Onboarding Makes or Breaks a Global Team with Meagan Suckling

Foreign. Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host, Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders, where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster, and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset, goals, time management and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExCexcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready and let's dive into the good stuff. But first, a quick shout out to today's sponsor, Vidyard. If you aren't using video in your sales process, I promise you, you are leaving money on the table. I personally have been using Vidyard with my teams for years now and we use it everywhere. Top a funnel to book more meetings via email and LinkedIn. Middle of funnel to improve show rates, to demos, post demos to do proposals and follow up and close deals faster. Using video allows you to connect better with your prospects, bring your personality, energy and enthusiasm across every single time and they have a much more impactful and memorable experience for your buyer. So again, if you're not using video, you need to be. And if you are using video, you should be using Vidyard. Check out vidyard@vidyard.com and with that, let's get back to the show. What up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of live Better Sell Better Podcast. This is your host, Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd and we are going to talk about one of my favorite topics today, which is onboarding. How do you set the foundation for success for your reps for the future of their career? I believe we lose so many reps in the sales industry because they were never onboarded the right way. They got thrown into the deep end, thrown to the wolves, trial by fire. And what I think people forget about is in all those situations, someone dies. Is that really how you want to be training your reps? And so I am pumped to have Megan Suckling on the show today. She's the global Director of Sales Dev for Shutterstock. She's got reps in New York, Singapore, Toronto. And she loves building sustainable teams, setting the foundation to build on. And she uses a word that I like, machines, things that run and operate efficiently. She solves problems, she, she develops her people. She's a sales hacker, sales development award winner, sales star of LinkedIn 2020 and 2021. And today she's gonna take us to school on onboarding. Megan, welcome to the show.

Wow. Thank you so much for having me. Such a nice intro, you know, and.

It'S really nice when it's all truth, right? Like there's nothing made up in there. Those are all good things happening right now. So cool. Well, I'm pumped for this. Cause this is one of my favorite topics and it's something that means a lot to me and I'm really excited for you to share. So we're gonna go right into it here. Why do you believe a strong onboarding program is so important?

It's a big question to start off with. It is onboarding is one of the most important things that we can do for our teams. Truly, it really sort of sets the foundation for their time as a sales professional, especially for SDRs. A lot of the time they're coming out of college or it's one of their first jobs. And so not only is it their first taste of what it's like to work for your company, but it's also their first taste in sales. And so onboarding can really make it or break it for people working some of the work through that I do through SDR Nation, we see so often SDRs having a poor onboarding experience and then totally being turned away from sales as a career in general, which is really sad. So creating that foundation of, I think not only expectations for performance and providing the right training and support, but also spending a lot of time to create the right culture during onboarding is exceptionally important for the overall experience of salespeople.

I love that. So let's go there a little bit. Talk to me about the culture of onboarding. Right. Kind of like, what do you mean by that? And how do you. So I have two questions here. I want to learn what you mean by it, but like, do you have a different culture in the onboarding program than your team, or are you trying to inject the culture of your team into the onboarding program? So two part question there.

Yeah. So really trying to set the tone for the overall culture from an early stage. So we're very, very. A culture of openness, a culture of inclusivity. At Shutterstock, diversity is really important. So we really try and set that tone from the beginning. We want people to feel like they can be their authentic selves right from the start because we know that if they can be authentic, we're able to get them to be more motivated and work part harder and they'll actually enjoy their Jobs a lot more. So we really try and create that environment right from the very beginning. The way that we do that is a lot of people believe in having very, very structured onboarding programs, like a one size fits all approach. And I think that can work in some organizations. But for me, especially because I'm hiring and working with a global team, we do have people that come from different cultures all over the world and so have different expectations of even communication and human interaction. And so we really try and tailor onboarding to different learning styles and strengths a little bit, while of course, still having those core pillars and foundational things that we know we need to cover in the first two to three weeks in order for our reps to be successful.

