This article originally appeared in Korsgaden Insights.

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It’s time to reimagine onboarding and holistically think about the journey of the new hire.

Sara was an hour into mandatory onboarding training for sales reps, trying to stay focused on what was being presented and getting increasingly aggravated.

She had five years of experience under her belt at a top 20 insurance firm. She had the skills and was anxious to get in front of prospective clients and start selling. And yet the company was making her sit through hours of training that focused on basic skills.

Compounding her frustration was the fact that IT was not prepared when Sara arrived on her first day, so no computer was waiting for her, and she couldn’t access the HR forms or any other resources to help her. Plus, she had barely met members of her team.

It was Day 2 of Sara’s new job. She was bored, frustrated, and did not feel welcomed. Sara was beginning to think she had made a terrible decision joining the company.

Traditional Onboarding No Longer Works

Sara’s experience is just one example of how traditional onboarding fails professionals in every industry. In 2022, a Paychex survey of newly hired employees found only half of the respondents were satisfied with their company’s onboarding process, and 80% who felt under-trained by onboarding plan to quit soon. Remote workers are even more likely to feel unsatisfied.

Traditional onboarding fails because it is sequential, disjointed, and impersonal. Each group involved in onboarding new hires is responsible only for their individual areas. They don’t provide a unified, welcoming experience.

This is a problem at nearly every company. In fact, less than 10% of companies have a fully integrated set of onboarding resources and technology, according to 2022 research from Brandon Hall Group.

In addition to being a bad experience, the model is not conducive to learning. People have a hard time remembering what they are taught when flooded with information all at once. According to the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve theory, the average person will forget up to 98% of information within a month if it’s not reinforced.

Traditional onboarding runs counter to humans’ natural learning tendencies. In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing business environment, learning should be an ongoing process that fits into our busy lives and includes all the modern learning tools and technologies available.

“Learning should be an ongoing process that fits into our busy lives and includes all the modern tools and technologies available.”

To improve the sales onboarding experience, you must pull the lens back and holistically think about the journey of the new hire.

Onboarding Reimagined: Create a Journey with Your Employee at the Center

It’s time to reimagine onboarding. Instead of following a formal, one-size-fits-all formula that has a beginning and end, put the employee at the center and create an everboarding experience.

Everboarding is dynamic and ongoing, supporting and educating employees throughout their tenure, not just the first 90 days. And each component is organized around the new hire. This continuous education and support are critical in an evolving landscape where advancements such as artificial intelligence (AI) continually alter workflows and job responsibilities.

With everboarding, for example, employee training is personalized, self-directed, and just in time. Employees are not forced to do basic-level training if they already have advanced skills. Employees can select training relevant to them, beyond the training required of all new hires. And employees can do virtual training from any device (desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone) when it is convenient for them. Furthermore, learning is delivered in small, easily digestible chunks, and employees receive reinforcement and coaching to ensure they retain what they learn.

Your goal is to deliver “Moments that Matter.” You want your new hires to tell everyone how great your company is, not cause them to question their decision to work for you.

When you do, your employees will be happier and less likely to leave. In fact, a good onboarding experience can improve new hire retention by 82%, Brandon Hall Group research finds.

“A good onboarding experience can improve new hire retention by 82%.” — Brandon Hall Group

Your employees will also be more engaged, resulting in better performance. According to Gallup research, highly engaged workforces have produced:

• 18% higher productivity (sales)
• 23% higher profitability
• 10% higher customer loyalty/engagement

How to Create an Everboarding Experience and Deliver 

Moments That Matter

The everboarding experience begins with a new hire’s handshake at the time of offer and continues through the tenure of their employment. Along the way, you must provide moments that matter—moments that make them feel welcomed, valued, engaged, and that your organization is innovative and forward-thinking.

New technology like Allego is helping organizations reimagine onboarding to assist new hires across multiple industries. Not only does Allego help companies integrate employees seamlessly into their organizations, but it also allows new hires to excel on Day 1 and walk in ready to work. It’s a game-changer in the world of onboarding.

By following these nine steps and using Allego’s Modern Revenue Enablement Platform, you can provide the everboarding experience your new employees want and need.

1. Preboarding: Generating Excitement Before Day 1

Before their official first day, send your new hire a welcome package. Include items that are personal to them and relate to your company. During this time, new hires can complete routine new-hire tasks, such as completing HR forms, and work with IT to ensure they have the tools, software, and hardware they need for their job.

2. Day 1: Executive Welcome

In addition to giving your new hire a computer and software, give them a new mobile device with the Allego app pre-loaded on it. The first thing they do is launch the Allego app and see a welcome video from the CEO. In the video, the CEO shares information about the company, explains the company’s operating principles, and welcomes the person to the team.

3. Meet the Team

Now it’s time for the new rep to get to know the team. Using their new iPhone/mobile device, they record a video introducing themself to the team. The video is then automatically uploaded to the employee directory and shared with the team. Members can then watch, post welcome messages, and share information about themselves. Now, when a team member meets the new rep in person, they already know a little bit about them and it’s easier to have conversations.

