In this episode of the Sales Transformation Podcast's 'Mastercast' series, Phil welcomes Nick Rose, Sales Director at Sharp UK, to share insights from his master's dissertation on the impact of sales onboarding on business success.
Nick discusses his personal journey into sales without structured training, the high attrition rate in sales, and the enormous costs associated with onboarding typical sales recruits. Through his master’s research he discovered key gaps in onboarding, which led to him overhauling the process with a Sales Academy programme.
Highlights include:
- [01:18] – Nick’s own onboarding into sales experience
- [33:40] – Identifying a diversity issue in sales
- [41:33] – Designing a Sales Academy based on master’s research
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Full episode transcript:
Please note that transcription is done by AI and may contain errors.
Phil: Um, so Nick, this is a, a huge welcome to the Sales Transformation podcast, but this is the, um, this is the mastercast series. So this is where we invite master students to actually share their research findings. And I know that you've. Um, taken part in our GST events in the past where some of your research was shared, but this is now the podcast, so just a huge welcome to the, um, sales Transformation Podcast master series.
So thank you, Nick.
Nick: Oh, thank you. No, it's an absolute pleasure to be here. Um, as you know, Phil, I'm a huge advocate of, of Lia and the team and the people and the work that you guys do. So yeah, real privilege to have been asked to thank you for the opportunity. Oh, well, it's a,
Phil: it is our privilege, um, in fact, having you on board and I'm kind of, I think it's, uh, you know, the topic of your.
Um, dissertation is something that I think is going to appeal to a huge number of, of people who listen into the program, um, which is sales onboarding. How can, I'm reading it out. I've got your dissertation up here on my screen, Nick, so I can, you know, it is funny with titles, they're always very long, aren't they?
And but in sales onboarding, how can the process of onboarding sales recruits impact upon sales success? So. Um, the first question that we normally ask is, why, why this topic? Why was it a topic that was of interest to you? Why was it your concern?
Nick: Yeah. Well, that's a great question. I mean, I, I, on a, on a personal level, um, I started my, my sales career at 19 years old.
And It always stuck with me. I never received what I would call any structured training or development, so I was very lucky to go into a medium-sized business. Um, and there were lots of amazing things that kind of went around that it was a welcoming environment. The business was run by a person. I had, I still do have an awful lot of respect for, and I was taught sales in a very unstructured way without an onboarding program, without any structure.
I would say without understanding the values of the business or being encouraged to understand my own values and having to learn as I went, and I think I made a lot of mistakes as a result of that approach. I also learned a lot of things, um, potentially picked up some bad habits. I would say reflecting now and looking back, and so it always stuck with me that that didn't, that experience for me didn't feel.
As it perhaps should have felt. Um, yeah, so when it, when it came to dissertation time and picking a subject, I wanted to go with something that actually meant something to me that I resonated with that kind of provoked an emotion almost. Mm-hmm. Um, and on top of that, I'd kind of, having worked for Sharp Laterally, which is a, a big organization, you know, a, a, a corporate global business, um, I had noted that we.
Had a fractured way of onboarding salespeople, and so it felt like something that you'll know better than anybody. You're gonna invest a lot of time into. Yeah. A dissertation into the research, into the lit review, you know, into carrying out that project. Mm-hmm. I wanted to invest my time into something that felt relevant and this felt like a topic that I was excited to get into.
Yeah. To learn more about and to understand how it could potentially positively impact our business.
Phil: Yeah. Nick, I know you've mentioned you work at Sharp, but would you mind sort of telling, telling us a bit more about, you know, which bit of Sharp you work with and what, what's your sort of. Well, what was the area of responsibility that you had at the time that you did the dissertation?
Because I, I think your role is maybe changed slightly since, uh, we last spoke. Uh, perhaps not, but would you mind just sharing what your role is at Sharp? Absolutely.
Nick: Yeah. Um, I'll have to try and remember now. So yeah, I, I, um, so my role, my title is Sales Director, um, and I cover the Northwest region. So the day-to-day role is around, um.
Developing a sales team to achieve results in our world. Yeah. And some of those results are your, your standard metrics, things like, uh, revenue generation. Yeah. Um, gross profit generation. So we're working with around 4,000 customers of all different shapes and sizes. Um, for those that don't know, many people know Sharp as a, um, as a consumer electronics company.
So, you know, we have a bit of a running joke that at any, anytime we tell people we work for Sharp, it's sharp tb, sharp microwaves, Manchester United sponsorship, all that kind of stuff. But what we actually do, what I'm involved in is office technology. So we position ourselves as an office technology provider.
We're providing our clients with managed print solutions, managed IT services, audio visual solutions. Et cetera. So my role within that is to manage sales teams. Um, it's about performance, it's about development. Um, it's about achieving numbers, but additionally to that, um. I manage our national new business team as well.
Okay. So there's a bit of a specialism there around the way that we, we, um, ironically onboard new client. Yeah. We find and, and, and bring new clients on. And we're more scientific about that than we've ever been. So I'm really enjoying overseeing that side of things. Mm-hmm. Um. Yeah, there's the strategic element to what we do.