And so let's get tactical here a little bit, I guess. How do you build in that culture in the onboarding? Like, how do you make sure that your new reps do feel that they can be their whole selves or they can be authentic? Right. Because a lot of times new reps come in and they. They put on the sales Persona hat Right. They put on this Persona of who they think they need to be in the professional world. So how do you help pull that out of them a little bit? Like, how do you actually encourage them to be their authentic self from day one on your team?

Totally. So one of the ways we do that is we create a lot of opportunities to have fun in the first few weeks. We really believe in creating moments where they can connect with their peers, where we're laughing while we're making jokes, having sort of those team bonding moments. So setting meetings for that or creating opportunities for them to have one on ones and meet people throughout the company. Myself as a leader as well as the rest of my leadership team, we're really intentional with how we start to build relationships with the reps that we bring on. The way that we do that is in our first few conversations, it's really not talking about sales at all. It's really just about getting to know the person on the other side of the table from you and really understanding what they stand for, what they come from, how they like to learn, what's the most important thing for them in the past, what are the types of learning styles that have really worked most effectively for them. Then we take a look at our overall foundational onboarding program and figure out, okay, how can we make sure that this actually caters to that specific person? Then in terms of how do you really start to create space where you're building those spaces for people to be their authentic selves. Actually, being authentic yourself as well is a really important way of showing how to do that. So being vulnerable, you know, one of the. In the first one on one I have with everybody on my team, I'm talking about my personal life, I'm talking about my dreams, I'm talking about my fiance, I'm talking about my family. And that's really just to open the door to have them potentially do the same thing in a really early stage so that we can continue to build that relationship.

I love that. I think it's so, so key. I love kind of like intro, like, surveys or questions of, like, getting to know them. Like, I love to ask what motivates you? Which, you know. But not money. Like, it's very specific. Like, what motivates you besides money? Right. Like, how do you like to be recognized in public or in private? Do you like the fist bump or the slack? Do you want an experience or cash? Like, I love to learn those little types of things from day one so you can leverage it across the entire program, which is really, really cool. Now, I got to take a step back because you said a word that I want to dive into here. You said pillars to the pillars of, like, the program. Talk to me a little about what do you view as the pillars of your onboarding program?

Yeah, so our onboarding program is about three weeks long. The first week, the main pillars are really understanding the business objectives, the overall sales team objectives, and then the sales development team objectives. At the end of that week, we also start to touch on some of our products that we have at Shutterstock. We do actually have a lot of products at Shutterstock. So soon as they can start learning about some of those things, the better. In the second week, we focus a lot more on actual prospecting. So that means, I mean, really, when you strip back what an SDR does, it's research, emailing, they're on calls, social selling, and that's pretty much it. So we keep it pretty basic in that second week to really focus on those core skills that are going to help them be successful as quickly as possible. I do find, especially in speaking with a lot of SDRs through SDR Nation as well, that a lot of the time there's just information overload in onboarding programs, and I think that can be really dangerous. At the end of the day, the SDR's job is really just to find the right people to talk to and get them excited to continue to talk to us. They don't need to have all the answers about all our specific products and services that we offer. And so we keep it pretty light in that second week. And then we actually have the team on the phones by beginning of the third week and actually doing some prospecting, outreach, Going back to sort of creating that culture where they can be authentic and feel comfortable. We do that intentionally because we actually want them to fail and have those moments where they come to us and they're like, oh, my gosh, somebody picked up today and they hung up within five seconds on me. And it was mortifying. And we have a good laugh about it. And then we listen to the call and we talk about tonality and a little bit about how they could potentially tweak that so they actually got the opportunity to talk to that person in the future. So creating that. That opportunity where we're throwing them in, you know, sometimes I think people have different philosophies around that. A lot of people like to wait a little bit longer. But again, going back to creating that culture where we just want them to feel comfortable making mistakes and coming to us for support, we do sort of move to get them being productive as quickly as possible.