4. Understand the Company’s Culture

Delivered in bite-sized pieces that new hires can watch and read as their schedule allows, these microlearning modules teach employees your company’s operating principles, the company’s strategy, and how employees fit in. These modules are supplemented with quizzes and reinforcement to ensure learning sticks.

5. Expedite the Ramp Process

Micro-learning, another feature in the Allego app, also helps new hires ramp up quickly. Deliver short videos and articles in the flow of work to help your new reps understand product positioning and to master corporate messaging. Couple that with quizzes and reinforcement to help employees remember what they learn.

6. Master Skills and New Information

Customize skills training according to the new hire’s proficiency. Training content must be relevant to their level of expertise and delivered in bite-sized segments that they can consume in the flow of work. Provide ways for sales reps to practice pitches and messaging before they talk with real prospects. For example, a sales rep can record their pitches, and coaches can use Allego’s AI-powered Conversation Intelligence to analyze the recording. The rep can also use Allego’s Dialog Simulator to role-play sales conversations. Trainers can coach from within the app, monitor new hires’ progress, and certify their abilities.

7. Prepare to Engage with Prospects and Clients

Equally important is the seller’s understanding of your industry and your buyer personas. With that knowledge and the right tools, they can deliver personalized buyer experiences. Set your sellers up to succeed by implementing a sales content management system that integrates with your CRM. When you do, you can easily recommend the best content, training, coaching, and messaging for the deal or meeting at hand—and in the flow of their work.

8. Engage Prospects & Clients with Digital Sales Rooms (DSRs)

Help your sellers stand out and increase their chances of success by providing them with cutting-edge technology. Allego’s Digital Sales Rooms (DSRs), for example, enable sellers to further create personalized and convenient buying experiences using an easy-to-create microsite they build from a template for the buyer. With a central hub, sellers and buyers can communicate, share content, and align. Your sellers will also be happier and more likely to stay knowing you invested in modern sales tools that elevate their performance.

9. Sellers Share Lessons Learned

Sellers like to learn from other sellers—to hear their success stories, winning pitches, and how they overcome buyer objections. So, once your new hire begins meeting with buyers, ask them to share their win/loss stories and their insights and expertise from the field. When sellers collaborate, they get real-life, in-the-trenches stories—not theory—that they can apply to their prospecting and buyer conversations. These stories and insights can be added to your sales content library for future reference and training modules.

How Companies Use Allego to Create an “Everboarding” Experience

Allego provides a modern approach for each step of the everboarding process. And with our partner Apple, we’re helping companies implement everboarding experiences.

Leading companies such as TIAA, Mass Mutual, and Smith+Nephew have deployed a sequence of training and engagement processes to help new hires onboard more successfully based on a holistic viewpoint. They understand that learning is a lifelong journey—and an engine for growth, performance, and retention.

It takes work to attract, develop, and retain top talent. Not only that, but it is costly to train sales professionals only to have them leave later.

“To keep top sellers, you need a continuous growth journey, with multiple levels of learning available to those curious and adventurous sales professionals.” — Kaleb M. Sunwall and Stephanie Ibarra, Smith+Nephew

“To keep top sellers, you need a continuous growth journey, with multiple levels of learning available to those curious and adventurous sales professionals,” write Kaleb M. Sunwall, senior vice president of global commercial training and education, and Stephanie Ibarra, global training operations director, in an article published in Selling Power Magazine (February 2023). “Smith+Nephew is on a journey to provide world-class commercial training and lifelong learning experiences, from hire to retire. We endeavor to strengthen our talent and capabilities and make the company a destination employer.”

To achieve that, Smith+Nephew transformed its learning methods based on industry studies and its own research into individual and sales team performance. And it created an “agile team relentlessly focused on embedding a growth culture within the sales teams.”

Since implementing its revised commercial training strategy, the company has seen several improvements:

• Manager coaching and reinforcement increased sales rep satisfaction, engagement, and sales performance.
• Continuous learning on product launches and market development initiatives led to millions of dollars in growth and ROI.
• Higher engagement in training has resulted in higher sales.
• Sales rep participation in advanced training courses has led to lower turnover.

“Employees now recognize that learning is a lifelong journey, not an event. Learning is an engine for growth and enables higher performance. Training is a leveraged investment, where every dollar is a positive multiplier to productivity,” Sunwall and Iberra say.

Create Your Everboarding Experience

It’s time to ditch stagnant, traditional onboarding methods and embrace customized everboarding to improve company performance, employee engagement, and recruiting power. By creating a culture of community, continual education, and engagement, not only will you empower your sales reps to succeed but do so in a way that makes them feel included and valued.

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About the Author: Mark Magnacca is President and Co-Founder of Allego. Prior to Allego, Mark was President of Insight Development Group, a sales enablement and consulting firm that specialized in financial services. Mark is also co-author of the book Digital Sales Revolution and Mastering Virtual Selling: Orchestrating Sales Success.

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Traditional Onboarding No Longer Works: Onboarding Reimagined

It’s time to reimagine onboarding. Instead of following a formal, one-size-fits-all formula with a beginning and end, put the employee at the center and create an “everboarding” experience. Watch this webinar to learn how to do it.