How to work with me
"How to work with me" is one of the most important parts of your sales onboarding. If you missed my sales onboarding framework, here it is.
The Sales Onboarding Framework — Fractional VP of Sales
What is it?
It is a letter from you (the leader) to your team member or new hire, where you explain how you manage people, who you are, and what you stand for.
How it all started?
During my time as Head of Sales at Boom, I found myself onboarding multiple people remotely and with little support.
As a result, I wrote an open letter to the new hire to ensure they knew me well from day one.
At that time, Boom was transitioning from a marketplace to SaaS with few proven methods and many challenges.
It was crucial that each new hire was fully onboard with our mission, vision, and most importantly, with me. While revamping our sales onboarding, I wrote an open letter explaining my principles, nuances, way of working, and expectations to the new hire.
The structure
The onboarding process begins with a warm greeting to your new hire or team member, followed by an explanation of the principles of onboarding. From there, you can begin to explain the purpose of the letter you are writing.
Section 1: Our Average Week
In this document, I will discuss our interactions and what is important. Specifically, I will outline how I run meetings, my expectations for attendees, and which meetings are mandatory or very important not to miss.
Section 2: North Star Principles
Here, I have listed my top three principles. Typically, I do this session live, so I write down just the main points and then take time to deep dive in a separate call. The goal here is to explain what’s very important to me and why others should know about it.
Section 3: Feedback Protocol
Here I explain how I like to receive feedback and why feedback is important to me.
Section 4: Meeting Protocol
Meeting protocols are crucial in remote or hybrid environments. In this section, I will explain how I run meetings and why I do so.
Section 5: Overtime
I take the opportunity to foster a healthy working environment by explaining that I do not work overtime. This statement, coming from me and being included in this document, is crucial for providing guidance on mental health and burnout prevention.
Section 5: Notifications
In this document, I provide guidance on how to contact me and what individuals should expect when doing so.
Section 6: Emails
My ‘no internal’ email policy goes here.
Section 7: Management Style
This is a very important document. Here, I will explain my management style and what it means for those working with me. I will take the time to write this properly and provide a clear explanation of how I manage people.
Section 8: CRM
CRM hygiene and how we use it are very important to me. Therefore, I have dedicated a section to it where I explain why it is crucial and what I expect in terms of standards for this topic.
Section 9: Bonus Point
I’d like to take a moment to share something that inspired me recently and that I think can inspire new hires as well. In my template below I have shared a Twitter Thread called 'the best advice you have ever received'.
I am certain that this document is one of the most important parts of your sales onboarding. However, even if you are not currently onboarding anyone, it is never too late to sit down and write something similar. Your team will appreciate it.
Ah and remember, make it yours, the above is what worked for me. 😉