I love it, right? Because the old phrase used to be like, you know, fail fast, right? I kind of believe in that. But I believe more so now in, like, fail safely first. Like, they fail, but they're safe. They didn't feel like their quota was blown. They didn't feel like they're gonna get in trouble. They don't feel like they're gonna be reprimanded or embarrassed, right? It's like, okay, it failed. Yeah, let's laugh about. Let's talk about. Let's break it down, right? And share those things. And we love. We share sales fails all the time in our onboarding of, like, okay, yeah, they answered and I hung up. They answered and I hung. I got so nervous, I hung up, right? And then we laugh about it and we move on to the next one. So I like that. I think that's a really, really cool thing to do. And so then how do you structure the duties of onboarding? Is it like, do you have an onboarding, like, program manager? Is it up to the individual managers? Are you doing it, like, who owns this system of those three pillars?

So the first pillar is fully owned by a lovely individual I have on my team named Lex. She really sort of owns. She's amazing. She's such a strong teacher helper. She's exactly the positive energy that you want to have, welcoming you to the company in your first week. She's also our inbound global SDR manager. So she has quite a large purview within the organization. And then depending on what team they're going to be working on, they'll spend the following two weeks with their actual direct manager. Sometimes that's still Lexi, sometimes that's working with Reem or Patrick, who are other two managers that we have within the organization. And they'll actually do some more of that tactical work and work together on a few things there.

And let's go down that path a little bit. Right, so like the tactics, right. Because a lot of times in onboarding, sometimes it can be like too much classroom. Right. Like you're getting all the theory but none of the tactics. Right. So like, how do you make sure they're picking up on the tactics versus just kind of receiving it, right? Like, oh, like, here's how you should handle this call. And they said, okay, cool. Then they get out there and their hands are shaking. They go, okay, like, how do I handle it? So how do you make sure they're actually picking up on the tactics?

Yeah, I think a few different ways. One, we don't just do presentation style learning as a part of onboarding. We actually structure it really intentionally. So we'll give them some external content material. There's so much out there. So let's say our topic for the day is on cold calling. We'll say, you know, start your day off by listening to this, this podcast on cold calling and get them to digest a little bit that way. Then maybe we'll do a bit more of a structured learning presentation style, more traditional training on that and dive a bit deeper. Then maybe we'll give them an exercise to actually join a team power hour, listen in on calls and provide some feedback or ask some questions around maybe why some of their teammates were structuring calls like that. And then they'll debrief in a one on one and actually do some role play. Um, so it's, it's kind of really surrounding the topic in a number of different ways so that they're really able to get a strong grasp on that knowledge as much as possible. Um, on the other side of the coin, we really do roll up our sleeves and get in there with new hires. Um, so especially in a remote environment, this has been a bit of a transition. It's not so much I'm just going to plot myself down beside you and, you know, be there for you if you have questions so you can turn to me or sort of watch you Work on your screen. We'll actually schedule one ones to say, okay, let's pull up your account list, let's select an account, you know, share screen, share with me while you find the right people to find or to talk to on LinkedIn. Um, so we, we really get in there. Um, it's not theoretical, you know, just personalize your email and go. It's like, okay, let's pull up your prospect, let's research them together and then let's craft the perfect email together so that you can actually learn through that thought process and through doing.

I love that. And it's a segue to the next question I want to ask. Right. Is remote onboarding. Because this has even been something that has been a big shift for me and my teams of like, okay, we had a 90 day boot camp, right. It was all to the minute mapped out and then gone. Right. Like now we're fully remote and we have reps kind of everywhere. Right. And so. And you lead a global team, so you've kind of done this a little bit before as well. Right. So how is it different onboarding remote than it is in person? Because I think that's where a lot of people are struggling right now is how do I onboard people remotely. So what kind of insights or tactics could you give us there to help still while remote?