So we're working with, with sales leadership across the UK to make sure that we, um, are going to market in the right way, that we understand who our customers are, who our ideal customers are, to make sure we've got an l and d plan in place to develop our people as best that we can.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: So yeah, so title sales director, but quite a diverse role and I really enjoy it that way.
I like to get involved in. As many different things as I can. Yeah.
Phil: Yeah. So I think given that context, obviously the whole sales onboarding. Kind of process is something that would've been close to your heart in terms of recruiting new sales teams and new people into the organization as well. So something that was really relevant.
Okay. So thank you for sharing about your previous experience. You know, so you came from a position where you felt that, um, you haven't had perhaps the best induction process. So perhaps we could focus a bit more into. Um, the kind of research approach that you took, 'cause I think you did some quite interesting analysis of best practices, you know, from outside of Sharp in, in order to start to shape some of your thinking.
Um, what you found from your literature review about, um, for example, things like the cost of onboarding salespeople, you know. The business case for why this is a topic that's so important, I think is something that would be great. If you could dust off your, uh, memory from your dissertation. It'd be great if you could just share what some of the key findings were and whether they surprised you.
Nick: Yeah, absolutely. So. Um, yeah, similarly, it was, it feels like an eternity ago now. It was a, it was a, it was probably what, a couple of years ago? I think that I grabbed a couple of years. It's not that long, you know? Yeah, yeah. It was only
Phil: a couple of years ago.
Nick: It feels a lot longer. I'm not sure Manchester United have won, won many games in that period of time.
No, they haven't. In football terms, it feels like a long time. Yeah. But no, it was, it was, um, it was a really interesting topic for me to dive into. Um, so. A, a bit of context as well. Really. I, I, I had not done anything like this before, so I, I never went to university. I didn't do a degree. Yeah. Um, so I kind of came about doing a master's without the experience of ever having done a lit review.
Yeah. Um, so the first thing I had to learn was how to do a lit review. But yeah, I, I found that. Mike, the most interesting findings really were the, I've got this figure of 30% attrition in, in sales, 30% of of annual attrition, which is, is a lot. In the context of, of, of going out and finding the right people.
So identifying talent and the amount of time and effort and energy that goes into that recruitment To bring salespeople into the business, making sure they've got the right skillset, making sure they've got all the, the, the, the relevant, you know, sort of k sbs almost, um, spending, you know, management, spending time with newly recruited salespeople to, to, to bring them up to speed.
So to make sure that they know everything they need to know. Um, only for that not to work and for you to then have to do it on repeat. So the amount of businesses that are out there having to do this on repeat wasting time, effort, money, resource. Um, the, the other statistic that I read in the lit review was this figure of, of of, of it costing up to 300,000 pounds.
Yeah. For a, for a sales hire.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: Um, I couldn't believe that when I read it. Yeah. I thought, wow, that is a, that's a lot of money. That's an awful lot of money. Yeah. Potentially being sort of wasted. Um, yeah. And so found all that, I found all that stuff really, really interesting. Um, it made me think that if the stake are really high, you know, those attrition rates are high, that that cost is high.
If my project could help to find a potential solution, yeah, then there would be huge savings. That'd be quicker time to success. Yeah. For the individual. You know, the sooner that you could potentially bring in somebody, but onboard them successfully, um, equip them with all of the skills and the knowledge and the information that they need.
Then that attrition rate could be reduced and that cost of hire could be, could be great. Greatly reduced. Yeah.
Phil: I mean, I think you make, um, some interesting observation based on your lift share research, uh, about cost and time, and how long does it take to ramp up a sales person as well from when they join.
Um, and you, I think you talk about 15, you know, you have this 15 month period where you might have a. You know, a high performing sales person or a performing sales person, and then you may get into that other cyclical process of them leaving and perhaps, uh, yeah, moving, moving elsewhere. Um. Uh, so yeah, so I think the business case for selecting the right people and then once you have selected the right people also, then having an onboarding program, um, that would be, I think you call it best in class, you know, is, is huge.
Um, you did quite a lot of internal sort of. Investigation as well, I think as well in terms of how it was currently being done at Sharp. And I don't know if you wanted to kind of share some of the observations you've made from your analysis. And I know the situation has changed hugely since then. You know, largely, I guess.
Based on the recommendations made by your, your project, but when you, you know, I was quite interested in this sort of survey research that you started to do to actually look at, look at, um, um, the experiences of people from within the organization about induction training. And so, yeah.
Nick: Yeah, absolutely.
Just, just before I do move on to that, Phil, one, one of the other points as well that, that I'd, I'd stumbled upon in the lit review was that there were, there was actually a lot of literature on the recruitment process and how to recruit salespeople, right? There was plenty of literature on training and development, so sort of ongoing training and development, but there was very little.
