help would change it.

The weekly numbers are the early warning. In ActivityTracker new reps log calls in one tap, and you see who's gone quiet, read their Friday check-ins and prep each 1:1.

See ActivityTracker for sales managers

What happens from day 31 to day 90

The first month gets a new rep making calls. The next two months get them selling without you in the room. Bigger companies take longer still: the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' handbook entry for sales representatives says many companies run formal training programmes for new reps that last up to a year. A small team doesn't need a year-long course. It does need a written plan for days 31 to 90, the same as for the first 30.

Days 31 to 60: the full call block every day, first proposals followed through to a yes or a no, and one call review a week. Work on one skill, the one that loses them the most meetings.
Days 61 to 90: their own pipeline and their own forecast for the month. They run one part of the Monday meeting, such as the stuck deal of the week.
Day 90: a longer 1:1. Compare their last four weeks with the team's numbers, agree the targets for the next quarter, and ask what they had to work out alone.

Keep the weekly 1:1 and the call reviews, and drop the daily check-in once they're logging without being chased. The 1 on 1 meeting template gives each 1:1 the same shape: the numbers first, then one deal, then one skill.

A checklist to copy

Paste this into the new rep's plan and tick it off as you go:

Before day one: accounts working, a call list of 50 to 100 names, the written plan, a buddy, the welcome note sent.
Week 1: a daily check-in, five recorded calls heard, two reps shadowed, the two-minute pitch given back to you.
Weeks 2 to 4: first calls with someone listening, every call logged, three calls reviewed each Friday, first meetings booked.
Days 31 to 90: a weekly 1:1, one call review a week, one skill a month, targets agreed at day 30 and again at day 90.

Measure the plan, not only the rep

Each new hire tests your onboarding as much as it tests them. After every hire, write down four things:

Ramp time: how many weeks from day one until their weekly numbers matched the team's usual week.
The week their meeting rate came within reach of the team's.
Whether they were still on the team at six months and at a year.
What the rep says was missing. Ask at day 30 and day 90: "What did you have to work out on your own?"

Change one thing in the plan before the next person starts. After three hires you'll have a plan that fits your team, and a ramp time you can count on when you budget for the next seat.

Mistakes that slow new reps down

Too much reading before any doing. Knowledge that hasn't been used on a call fades quickly.
Weeks of shadowing. A few days of sitting in on other reps' calls is enough. After that a new rep learns more from making their own calls with you or the buddy listening.
No list to call. A new rep sent to "find some leads" spends week two prospecting instead of practising calls.
Waiting for the first deal to judge progress. By then, two months have gone.
Only praise, or only fixes. Pick one thing that went well and one thing to change after each review.
Onboarding that ends at day 30. The weekly 1:1 and the call reviews keep going until day 90 and beyond.

Sales rep onboarding: how to get a new rep on real calls by week two