Field sales onboarding in a week (not a quarter)

Field sales onboarding has become a polite way of saying "we don't have a plan." A new rep who isn't billing in 90 days is a rep the team is paying to learn. Most of that learning could happen in week one if the program were actually designed.

Day 1: product walkthrough

Not a pitch deck. The actual product, the actual use cases, the actual pricing. If you can't teach your product in a day, it's too complex to sell in the field.

Day 2: territory ride-along

Ride with the best-performing rep in the closest territory. Watch them work. Don't talk for six hours. Take voice notes between stops.

Day 3: 10 voice memos from the top 10 accounts

The incoming rep listens to the last year of recorded notes on their assigned accounts. Two hours of audio. Pause, rewind, take notes. By the end they know more about their top accounts than most reps do after a month.

Day 4: shadow a close

If there's a deal closing this week, the new rep is in the room — literally or on the call. Watch the language, the pauses, the handling of objections.

Day 5: first call

They make a live call. Not a mock. Not a warm-up. A real outreach to a real account on their list, with the manager listening. Debrief that evening.

Week 2: solo

They're in the truck. No babysitting. Daily 15-minute voice check-in with the manager. Adjust in real time.

Why this field sales onboarding plan works

It front-loads the information reps actually need — context on their accounts, not a PDF of company values. It puts them in front of a customer before the muscle memory of "I'm in training" calcifies.

And because the learning is voice-based and account-specific, it compounds. Week three, the rep already has a base layer of context that takes a traditional onboarding program six weeks to build.