Literature on the actual specific, the onboarding piece. Yeah. Um, so the bit between the two really, it was almost like if you look at timeline perspective, the first bit, the recruitment. Yeah. The kind of the end bit being, not the end, but the next bit along being the training and development. But it was that specifically that piece around the onboarding where there was just very little, yeah.
Made me think there's actually, there's a knowledge gap and an opportunity for me to kind of. Add to that knowledge Yeah. If you like, or to kind of create some of that knowledge around that. Yeah. So yeah, in terms of the research, the internal research it was, was very interesting. So I'd, um, decided to kind of do a combination of qualitative and quantitative, um, research.
So. One of the methods I used, so the method I used for the, for the quantitative aspect was, was to survey. Yeah. So it was to send out a survey using an online tool to our entire sales population of, I think it was 96 people at the time. Yeah.
Phil: 96 you mentioned. Yeah. Uh,
Nick: yeah. And one of the kind of key challenges around that was, was, was gonna be for me, the, we have quite an established team at Sharp.
Um, yeah. We don't get. We talked about that attrition rate being around 30%. Ours is actually a lot less than that.
Phil: Okay.
Nick: So yeah, we've got quite an established team and my concern really around some of this stuff was the people at a time served, how well are they gonna remember their onboarding process or lack of even 25, 30 years ago.
Okay, so I don't know about you, but I struggle to remember what happened last week sometimes. Uh, so I had a slight concern with the survey, but the idea with the survey was to try to understand that kind of, that starting point, you know, it was to get as close to our caners, but where are we now? What, um, you know, what's the current state of play?
What feedback can we get from the individuals that have been. Onboarded by Sharp into a sales role. You know, are we good? Are we bad? Yeah. Are we consistent? Are we inconsistent? Is there a kind of, is there a measured way that we do it? Um, so I sent out this survey. Online the response rate was 48. Just under 50%.
Right. Which actually I was quite pleasantly surprised by. Yeah,
Phil: yeah. Well that's a big sample, you know, from the 96, you know, quite a large number that you've, you know, half of the organization, so, yeah.
Nick: Yeah. So half of the organization and the idea was to try to understand what we would, how we were kind of handling onboarding now, key bit of information.
We are split regionally. As a business. So yeah, I mentioned earlier that my kind of, my bit is the northwest. Yeah. And then I have two counterparts. So there are three of us in total sales directors that manage bits of the country. So what I wanted to do was to make sure I got snapshots across all three of those teams and make sure that I got responses from representatives on of those three teams.
But it was to understand really what, how do we approach it, what do we cover? What was covered in that onboarding process? Um, what wasn't covered? What were, you know, what were the, what were your overall force? Would you consider it successful? Was it memorable? Did we tell you about the company values? Did we tell you about, um, you know, sort of what's expected of you in the role?
Um, and actually the findings were really interesting. Yeah. So do you want me to justify? Yeah, it would
Phil: be great to know more, but ju ju just before we do, um, of course you're involving the sales teams of your fellow sales directors, you know, I guess they needed to buy into the fact that you were doing the research.
Were they equally interested in, in sort of the research program that you were embarking upon here? Were they supportive?
Nick: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm, I'm very lucky in the sense that, um, you know, I never take it for granted that I work for a company whereby we've, we, we've got a really good culture in that sense.
We pull together, together really, really well. Um, when it. When it's best to, we operate really strongly as one team. Okay. There's also sometimes benefit in operating regionally. And actually my two colleagues, um, my fellow sales directors, we are very different in our approaches. So one thing I was mindful of is that we all have a current way of onboarding salespeople into our regions, and we all think that's the right way.
Otherwise we wouldn't be doing it that way. Yeah. Yeah. So there's almost that acknowledgement that there's, there's three different ways of doing it. Okay. And three, three individuals that all think that their way is probably the best way to do it, so. Right. I think like anything, you know, anybody that's been on, on, on that master's journey and handled that dissertation and done a deep dive into something that's going on within the, you have to handle it with kid gloves.
Yeah. Yeah. You can't storm in and say, actually. Uh, you two are not doing a very good job of this, so I'm going to do a project and then we're all gonna do it really well. So I think for me it was, yes, it's just about respecting that everybody's got a slightly different view and a slightly different way of doing things, but hopefully gaining that buy-in, that if we could find an established way.
And a consistent and structured way to handle this, then the benefit would be there for all of us. Okay. Yeah. You know, if we can reduce attrition rates, if we can reduce how much money we spend, if we can, you know, ramp up, um, if we can sort of decrease that ramp up, time to success, yeah. We win. So yeah, to answer your question, I think, yeah, it was, I was, I was able to get buy in from, from my colleagues, which was great.
Phil: So for Sharp, it wasn't really the attrition that was a concern. It was more the ramp up. Is it because attrition was, was, uh, you know, quite low compared to other companies?
Nick: Yeah, I think it was. It's the, it was definitely, it was the ramp up. Um, it was the kind of, it was that engagement piece as well, so.
