Two weeks of product training, a CRM login, a couple of client presentations… and from month one we start asking for pipeline, forecast and closed deals. When results don’t show up by month six, the same line appears: “they weren’t as good as they seemed.” I think the uncomfortable question is a different one: are we actually doing onboarding that matches the type of selling we’re asking for?
In B2B consultative selling, where sales cycles can take several months, talking about a 15-day onboarding is just fooling ourselves. The induction can be short, but commercial onboarding should cover at least the first 3 to 6 months, focusing on helping the rep truly understand the business, the customer, the real sales process (not the theoretical one), and the working culture. In those first 90 days, for me the order is simple: first, observe and listen (how the company actually makes money, what real pains the customer has, how the deals that really close are sold today); then, practice with support (taking parts of the meeting, asking questions, closing next steps with someone from the company in the room to give feedback); and only then start to let them handle certain types of accounts on their own, with a manager acting more as a coach than as a numbers inspector.
There’s another topic that almost nobody talks about, and where many regional companies hit a wall: salary and variable compensation during this period. If we ask for consultative selling with long cycles, but design the commission scheme as if it were retail, we create huge tension. What I see working best is partially protecting the variable income during the first months, tying it to learning milestones and quality activity (qualified pipeline, solid CRM usage, relevant meetings), not just to billed revenue, and also defining ramped quotas and targets that match the real sales cycle. The message to the rep changes completely: “we know what kind of selling we’re asking for, and we’ll measure you with the right yardstick.” Anxiety drops, qualification improves, and the quality of customer conversations goes up.
I don’t think the problem is just “we can’t find good consultative sales reps.” Many times, the problem is that we throw them into a complex game as if they already knew the club, the playbook and the league, and then judge them by the score at halftime. The question I like to leave with leadership teams is simple: if a new consultative sales rep joined your company tomorrow, do they have a designed onboarding journey, or do they have to fend for themselves? The answer says a lot about your commercial model… and about how much you’re really taking care of the talent that’s so hard for you to attract.