Totally, yeah. It's been crazy adjusting to that change. As much as we were onboarding remotely before with some of the global aspects of the team, there always still was an in person manager that was available and around. So it has been a major change and I don't think we did it very well at the very beginning, but we've learned a lot since then and how to improve our program. One of the things that we really lost in moving in this virtual environment was job shadowing, which I know is something that a lot of managers really rely on doing. You got a free afternoon, just go sit beside this top performing rep and just watch them work. And you really do learn so much from that and through asking questions. So we had to find other ways for repetition for the SDRs. So we needed to find ways for them to actually do more call practices or actually schedule virtual job shadowing and have some more structured questions that they can ask because it might not be the exact same experience that they were getting potentially in person. So it's definitely been challenging. I think we're still figuring it out a little bit more too. I think we'll look to actually extend our onboarding program a bit more with some more Intentional courses and classes to really reinforce training again, because, you know, when they're shutting off their training session, they're just sitting alone in their office. They're not hearing what's going on in the sales aisles around them, which you just don't really realize how much I think that contributes to learning until it's not there 100%.

And I feel everything that you were describing because same with us, we're like, wait, okay, now what? And so we did. We extended the onboarding program. Right. Ramp has taken a little bit longer remotely because you don't get as much of the tribal training, which I want to talk about here in a second. But they don't get the organic stuff. Right. Of like them hearing calls, but also people hearing their calls because a lot of times new reps love to hide, right. They come in and they go call from a conference room or they go call from a corner. We had a no hiding rule. You called from your desk for the first three months because we wanted to make sure people could hear you and give feedback. Right. So. And now that's gone remotely. And so we've. We're still moving chess pieces around trying to figure out how can we help people learn remotely. And so how. Which leads to the next one. This idea of like tribal training, right? How do you involve your current team to onboard the new reps? Right, so you kind of mentioned shadowing, but like, how do you get the current team involved with the new reps coming in to help level them up?

Yeah, so we have an incredible team. We have a lot of people that have different specialties on our teams too. So we've really leaned into that. You know, if there's one person who's a total rock star copywriter, we'll have them actually schedule a one hour session to walk through how they approach copywriting emails and do some sort of practice with their new hires. And it's also a great opportunity too, for people who are interested in leadership to start to get a little bit more mentorship under their belt and work more directly with some of the new hires. So that's been a huge focus. We also do some group training sessions. So, for example, bring a cold call to the group. Actually listen to that cold call first. We'll do sort of a roundtable of feedback so everybody gives. You know, maybe what's one thing that was great about that call and one thing where we think we could improve a little bit, and then we'll actually reenact that call and do sort of that more role Play with everybody in the room. So not just the new hire, not just putting them on the spot, but getting everybody to practice so that they really feel like they're a part of the team. So a combination of one on one job shadowing, but then also creating those sort of group settings for learning for everybody. Because as much as even if you've been in the role for a year, there's still room for you to brush up on your cold call chops and improve a little bit as well.

What would you say is one of the bigger changes you'd like to make your program right? If you've had unlimited resources or we're rebuilding again from scratch, what would be like a cool idea you've wanted to implement but haven't been able to yet?

I would love to have a dedicated person that can really be with the SDRs throughout their entire onboarding program. It's. I have amazing managers on my team, but I feel for them. Sometimes it's really hard to balance running your business, running that machine, while also giving somebody the amount of support they need in order to effectively learn and ramp up as quickly as possible. So I think there could be a lot that could potentially come from having somebody be that dedicated person in that specific role. That would be one area. And then, yeah, probably a little bit of what I mentioned before, really just extending the program. I think creating more opportunities for frequent repetition. It's all just practice perfect. So just creating more space for that over time would be really key. And then honestly, I really do miss hanging out in person. So, you know, I hope that, you know, I believe the future is remote and I believe, I think we'll. We'll probably be in some sort of a hybrid model, you know, overall out there. But meeting your teammates I think is so important. Building that emotional connection, celebrating having fun together. If you can have even just a day to hang out together, you're going to be so much more likely to reach out to that person.