Again, slightly nuanced in our business is that we're in a transitional period. Yeah. Okay. So if you were to kind of, um, sharp, 10 to 15 years ago, we were a photocopier company. And I use that term quite intentionally because that's Yeah. What we did, we, we, we sold photocopiers and they came with a service contract.
Phil: Yeah. Um,
Nick: and that was how it worked. There are some complexities around that, but it was quite simplistic in that sense. So a potted history in the last 10 to 15 years, digitization has meant that our business has had to transform because, um, you know, I'm sure people who are watching or listening to this will appreciate that businesses, organizations are looking to print less.
Um, sustainability is now massive. It's high on everybody's agenda and quite rightly so as well. Um, you know, digitization. Has meant that for us, people print less, people are gonna buy less printers. And ultimately we needed to find a way to pivot as a business. And so the way we've done that is to diversify our portfolio, which is amazing.
You know, it gives us far more opportunity to talk to our customers about the, the many projects that they've got on. The challenge around that for salespeople is that many grew up in, in the print industry, and so we're now asking. People that signed up to, to sell photocopiers for a living and had done that very successfully for many, many years to do something that's completely different.
And of course, some people go on that journey and want to go on that journey and some don't. And that's okay. That's quite normal. But recruitment forms a fairly key part of that change. So as we recruit. We want to recruit people that can do all of the things that we need them to do. Okay. Yeah. And so I think it was the, the reason it wasn't the attrition that's the issue.
It was more about as we recruit, we want to find the best people that we can for what we want to do today.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: We want to onboard them. In a new way. So yeah. Not the way that we onboarded somebody 10, 15 years ago and probably have got into bad habits of just rinse and repeat. Yeah. But we need to find a way that we can onboard somebody that really demonstrates what Sharp are today.
Yeah. And we can give them all of the skills on day one as opposed to drip feeding them out over the next 12 months.
Phil: Yeah, that's, that's very clear. And, uh, so fantastic. Okay, so let's move on to the research now and the findings. So, uh, I think you've got some really interesting sort of survey data, um, that that came back as well.
So, uh, it'd be great for you to share what some of your key findings were from the survey.
Nick: Yeah. Okay. So yeah, lots of findings and, and it was, it was really, really interesting. Um, some things I expected, some I perhaps didn't. So the, firstly, the overall effectiveness rating, um, came in at 52%. So the sample of respondents gave, uh, roughly a five out of 10.
Okay. To the way that they had been onboarded. So for me, that was an interesting starting point because that feels low. Um, yeah. Yeah. I, I, I would. I would argue that a business should be aiming for, for, for eight plus in Yeah, in that area. I don't think, I think nine would feel maybe a bit artificial and inflated perhaps, because Yeah, the reality of working in a big business is that some people love what you do.
Some people are indifferent and some people don't like it. And that's, that's so, um, and obviously you try to limit the amount of people that don't like things. But yeah, for me, I would be looking at that to be certainly 7.5 to eight outta 10 for me to say, okay, we are where we want to be. So five is clearly lower.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: Um, the, so my main aim was to understand what we had covered in. Previous onboarding process. Yeah, so I created a list of various different things that you, and maybe there were 12 items on that list, but 12 things that you would find in a, in a, in a sharp onboarding, in, in an induction process. And the ones that came out as being the ones that people remembered the most were product training, health and safety, and company policy.
Right. So. All of which are important. Okay? So if you're gonna go and start a new job. You need to know the health and safety rules. You need to know what to do if the fire alarm goes off. Yeah. You need to know what the policies are, the company policies around. Yeah. You know, I guess things like data security and um,
Phil: yeah, and the
Nick: many policies that you need to know coming into a business like Sharp.
And you of course going into a sales role need to know what the products and solutions do. Yeah. So those things need to be there. But my instant thought was these perhaps shouldn't be the most memorable things. If you go to start working at a new business, that should be exciting. It should create an energy.
Um, it should be memorable. It should be something in my mind that you go home to your partner or your friend or your parents and you say, guess what? I started at this new business. And we've done some really cool things. I've learned some amazing things, and it struck me that policy and health and safety perhaps wouldn't be that.
Phil: Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure it'd light up anyone's particular. Fire those, those topics, but
Nick: not mine or yours. Phil, I know that I know you well enough to know that, so again, safe to assume for, for most other people as well. So, so that, that was the, that was where we were. So we'd got this, um. We'd got this five-ish out of 10 grade and we'd got this list of things that we knew were being covered that people could call off and say, oh yeah, we definitely covered that.
And we definitely covered that. Yeah. So the next aspect of of this then was what did the respondents think were important? So what in their minds do they think. Should be covered.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: And what would be the most memorable aspects of that? So the things that came out in that, in that section were things like company values, right?
What's expected of you, IE the role. So what are the kind of nuances in the role? Maybe things like, um, KPIs and, and things like that. So what we want them to do, um, and then the individual's own values, goals, and objectives. Right. The people focused bit. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so again, for clarity, the idea of turning up at work and rather than somebody kind of throwing health and safety information at me, somebody trying to find out about me and what makes me tick and what I'm trying to achieve and what my own goals are and how I operate the person.
