Quick Ways to Turn a Rookie into a Pro

Video Transcript

00:00 Vanessa Nornberg: Now that I’ve got my great person doesn’t mean that the recruitment process is over as far as I’m concerned. Because the next part of recruiting somebody to be an amazing sales person for my team is to give them training, and that’s product training. I need them to be on board with my product in a way that makes me excited every time I hear them on the phones. I want to hear them talking about my product like they own it, like they love it, like they live it, eat it, breathe it.

00:23 Nornberg: And so, to do that I need to teach them my product, then I teach them my competitor’s product, and then I teach them how our product will be used. Because the first component is just what is our product. They need to know how it’s gonna be used, who’s gonna use it, what situations might arise where they would wanna use one versus another, what a competitor has that we don’t have that somebody else might be looking for, and how to ask good questions around that so that they don’t go look for things at the competitor’s shop, but can find alternatives with us when it may not be obvious in our catalog.

00:51 Nornberg: And the last thing is, I wanna find out ways to show them what kinds of mistakes you can help customers avoid. By this, I mean, we have customers that call in, believe it or not, who don’t really know what they are asking for. Like people that pierce people and they don’t really know the right size, like to say, “You know, I need a 14 gauge 1 inch thing to put in.” Like, “I need a thing for a tongue piercing.” Okay, great.

01:12 Nornberg: So, my people need to know what that is. They basically have to be trained like a piercer is so that they can help that customer make the right choice because ultimately, if they are not, what’s gonna happen is, the customer is gonna order the wrong thing, and then the customer is gonna get their box and they’re gonna be pissed. And they’re gonna call in, and they’re gonna be furious, and we’re gonna have to spend a lot of money to fix it even though it wasn’t our fault. So, I train my people to avoid mistakes as much as possible before they happen.

01:35 Nornberg: Then we teach them, once they have learned the product, how to deal with the customer, and we do that in three ways. The first way is keeping them offline. So, basically, we give them, for example, web orders that come in, and we allow them to enter those in our system so they are able to learn our computer system. We let them take fake orders over the phone that I will call in to them or that other sales reps will call in to them. Maybe we let them practice with a real customer who is like a friend of mine or something, who is willing to do that favor for us.

02:03 Nornberg: And then, once they graduate from that, and they’re not making mistakes anymore when they enter orders, and they’re getting things right and they seem to be more or less understanding, then we let them shadow a senior rep. And what that means is they have headsets and they’re gonna listen in to a phone call with somebody else and they’re actually going to be typing in the same order that that rep is and then comparing notes once it’s over to see if they missed anything. And once they do that without mistakes, they’re able to take the lead with a senior rep doing the same thing, shadowing them to make sure that the customer is never losing out because of the rookie.

02:33 Nornberg: So, once that’s all done, then the last thing that we do with them is to make sure that we’re monitoring, managing, and motivating them. And we do that in basically three ways. We monitor randomly for the first three months. And when I say “we”, it’s really “I”. I listen to their phone calls whenever I want to, I pay attention to what they’re doing, I give them notes, I Skype with them while they’re on the phone giving them clues and telling them what to say if I feel like they’re missing opportunities. And that gives me a chance to really manage problem areas with them and to retrain them if I think that there’s something they don’t understand.

03:03 Nornberg: And then finally, I try to keep them motivated and keep them sort of developing their own system of motivation in their mind for going forward by setting them up mini goals which would be by day for the first two weeks, by week for the next six weeks, and by month for the next four weeks. And the reason that I break it out that way is because I want them to be able to be excited about going after the mini goals, like the moment, “Did you get that one sale that you were on that call?” I want them to be thinking about the sale that they might get next week from the guy that they talked to two weeks ago who’s ready to re-order. And I also want them to think about what their overall sales picture looks like. Are they making their revenues that they need to make each month?