The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

You know the feeling of an ah-ha moment…

When you're talking about something you passionately believe in and then—BAM—you can practically see the light bulb go off for the other person.

It's a highlight for anyone who passionately loves what they do.

If new employee onboarding procedures are insufficient, it can take up to 12 months for new hires to reach max productivity. In a world where employees don't stay at jobs for the entire duration of their career, this is horrific.

New employee onboarding has always been an issue. There are always holes in an onboarding process, and some companies seem better at it than others. Throwing new hires in and expecting them to swim no longer works.

This is especially true in our new hybrid working world. New employees are required to coexist in a virtual and real world, and be able to seamlessly toggle between the two.

To counteract these struggles, it's important to stick to a consistent employee onboarding checklist. To help you do that, we've assembled steps that will consolidate your processes and make new employees feel informed, safe, and ready to start being productive!

A large study by Flexjobs recently showed that 27% of employees would be willing to take up to a 20% pay cut just to continue working from home, and 81% reported that an employee who offers flexible work options would get significantly of their loyalty.

Supporting studies from Gartner also show that 82% of company leaders intend to support a hybrid workplace.

This is a candidate’s market, and it will become increasingly so.

Have you ever heard music that was so brilliant, you couldn’t even carry on a conversation while listening? 

I had a friend in college who played like that. Her audiences would be nearly silent as she played, mesmerized by the sound, until her last note when they would go nuts!

She practiced both the piano and the guitar often, simply because she loved it, and she often played for us upon request. I’m not much of a musician myself, and I don’t know a lot about the business, but those who did were certain that she could be one of the few who actually made a career for herself in music. 

Companies with highly-engaged employees grow revenue 2.5x as much as those who don't, and engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their organization. Creating and building a company culture of engagement is vital to a healthy company and business growth.

Our team spend hours a day talking about talent:

• How to recruit talent
• How to hire talent
• How to develop talent

There's no doubt that talent is the foundation for success in any path we choose! But talent alone is not enough; the fit has to be right, too.

We encourage hiring managers to consider fit as carefully as they consider talent because talent is a strength only when the fit is right.

If your job involves growing a department or organization, the only way you can do that is to grow each person on board. How do you do that? Follow this Growth Formula.

This article on how to hire a great sales hunter stirred up great conversations about how to coach and develop those hunters once they are onboard. Great stuff, so we want to share it!

The best way to grow an organization is to grow each of the people within that organization, including your sales hunters. Great managers do this by keeping the natural behaviors of these people top of mind and committing to a handful of strategies to maximize their strengths. 

When you focus on a natural strength, magic happens. They say that when you spend time practicing and honing a strength you have, you can grow in that area by as much as 10xs!

Investing that same effort in an area that’s not a natural strength pays little return.

Imagine the improvement that a salesperson could see if they had the innate ability to ask probing questions and uncover meaningful information—and then spent time practicing and developing that ability! The potential would be huge!

But what if they were too busy to spend any directed time or energy developing that talent? Or even worse, what if they were simply unaware of their incredible potential for growth? That is a wasted opportunity that keeps us awake at night.

You already know that turning talent into performance requires a true understanding of talent. Spotting talent, hiring talent, developing talent, and coaching talent. . . it’s mission critical.

Talent assessments are an excellent tool for understanding the way your candidates and current salespeople are wired. The difference in approach with each group is key to productive new hires and successful coaching.

To successfully manage and lead others, you must understand what makes each of your team members unique and individualize your approach. It’s important to understand the innate talents of each person and consistently coach them to maximize their strengths, work around their weaknesses, and turn talent into performance.

Gallup's research in the bestseller It's the Manager proves that this strengths-based approach to being a coach, not a boss, is essential to leading a high-performance team.