3 Sales Rep Ramp-Up Strategies to Get Productive Faster

There’s no question about it—time is money. 

Organizations need to optimize efficiency and productivity. That means getting your new sales reps up to speed as quickly as possible.

Reps take time to ramp up to full productivity, costing your company time and money. A 2023 study by The Bridge Group shows that the average ramp time is 3.2 months.

“We often talk about the benefits of decreasing ramp time for the organization–it allows companies to see more revenue faster,” says Mallorie Maranda, WorkRamp’s VP of Sales. “What’s not talked about enough is the benefit that decreasing ramp time has on the individual reps. Decreasing ramp time and increasing time to first deal allows reps to make money faster and increases their confidence, leading to greater success in the long run.”

Discover strategies to shorten ramp-up time, get reps up to speed quickly, and drive more revenue for your organization.

Understanding sales ramp time

Before you can improve something, you must understand how it’s measured.

Ramp time in sales is the time it takes a new hire to become fully productive and hit goals. It starts with their first day on the job and ends when they are assigned and evaluated on the standard goals for your sales team.

The primary goal of ramp time is to prepare a sales rep to be successful. Shortening the ramp time isn’t helpful if it raises the failure rate.

What happens during ramp time in sales? 

This timeframe includes the following goals:

• Teach sales reps about your company culture and help them acclimate to the company
• Teach reps about your business, products, and services and how they help customers
• Train reps on ideal customer profile(s) and personas
• Teach the sales process

If this isn’t done well, you’ll have sales reps who miss quota, become demotivated, and leave the company sooner. This costs far more time and money than a proper training program.

How long is sales ramp time?

The often-quoted standard for ramp time is “three months,” but that oversimplifies the process. 

A better expectation would be to combine your training timeframe with the average sales cycle length. If you have a three-month training period and a six-month sales cycle, you’d expect it to take nine months before a sales rep performs at the level of experienced team members.

The Bridge Group study found that there was a wide variation in ramp times among B2B SaaS sales reps: 

• 1 to 3 months (19%)
• 3 to 5 months (39%)
• 5 to 7 months (23%)
• 7+ months (18%)

 Predictably, ramp times were longer for higher average contract values as well. 

Measuring success

Part of reducing sales ramp time is knowing when reps are ready to “graduate” to the normal sales floor. Careful measurement of training and results will help you choose the right time for each new hire.

Each company will have its own definition of success, but it is important to measure leading indicators rather than lagging ones. This will help you identify problems and correct them rather than waiting until the end of the cycle to determine success or failure.

For example, you can measure how many contacts new reps make, how many sales calls they get, and so on. As long as these statistics correlate with win rates and sales, they can give you an idea of how a rep is doing while you still have time to coach and improve their approach.

Tips to improve sales ramp time

A sales enablement team focuses on reducing ramp time and improving sales productivity by equipping reps with the right resources and training. This doesn’t mean simply cutting training time. Instead, it’s about improving productivity and increasing retention during training.

An effective transition into training

A new hire’s first few days usually consist of onboarding and orientation. 

Work with your internal teams to ensure that new sales reps are introduced to the company’s key values and culture in a way that helps them align with the organization.

A Learning Management System, like the Learning Cloud from WorkRamp, can help by allowing you to create custom onboarding and learning paths for your sales reps.  

“At WorkRamp, we’ve been able to decrease rep ramp time by personalizing onboarding paths within the WorkRamp LMS to fit the needs of individual reps.”

-Mallorie Maranda

Showcase the purposefulness of the work they’re doing and the way that selling your products and services benefits others. Establish good communication and let them know who to contact with questions about HR, training, and more. This will help engage new hires from day one, which lays a solid foundation for successful training.

Improve the training process

Next, think about the training process itself. You want to ensure training tools are easy to use and don’t create stress for new hires. Your training should also be engaging. The Learning Cloud can help you create effective onboarding and sales training programs tailored to your team’s needs to reduce ramp time, boost sales efficiency, and empower sellers to maximize their potential. 

When the training process and materials are accessible and new hires can give feedback and ask questions, they’ll be better equipped to be productive faster.

Reddit used WorkRamp to build its L&D function, train new hires and Go-To-Market (GTM) teams, and roll out company branding initiatives. Thanks to WorkRamp’s simple user interface and user experience, they decreased ramp time by 33 percent.

“We leverage WorkRamp to train our customer-facing teams on new feature functionalities, corporate messaging, and role-based skills. In particular, the sales team is focused on sharpening their negotiation skills and corporate pitch with WorkRamp Challenges. On our latest brand narrative pitch challenge, the average rep score was over 90 percent–which proves how effective WorkRamp is in training and certifying our teams.”

 

–Ashley Crisostomo, Principal Program Namanger, Sales Enablement, Reddit

Use clearly defined goals to measure performance

Nothing is more frustrating and demoralizing than feeling like you can’t reach the goals set for you. That’s often the case when goals are vague, or expectations aren’t clear. 

On the other hand, if you use clearly defined goals, you make the ramp process easier for everyone. Sales reps know what they’re shooting for, and coaches know what to focus on to help team members grow.

When you focus on providing support in specific areas, you can dramatically improve ramp time.

How long do you give a sales rep to succeed?

The cost of turnover in sales is significant—when you lose a team member, you need to hire someone to take their place. This new hire will start from the beginning, and you’ll lose productivity for the full duration of the new rep’s ramp time.

Often, lack of performance is not entirely the sales rep’s fault. Perhaps they aren’t getting the coaching they need, or they need more time in training. Or, maybe there was a change in the product, service, go-to-market message, or another fundamental part of the sales process.

Pinpointing the exact issue will help you decide if you need to let a struggling rep go or if there’s another solution. It will also allow you to make changes to avoid losing time and revenue.

Read more: 8 High-Impact Sales Coaching Strategies

Reduce sales ramp time with the Learning Cloud

Having the right systems in place can make all the difference as you improve your onboarding and training to reduce ramp time. Using the Learning Cloud can help you build onboarding programs with customized learning paths for your team and help customer-facing teams reduce ramp time, generate more revenue, and provide better customer experiences.

When you improve onboarding and decrease ramp time, you can increase productivity and exceed your revenue targets. Learn more about how the Learning Cloud can help you empower your team to succeed. Contact us to schedule a free, personalized demo.