Set New Reps Up For Success

Why is it important to keep human resources and revenue enablement functions separate when onboarding a new B2B sales hire? Because the two functions serve fundamentally different purposes, and the sellers need clarity about what to expect from each. The HR team primarily exists to manage general employee matters — and, in fact, to protect the company — while enablement is effective only if its internal customers (sellers) view it as 100% laser-focused on helping them meet and beat quota.

This is why a formal, structural separation between HR and enablement responsibilities for onboarding is essential. After all, the disciplines have starkly different skill sets, reporting lines, and KPIs. Every new seller’s time and attention should be clearly divided between the two.

Human resources focuses on:

Provisioning the new employee by role and geography, including general technology, security access, and the physical office environment.
Communicating cultural norms, helping build connections with peers, managers, and leaders, and ensuring compliance with legal guidelines.
Establishing compensation, benefits, policies, and career-path expectations.

Revenue enablement focuses on:

Understanding buyer personas, customer needs, market dynamics, and key trends.
Learning the sales process, methodology, and sales-specific technology.
Building foundational learning of products, services, and internal processes required for the first months of selling.

The North Star for positioning revenue enablement in the minds of new, and existing, sellers should be singular: “This is the function that helps me sell more, sell faster, and get to President’s Club.” Because of this, organizations must deliberately separate general employee orientation from sales-specific onboarding.

These activities often begin before a seller’s first day. HR may send company swag, the first-line manager reaches out to build rapport, and enablement lines up mentors and new-hire cohort classes. Ideally, enablement staff appears only as champions of selling success and prior quota-bearing experience to bring more authenticity and practicality to the onboarding journey. Still, HR and enablement possess core competencies that should strongly cross-pollinate their collaboration in optimizing seller onboarding, as well as in the ever-boarding that follows:

Human resources leaders typically excel at building a positive culture in which engaged employees perform better and stay longer. This is a lesson that too few traditional B2B sales leaders value. HR also tends to differentiate more effectively between micro- and macro-learning deliverables, whereas enablement may struggle to push back on overly ambitious product-launch training requests that clash with seller capacity and cadences.
Revenue enablement, however, has a deeper understanding of learning in the flow of work. And to be blunt, it’s why sellers often dismiss well-intentioned HR-led learning and development output. They also, especially as former quota carriers, recognize the need to view sales training through the lens of objectives to accomplish rather than tasks to be performed.

Ultimately, when HR, L&D, and sales align to create onboarding that maximizes seller lifetime, everyone wins.

Need help with sales onboarding? Forrester customers have unlimited access to our revenue enablement analysts and resources. Ask for a guidance session here.