- Sales Intelligence: Sales Force Onboarding
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- Weekly Newsletter - 12.4.2024
Weekly Newsletter - 12.4.2024
PLUS: The Tools That Drive 57% Higher Sales Effectiveness📈
Welcome to Sales Intelligence: Sales Force Onboarding, the weekly newsletter for the industry’s senior sales onboarding leaders. Packed with actionable insights and strategies, we’re here to help you navigate market shifts, streamline onboarding, and drive revenue growth in a dynamic and competitive landscape.

In a recent episode of the Candid Sales Rep Podcast, Lorraine Pettit, a top-performing Senior Account Executive at Gong sat down with Ken Lundin and Hive Perform to share her take on strategies for building and maintaining high-performance sales teams. Lorraine’s approach emphasizes the importance of leadership, trust, and intentional habits, moving beyond just metrics to create environments where sales teams can truly thrive.
💬 Lorraine discusses:
The role of leadership in shaping strong habits that drive growth.
How trust leads to greater autonomy among sales reps.
The importance of focusing on outcomes, not just activity.
The value of leading by example through open communication.
✍️ To start building a stronger sales team today, Lorraine suggests:
Setting clear priorities to focus on high-impact objectives.
Coaching curiosity by teaching reps to ask customer-driven questions.
Celebrating progress, no matter how small, to maintain motivation.

EDITOR’S PICK 🎯
Inconsistent sales onboarding creates confusion and slows growth, compromising productivity and employee experience. AI workflows offer a solution by standardizing and streamlining onboarding processes. Two key workflows, Contact Research and AI Strategy, effectively address these challenges by equipping new hires with comprehensive insights and guidance.
The Contact Research workflow provides new sales hires with detailed profiles of key prospects, offering data on job history, skills, and interests, thereby facilitating personalized outreach. In contrast, the AI Strategy workflow evaluates sales call transcripts to deliver tailored deal-specific strategies, ensuring that new hires receive actionable and objective guidance on advancing deals.
When combined, these workflows enhance onboarding efficiency by offering consistent processes powered by AI, equipping sales reps with vital information from the outset. This integrated approach eliminates inefficiencies typical of traditional onboarding and sets new hires up for success from day one.
These AI tools serve as a foundation for further enhancements, such as automated battlecard creation and AI-generated call scripts, ultimately preparing teams to achieve their goals. A comprehensive GTM AI platform enables seamless, standardized onboarding and drives improved sales productivity and GTM Velocity, proving indispensable for modern sales teams. Leveraging AI for onboarding is a small step towards transforming the entire sales process and achieving sustainable growth.
PODCAST 🎙️Top performing Senior Account Executive, Lorraine Pettit from Gong, recently shared her take on how good sales leadership can take sales teams from surviving to thriving. |

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🌐
Investing in learning and development (L&D) programs for sales enablement can significantly enhance a business's efficiency and revenue growth. Companies focusing on L&D outperform competitors by 57% in sales effectiveness.
Implementing an L&D program involves identifying the right tools like learning management systems (LMS), customer relationship management (CRM), and content management systems (CMS). These platforms aid in employee training, data tracking, and streamlined sales processes. Integrating data analytics further refines sales strategies, making it vital for companies to ensure compatibility among these systems.
Securing leadership buy-in is crucial for implementing a successful sales enablement strategy. Business leaders must align training initiatives with organizational goals, emphasizing the potential for increased sales and customer satisfaction. Presenting data-driven evidence, involving leadership in planning, and celebrating achievements can foster broader support.
Effective sales enablement assets are pivotal in addressing customer concerns, showcasing value, and differentiating offerings. Recent insights highlight that the most impactful assets for sales teams are case studies, product demos, ROI calculators, and pitch decks. These tools are not just static resources; they serve as dynamic solutions tailored to the sales process, helping teams close deals more effectively.
To optimize the creation and management of these assets, a suite of cutting-edge tools has emerged, streamlining everything from content management to performance tracking. Platforms like Highspot, Seismic, and Showpad are disrupting how sales teams access and utilize content, ensuring the right materials are delivered at the perfect moment. Tools like DocSend and ClearSlide provide real-time insights into how content is engaged with, offering a feedback loop to refine strategies. Knowledge-sharing platforms such as Guru and Bigtincan further empower teams by keeping critical information updated and accessible, while solutions like QorusDocs and Brainshark focus on automating the creation of high-stakes documents and providing training resources.
AI-powered platforms are transforming onboarding in banking by offering interactive, scenario-based training. They enhance employee productivity, adapt to market changes, and ensure consistent brand messaging. Through personalized and scalable training, banks improve employee skills and customer relationships, positioning themselves competitively in a rapidly evolving industry.
Sales teams often face the issue of "ghosting," where customers abruptly cease communication, usually due to a misalignment between sales and customer buying processes. This phenomenon frequently occurs when sellers focus solely on advancing deals according to their sales steps, rather than aligning with the customer's buying journey. Customers may still be grappling with early-stage questions while sellers prematurely push for proposals, leading to disconnection.
To mitigate this, sales teams should prioritize understanding the customer's buying journey and tailor their strategies accordingly. By aligning the sales process with the customer's needs, sellers can become valuable coaches rather than mere transactional agents. This approach ensures that sellers remain relevant and helpful throughout the customer's evaluation, leading to better engagement and fewer stalled deals.
A significant impact of this misalignment is the distortion of sales forecasts, caused by deals lingering in stagnation. The remedy involves recalibrating the sales process to reflect the customer's current stage and decisions. Engaging customers as partners in this process enhances sales predictability and efficiency.
Emphasizing a customer-focused sales strategy not only improves the accuracy of sales projections but reduces pipeline bloat and increases win rates. By supporting customers through their buying journey, sellers foster trust and facilitate smoother transactions, ultimately achieving superior sales outcomes.

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