Yeah. So those, and the other one to mention was product training. So product training made an appearance in both. Yeah. We were doing training, which is great, but also, um. People felt that, that that should be, that should be covered. Um, yeah. So what kind of, I think what the data showed there from the survey was that we were, we were handling the onboarding process in a very, what I would call a black and white way.
Yeah. And we needed to bring some color to that process.
Phil: Right. Okay. That's really interesting. And I mean, it's, it is, uh, when you talk about company values and personal values, um, we obviously talk about that a lot as you know, on the Master's program, but was that something that you had suggested might be covered?
Or is that something that you had got from the survey data? That it was something that they wanted, you know, the, the inductees, if you like, wanted to know more about company values and, you know, how are, how will you work with me to let me flourish within the company that I'm now working for?
Nick: Yeah. So the, the everything was selected off a list that I had put together.
Um Okay. And, and, and ran by some, some colleagues really to, to make sure that I, so this list comprised of all of the things that I've just mentioned there. Yeah. So they would never rise down, but I think interestingly, to link, to link these things together, which is important to do, I wouldn't have fought to have added.
That particular item around values and goals and objectives. If it weren't for my, my master's experience and my experience. Okay. Learning about myself as, as you just mentioned, so through my master's experience, because obviously this dissertation comes right at the end. By this point, we've already done six modules.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: On the master's program and my experience of the Master's program was that it was one that made me highly reflective. Yeah. It was one that made me look internally at my own values Yeah. At my goals and what I want to achieve both in my career. Yeah. Uh, professionally, but also personally. So certainly I, by that point, had developed my own.
Feelings around what I think I would want. Yeah. Um, and so, yeah, it was important to me to capture some of, of that stuff. Right. As well as making sure that it was balanced from the perspective that, look, an induction slash onboarding, yes. We can make it person focused. That can be an option, but also we are gonna have to make sure that we do Yeah.
We, we do the basics. You know, we cover the two. Yeah. Uh. And, and what, one of the, one of the recommendations, and I hope I'm not jumping too far ahead with this, that, that I came to was that the two things should be very different. Right. So there should be, uh, there should be an induction process that the, the, the people team or the HR team would handle.
Yeah. That would cover, or you know, the generic stuff that you would have to know whether you're an administrator. Or a cleaner or a sales person or a senior executive, but that there should be a sales onboarding. A specific sales onboarding that sits next to that. Yeah. Is not wrapped into it, but it sits separately and it covers all of those other, um, I would argue more interesting and right and energy provoking activities.
Phil: So is there anything more that, um, you'd like to share about some of the findings from your research before I move on to the kind of, did you get a then a chance to actually take the findings and implement it in, into a new way of inducting salespeople at Sharp.
Nick: Sure. Yeah. I mean, I guess the, the, the other bit I would, I would mention with the findings would be the, the, so I did the quote, the interviews as well.
Yeah. Uh, so mentioned earlier about making sure that the data was, um, I guess as accurate as we could make it, so sat inside the surveys. Um, the survey, I also interviewed three account managers. Right. And one, one from each of the different regions. Um, yeah. They were kind of 20 to 30 minute discussions that were Yeah.
More of a deep dive held over teams because I wanted Yeah. Um, there, there's obviously a regional aspect and I wanted to make sure there was a consistency Yeah. Um, across all of those conversations. And yeah. It was obviously the process then of triangulating the Yeah. Um, the data that came from the interviews and the surveys, the data from the interviews very much backed up what we'd seen.
In the surveys.
Phil: Okay. And what were they, were there differences from region to region in terms of output, or did you find sort of common areas? It.
Nick: W Yeah, there was a mixture of the two. I mean, the common areas would tend to be those that were handled directly by the people team. So, okay. What I would call the, the induction based bits and pieces, the commonality across the two was that they were very much, again, in the interviews, they were the bits that came up.
So when I asked the person directly, what can you remember from your first few weeks at Sharp as a quite an open, generic question, um. Again, it was very much, well, on day one I started, I was given a tour around the building. I was shown where the toilets are. Um, I was, I was taken to the warehouse and shown how to lift a box, for example.
You know, used the knees, not the back, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So the themes through the interviews were very, very similar in that
Phil: Okay.
Nick: For me it was. That bit was quite consistent. Where the inconsistencies came were on the approach to product training, for example. Okay, so in one of the interviews, somebody was kind of, um, uh.
Was given a lot of product training in the first two weeks, and it was quite an intense two weeks. Yeah. Where we expected to remember all the feeds and the speeds and the, and the, and the nuances around the different models of photocopier, for example. And in another case, that happened over a three month period.
Right? Yeah. One of them felt planned. One of them was unplanned. Yeah. So the interviews kind of helped me to see that, okay, we don't have. Yeah. A consistent way of doing this. The experience is very different based on where you are in the country, for example. Yeah. Um, and you know, it occurred to me that that shouldn't be the case in a, in a, we should have, however we do it, there should be a consistent way.
