Of all the levers you can pull as a sales enablement manager, improving the way you onboard your reps is one of the most powerful.
A strong onboarding program increases time-to-productivity for new reps by up to 25%. It also reduces turnover by up to 82%, saving your company some serious dough by minimizing hiring costs and lost sales revenue.
When done right, onboarding does some serious double duty for your sales numbers. But if you have a sneaking suspicion your current sales rep onboarding isn’t up to snuff, you’re probably right. Paper-based onboarding is a thing of the past. It’s cumbersome, impersonal, and ineffective.
By contrast, video gives you a greater deal of leverage to improve your onboarding. It minimizes the costs of a new hire and helps you onboard new reps quickly and effectively, so they spend less time in a sea of paperwork and more time ramping up to sell.
With five high-quality onboarding videos, you can turn your sales onboarding from paper-based to video-awesome. Here’s how it’s done.
Why onboard new salespeople with video
The power of video is widely documented.
- We humans process visual information 60,000 times faster than we process text.
- We also retain 95% of a message when we see it in video.
- And 68% of people prefer video over text for getting information.
Video packs a punch in a very short amount of time. You can convey a lot of information in just a few minutes, so it’s possible to create a well-structured onboarding package with a handful of short videos.
This isn’t to say that video can replace all of your onboarding documents, especially things like HR policies and company handbooks. Those resources address onboarding topics in painstaking detail, by design.
But onboarding videos are a huge improvement over the paper pile that passes as an onboarding package in most companies.
A series of short videos extracts the most important points from dense onboarding documents, making the information much easier for new reps to process in their first days at the company.
Reps will stay more engaged during this critical time, and they’ll retain more of the information they need to be successful members of your team. When they do need to refer back to any of these resources, an onboarding video library is a quick reference point.
Start with these five videos as a welcome addition to your sales rep onboarding.
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5 essential videos for your sales rep onboarding
You can get incredibly granular with your onboarding videos. And you may have unique needs that require a somewhat complex onboarding package.
But for most sales teams, these five videos are enough to create a robust and effective onboarding package.
1. Company intro
There are several angles you can take for your company introduction, but it’s best to focus on the one or two aspects of your organization that have the most influence on sales. This keeps your video short, focused, and laser-targeted to your sales reps.
In most companies, the mission and culture have the biggest impact on the sales team. We suggest creating a video that focuses on these two key aspects.
Start with this template:
Best practices for this video:
- Be honest and authentic. Avoid papering over things about your company that might not be for everyone. New hires need to know what to expect.
- Use footage of company leadership. If you can, personalize your video with a clip of the CEO or another leader introducing the company.
- Send your video before the first day of work. This video is best watched before the new rep actually starts.
- Keep it brief. Two minutes or less is ideal. 30 seconds is incredibly efficient.
2. Sales tool walkthroughs
Video is the best way to get new team members up and running with all the tools your sales team uses because you can demonstrate the tools in action.
Video also makes it easy for new hires to self-serve. Videos can be accessed with a few clicks and referenced as new reps get everything online. This self-serve approach frees up time for managers to spend coaching reps instead of walking them through tools and processes.
Start with this template:
Best practices for this video:
- Use screen capture footage. Screen capture footage is the most direct representation of setting up digital tools. And it’s the easiest to follow along with.
- Include a simple task at the end. End your video with a small assignment — like sending a Slack message. This is a great way to get the new hire to try out the tool.
- Save in-depth process outlines for later. The purpose of these videos is to get the tools set up so new reps can perform all their work processes.
Avoid covering those processes in detail here. Save that for a separate video.
3. Commission structure
The commission structure is a big deal for your sales team. It’s what they want to know about most of all, and it will guide their day-to-day work. Easily familiarize reps with your commission policy with a short video.
Start with this template:
If you follow these guidelines, you’ll get concise policy videos and a tight policy video series.
Best practices for this video:
Be clear and direct. This isn’t the time to add a positive spin. Reps need a crystal clear understanding of the policy, even if that gives your video a strict tone.
Point viewers to more info. Make sure reps know how and who to contact if they have questions. You can also include a direct link to the supporting policy documents.
- Keep it to 2-3 minutes, max. People quickly get overloaded with policy details. If your video is too long, they’ll start missing details.
4. Team and organizational structure
Who does what in the organization is essential info for new sales reps. Organizational structure videos should focus most on direct relationships like team leads and sales managers, plus any key contacts in adjacent teams.
It’s also a good idea to introduce new reps to key players in the company who they might not interact with as often, like the VP of sales and the CEO. Just check with your HR team to double-check who they introduce as part of their onboarding so you avoid redundancies.
Start with this template:
Best practices for this video:
- Use video clips or headshots. You’re introducing people. It makes sense to use the power of video to make these introductions as close to in-person as possible.
- Show how each person relates to the rep’s job. Personal tidbits about each person are good. But the main thrust of this video is to activate working relationships.
- Add contact information. Conclude each introduction with the best way to get in touch with the person during working hours.
- Use the Capture tool in Biteable Teams. Send leadership a request for video footage and a link to record. The footage automatically uploads to your Biteable Teams dashboard.
5. Team member introduction
Lastly, get the new rep involved in the onboarding process by having them create a short video introducing themself.
Provide a few prompts as a springboard to get started: where are you from; name one fun fact about yourself; tell the team about your previous jobs (best and worst); and so on.
This is a fun project that breaks up the drone of administrative onboarding tasks. Once you’ve been using this as part of your onboarding for a little while, you can also direct new hirs to a library of sales rep intro videos, so they can familiarize themselves with their new team.
Start with this template:
Best practices for this video:
- Give reps a template. Since the new team member is a sales rep, not a video designer, point out a template or two. That way there’s no stress.
- Suggest recording footage. A short video clip shot on their phone showcases the new rep’s personality. It’s easy to record footage in Biteable Teams with the Record Me feature.
- Share the video company-wide. It makes people feel even more welcome when you send their intro video out to the whole company, not just the sales team.
Power up your sales onboarding with Biteable Teams
Adding video streamlines your onboarding process. And Biteable Teams streamlines your video creation.
With Biteable Teams, creating onboarding videos is simple — no experience required.
A huge library of video templates, branded scenes, and unique animations takes care of all the technical details. Collaborate with your team and streamline approvals with a user-friendly workflow. And top it all off with an analytics dashboard and easy-share video links.
Biteable Teams is so simple, you’ll look forward to making onboarding videos, no stress necessary.