Use Onboarding To Your Advantage

Bringing a new team member onboard at your MSP is a critical moment. It only happens once. Don't blow this new investment in your business! Think I’m being overly-dramatic? 

Maybe you feel your new salesperson should be savvy enough with their experience to “figure it out” on their own. Not so fast, there are serious consequences for a poorly executed onboarding. Ever lose an employee after you’ve put in hours of training, or even paid certifications? 

A few reasons to look closer at your onboarding:

1. New Employees Make Decisions Fast
   70% of new hires will decide if your company is the right fit in the first month — and 44% start having second thoughts in the first week. (* bambooHR)
   Onboarding is your chance to build trust, establish rapport, and lay the foundation for a future with your new employee.
   

2. Setting Your Expectations
   Onboarding isn’t just a time for training and developing the relationship, it’s also where employees get a feeling as to what is expected on the day-to-day and what they can expect from you in terms of support.
   

3. An Edge on the Competition
   A well-conducted onboarding builds more flexible, independent team members who are able to reach sales targets faster, giving the MSP in terms of time-to-market. While competitors are dealing with turnover, you are retaining top sales-talent.

Preparation

Having your game plan set and resources in order are important. A new Salesperson Onboarding Checklist created by the team here at Feel-Good MSP ensures that this process runs smoothly. More than just setting up the tools and accounts required for the onboarding, but also defining short and long-term goals. Are you prepared to illustrate for your hire the metrics by which their success will be measure? Education and training modules should also be prepared in advance as well as a shadowing program with one of your more successful salespeople.

Training

If your new team member is already familiar with the Managed Service Provider industry and how services are offered, then training may be tuned to business-specific essentials such as your service offerings and value proposition. Not just talking about these things, but live role-play should be conducted of how a lead prospect is received, the sales-pipeline is managed, and your end-to-end sales process. Often MSPs enter salespeople into a development program such as Feel-Good MSP's Sales Accelerator.

Evaluation

The onboarding process is enhanced when mechanisms are put in place for ongoing support and feedback to better understand the challenges and progress of this new employee. We mentioned metrics for the employee’s success, but what about metrics that you will use to gauge the success of this onboarding process? MSPs should set milestones for employees by which their time-to-productivity can be measured, in addition to overall sales performance and general happiness at your organization.