Yeah. You know, if three different people start on the same day in three different parts of the country, we should have an identified. Yeah, that we onboard that person to give them all of the skills and the knowledge that they need, but also the best chance to succeed in this business.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: And if they were to move, um, I don't know, say somebody relocated from London to Manchester, they should move from one area to another where there are consistencies around approach on, on things like this.
So, yeah. So the, the. The research and, and enabled me to see, I think what I thought was the case anyway.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: But it really helped me to understand on a much greater level. Yeah. Ultimately this isn't about what I think, this is about what the research tells me. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so, so that was important I think, Phil, the other thing I mentioned really quickly before we move on is, is to say that, um, one of the other issues that I felt.
We had was a lack of diversity across our sales team as well. Oh, yeah,
Phil: yeah.
Nick: Um, so that was another key driver for me was to understand how do we start to diversify this team. Um, it was, you know, I mentioned earlier 96, a team of 96 salespeople, and I, I think 90 plus of those were white, middle aged males.
Right. There was nothing wrong with being a white, middle aged male. I am one. Uh, yeah. But in 2023 as it may have been at the time, that felt to me like we were absolutely behind the times here. Right. You know, this we are not CR for, it's not an intentional thing. There's no systematic problem at Sharp, you know?
Yeah. There's no sinister thing hiding underneath the surface.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: But we are not proactively. Handling that, you know, there's something that we're not doing that's not enabling, um, women, um, people from other, um, you know, sort of other cultural backgrounds.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: People of, um, I think younger people as well.
It would be fair to say younger people we're not creating those opportunities for those people to come and work in our sales function. Yeah. And so it felt to me that, um. A little bit around the way we recruit, of course, which I didn't, I didn't focus on for this project. Yeah. But the recruitment piece, but then the way that we onboard those people, because that, it occurred to me that, you know, if you bring a young person into a business now with the expectations that young people have around the workplace and what they want to get from the workplace, if we do a really rubbish job of onboarding them, I expect that they would leave quite quickly.
Yeah. And so it was piecing all of that stuff together, really.
Phil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So creating, uh, an induction program that would appeal to you a more diverse intake? Yeah, absolutely. Of, of applicant? Yeah. Correct. Okay. Yeah, that's a really good, I remember you made that comment, uh, when you presented at GST, um, about, about diversity.
Okay. So you did this amazing piece of res, you know. Research you got the data in. Um, what happened after that?
Nick: Yeah. So, well, what, what did happen after that? So, firstly, I thoroughly enjoyed the process. Uh, okay. I enjoyed the process. It was great. And, you know, you will know better than anybody that it's, it's challenging, you know, it's, it's, yeah.
The Master's program is one of the best things I've ever done. Uh, you know, when I of you to say no, when I reflect on the benefits and the kind of that thing that it was for me, um. It's one of the best things I've ever done, and I would advocate it to anybody that that is in, um, yeah. A similar position to mine or in any sales leadership position, I would advocate it.
Yeah. Um, but it also is challenging and it's meant to be, um, yeah. Meant to push an individual Okay. Um, to grow and develop. And so, yeah. So your,
Phil: your dissertation, uh, such kind comments, Nick, and thank you so much. But your dissertation sort of highlighted. What a best in class induction program should look like.
Yeah. And I know that, that one of the, um, one of the challenges sometimes with dissertation projects is you, you surface or you get much more clarity around the problem you're trying to solve, which is what you've done around induction. And it's not till the dissertation is being completed. You know, you've done your dissertation, you've got your masters, now you've graduated and everything else, but it's actually, you know, the journey continues, you know, beyond.
So I'm interested to know beyond story, you know? So how have you managed to take these learnings? And actually started to look at changing the way that you've gone about induction. Sure. Because I know that you've done lots of interesting things. And, um, are you able to see the impact of some of those, um, problems that we find?
So I say round diversity or ramp up time or, or whatever. Uh, so interested to know what's happened as a consequence of your research.
Nick: Yeah, absolutely. So. So, yeah, I mean, as I say, really it was, it was kind of deep breath. Um, yeah, for me it was deep breath dissertation, complete master's journey completed.
Which, which was, which, uh, I was over the moon with. Um, yeah. And then like you say, it was, it was, it was what's next? Um, right. It was what's next? And, and that was why I went on this journey in the first place because I wanted to hopefully affect some change. Yeah, positive change. So yeah, I'd created what I felt was some knowledge around, um, something that we were perhaps ineffective at.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: You know, it worked to a level, but it could be, could be improved. It absolutely could be improved. And, and working for a business like Sharp, it's a big organization. You know, it's, um, it's um, it's an organization with structure and it's one whereby change is probably, um. Historically been cha maybe challenging to effect.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: So the next challenge for me was to make sure I'd got the ability to kind of do that internally.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: So it was to share these findings with, with senior leadership. Uh, right. And to say, listen, I know we've done this a certain way for a very long time. Yeah. And, and one might argue that actually we're not terrible at it.
It's, you know, we don't have a huge problem. What we do have is a big opportunity, right? A huge opportunity to to, to really excel at this. So my recommendations that I'd formulated were, you know, if I list some of them, Phil, if you don't mind, it would be, you know, that we onboarding in cohorts. Yeah. That we bring teams of people in together.
So in instead of piecemeal recruitment where somebody retires and we go and recruit one person. Yeah. Could we save them up Maybe. Yeah, get to a number like four, five or six and bring a group of people in together to go on a journey. To go on an experience. Right,
Phil: right, right.
Nick: Yeah. To kind of bounce off each Easier.
Phil: Yeah. Easier to create an experience when there's more than one you, you know, in that sense, you get, yeah, I can see the logic of that.
Nick: I think so. I think, yeah. Quite, quite. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously you're not, you're not the new person. You probably feel less pressure, you're part of a team. Yeah. So things like, you know, with, with Ongo onboarding, could we plan and communicate the plan in advance rather than just kind of write your turn up on day one and, right.
This is what you're gonna do today and maybe tomorrow, but actually this is what the first three months is gonna look like. Right. Yeah. So you'll do this in week one, and then we'll move on to this. So this whole idea that when you turn up on day one, I thought it'd be really comforting for somebody to say, let's sit down.
Let's have a chat. Here's what the first quarter of your employment is gonna look like. Well, here's what we'll cover. Here's a timeline, and here's what you'll be able to do by the end of that period. Talked earlier about separating the sales content from the compliance stuff.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: Yeah. So running the two separately, um, achieving kind of consistency across all teams, overhauling the content, bringing in some kind of mentoring program, and I was lucky in that I was able to kind of.
I, so I, I went about designing what I called a sales academy program. Yeah. So all of those recommendations led me down this route of thinking. So if we could, if we could bring in a cohort of people that we bring in, I will write a program based on the finding from my research, and the program will be informed by the.
The lit review and the surveys. And the interviews, the things that I'd identified, I will incorporate all of those things. And I've said before, I think I said at the, at the stock exchange at GST, that the, the single hardest sale, or the most successful sale I've ever completed in my career, nearly 20 years was the internal one to be able to launch.
Phil: To launch,
Nick: yeah. the Academy to gain that buy in to, because it was, look, it's an expensive thing to do.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: Um, is it more expensive than the traditional way? It's hard to say because in the traditional way, the cost, a lot of the costs are hidden.
Phil: Yeah, yeah.
Nick: Um, but yeah, so the recommendations were this idea of a sales academy where I wrote a sales program, training program that was, um, that was seven modules.
Right. The difference to it was that product training and solutions training came at the very end. Right? So the first six modules, it started off on. Welcome to Sharp.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: And it was a real deep dive on who we are as a business, what our values are, what our mission statement is. Yeah. Um, what it feels like to be a sharp person, what it looks like, how a sharp person acts.
Then it was the individual's own goals and objectives and their value, helping them to understand. Yeah.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: And so on and so forth. So it, for me, it was, it was, it was a pro, it was a very different program. It was sales training with a difference. It was very original. I'd written it. I didn't take an existing framework.
I wrote it myself.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: And we then went about, um, creating this cohort. So working with a third party company at the time, we ran an assessment day.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: And I'll never forget the day. It was one of the best days of my career. I absolutely loved it because we walked into this assessment day that was, was predominantly aimed at graduates.
Yeah. And I walked into a truly diverse room. Okay, fantastic. There was, there was uh, 30 individuals in this room that had turned up for this assessment day. Wow. Who applied for a job on our, on our academy, uh, sales academy program. And it was a truly diverse room. And that felt, for some people that'd be second nature.
They see it all the time. For me, this was like a, a, a seminal moment, right? Yeah, yeah,
Phil: yeah, yeah.
Nick: And yeah, we went about. This, this assessment day. Lots of different activities, interviews, team building. You, you've probably seen these things before. Yeah, yeah. And it was great. And, and there was a panel of us, so I'd, I'd brought four colleagues in from different, uh, people whose opinions I felt would, would really help on the day.
And we identified a cohort of eight individuals from that day.
Phil: Right.
Nick: That would come and be, um, the first cohort for our. Our academy sales program?
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: Four male, four female. Okay. F fantastic. Not intentionally just, it just so happened that the best individuals, the ones that Sean, yeah. Yeah. Um, the configuration, which was fantastic.
Um. Yeah. A few weeks later, they started their journey at Sharp.
Phil: Wow. Amazing.
Nick: One didn't show on day one. Okay. Okay. That's, that's how you know something happened. Clearly. I don't know what we, we did do some investigation, but, but we ended up with a cohort of seven. Yeah. And, and yeah, they delivered the program.
Which I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed. It was intensive. Um, yeah. These, these young individuals came into the business and were, they just breathed, um, they just, they brought ideas. We did all sorts of crazy stuff. We, you know, we sort of delivered a radio, live radio show. Uh, yeah,
Phil: I remember you saying
Nick: amazing.
Yeah. Great to manage. So, so the, the program as well as involving training, it also involved lots of, of projects and,
Phil: yeah.
Nick: For example, a mystery shopping project. So in the first week, sent them all off. To go and do a, a mystery shopping experience and to come fantastic. The report, you know, things like what they'd seen that they thought were amazing.
Yeah. Things that happened that they didn't think were great, would they buy from that business as a result of which? Yes. So we did that. We lots of, of, of presentations and practice. Uh, lots of time spent around various offices, so got them around the uk Yeah. Meeting people in different departments. We sent them off to do, um, logistics jobs and, and engineering jobs and accounts jobs.
And so they had a good understanding of how the, the other departments within the business were. Yeah. So this really diverse program. Um. I could talk about it all day, but we obviously can't do that. But so, so to today, so two or pushing, two and a half years down the line, we still have four of those.
Seven. Fantastic.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: Um, the three that have left, left on great terms because it was, yeah, it was the right thing for them and. And I always acknowledge that we're not gonna have these seven individuals forever. That's not how it works. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's fairy tale. Yeah. And I said from day one that whilst you're with us for however long that might be, let's have a great time.
Let's, let's, let's learn. And when you, when you walk out of this door, at some point, my objective is that you've had a, an amazing experience and that you leave Yeah. Bigger than, than, than when we found you. You know?
Phil: Yeah. Yeah.
Nick: So yeah, I think that's, that's the program. That's what we've done,
Phil: right? How amazing.
Nick: Yeah. And yeah,
Phil: it is a great story. I mean, it is. I mean, what's nice about the story now, and I, I think, uh, sort of looking. Well, you know, we did an interview you on this topic straight after your dissertation. You've had the chance now of having a couple of years to reflect back and see, uh, that yeah, four outta the seven have stayed, you know, and can see the benefits of that induction for them.
Uh, which, which is great. Yeah. Which is, which is really, uh, sort of great to see. So, I don't know, I think we're getting towards the end of our time, Nick, on the interview, is there anything that I haven't asked you that I should have asked you about, about your journey and about your findings and so on?
Yeah. I don't think so. I think it's been,
Nick: it is been, it's been comprehensive. I mean, it's, as I mentioned earlier, Phil, I always feel like when you and I, you and I are in a room. Yeah. We, we could talk all day, all day, um, about, about these things. And, and yes, you probably, you're best bringing me to a stop.
Uh, but no, I, I think that it, you know, I, I touched on it earlier. It's been, it genuinely has been a transformational experience for me. Um. I've learned so much and you know, the feeling of making a difference is something I I I, I, I, I live for, you know, we, we, I imagine a lot of people that, that watch or listen to, to this, to this podcast that are involved in sales in.
Yeah, they will be. Yeah. Um, and yeah, a lot of the time we focus on KPIs and, and numbers and revenue and targets and all that stuff, and we have to do that ultimately. It's really important, but it's the bits in between that I love and working and getting to know these individuals that I wouldn't know.
Yeah. What for the master's journey. Yeah. Um, these people wouldn't be in my life. And we, we, we play football together. Now some of us, we run together, you know, we, we have, um, there's a social aspect to what we do and, you know, I'm seeing some of these young people, um, move out of, of, of home with parents, you know, buy car.
Yeah. Go on nice holidays. And for me that's, um, all out of a dissertation project. Yeah. Written. Fantastic. That's the way I like to look back on it is, is these people have achieved that themselves. It's, I haven't that for them, but what it would, creating a platform. Yeah. Was was the thing. But also it's the greater impact as well across the wider team.
It's everybody that's been touched in one way or another, right. By those individuals that we were able to bring in.
Phil: Yeah.
Nick: And retain through the power of a structured onboarding program. Yeah. With looping back to the whole purpose in the first place of the dissert. Yeah, but it's everybody in the organization because.
They've brought lots of life and lots of energy. Yeah, and lots of new ideas. Um, that's great. And, and yeah, it's, it's just been a, a really cool journey and as you know, along the way there's been some other really, you know, being a, a privilege to speak at GST was a career high. Yeah, yeah. Me. Um, and being able, yeah, it
Phil: was fantastic.
Absolutely Nick. And, uh, yeah, just, just fantastic to keep and catch up with, uh. Yeah, catch up with your news as well. But yeah, being able to provide that sort of platform for enabling others to grow. I mean, that's why we enjoy, you know, the masters, you know, we've. Created a platform, but it's you that's gone and done it and shared some new insights, uh, on a topic that I think is going to be relevant to almost every sales director, you know, how to handle that sort of onboarding piece.
So I can't thank you enough, Nick, for joining us and I think that probably brings us up to the end of the podcast. So thank you and look forward to seeing you at next year's. GST.
Nick: Absolutely. No, thank you so much, Phil. It's been a, a privilege Al, always great to catch up, um, and to chat anything sales and yeah, look forward to look forward to seeing you at GST.
Yeah. Okay. Cheer then Nick. Thanks Phil. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.