Sales Ramp Up: Industry Benchmarks & Tips for Faster SDR Onboarding
Poorly optimized ramp up not only delays revenue generation but also increases Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and leaves vital areas of your pipeline vulnerable.
But what’s the best way to get new reps up to speed and reduce the strain on your team and their sales goals?
We spoke with Dale Thorn, Founder of SDR Leaders 1:1s and an expert sales coach. According to Dale, ramp-up times should average around two months for mid-level accounts, one month for smaller accounts, and three months for large, complex accounts. He also shared actionable tips to speed up this process.
In this article, we’ll break down the onboarding stages, explore proven tools, and share techniques to help new SDRs start converting leads faster—regardless of account size.
Optimize ramp-up time
Help your SDRs reach their quotas faster with automated features, shadowing tools, and performance support.
Request a demo
Initial training
In the initial training phase of SDR onboarding, you’ll establish expectations and introduce the onboarding plan. This includes familiarizing SDRs with your company’s values, mission, and sales approach while helping them understand your product, ideal customer profile (ICP), and core sales strategies.
You’ll also need to set milestones to gauge their progress. Dale says that weekly assignments like mock discovery calls with team members are a great way to do this.
A comprehensive initial training schedule should include:
- Introduction to values, beliefs, team structure, and role responsibilities
- Tech walkthrough, including company-wide systems and role-specific SaaS tools
- Knowledge base building around the basic SDR playbook
- Introduction to SOPs for identifying accounts, populating them, and managing workflows
- Product training, including demos, competitors, and pricing
- Customer training, including company ICPs and buyer personas
- Cold call training, role-play, scripts, and pitch practice
Time frames, factors, and metrics
Dale suggests that the initial SDR onboarding phase should take:
- 1-2 weeks for small accounts
- 4 weeks for mid-size accounts
- 4+ weeks for enterprise accounts
The duration of early-stage training is also impacted by the complexity of your product. As Dale points out, “It’s important to deeply understand the amount of product knowledge training that’s required based on the complexity of your offer.” To track success at this stage, focus on short quizzes that reinforce key concepts and gauge the SDRs' understanding of the product, messaging, and sales process. You can ask questions like:
- When would you change our value proposition based on the prospect’s industry, and what key metrics would you use to back it up?
- How would you explain our advantages over competitors to a prospect looking at [X OPTION]?
- Can you explain how our product's features can be customized to meet specific customer needs or industry requirements?
How to optimize sales ramp-up time
Effective SDR onboarding begins before your new sales rep even starts. Dale recommends that you “send over a document a week or so before your new hire begins, outlining the history of the space and your company so they don’t feel overwhelmed in their first week.”
You should also set up access to tools and CRM systems, provide product or service training videos, and share competitive analysis documents to help new hires hit the ground running from day one.
After the start date, ensuring as much collaboration as possible is vital to shorten the sales ramp-up period. As Dale says, “Meet-and-greets with existing SDRs, top-performing execs, RevOps, RVPs, VPs, and Demand Generation give important perspectives and highlight where new SDRs have knowledge gaps.”
Shadowing
New SDRs need time to observe experienced peers to understand call flows and sales strategies. As they become more familiar with product knowledge and customer pain points, the participation ratio between experienced and new sales hires will shift.
Time frames, factors, and metrics
Shadowing should typically begin around the two-week mark. The duration of shadowing depends on several factors:
- The SDR’s prior experience: Those with relevant experience may need less time to adapt.
- The pace of the sales cycle: In faster-paced environments, shadowing may need to be shorter to align with the urgency of the sales process.
- The variety of customer interactions: Shadowing a diverse range of calls provides a well-rounded perspective, but may necessitate additional time.
How to optimize sales ramp-up time
Keeping a new salesperson engaged during shadowing is key to lowering the length of their training program. One effective way to foster engagement is to create a dynamic work environment with a sense of camaraderie among your teams.
Orum’s salesfloor does exactly that, bringing life and energy into your training sessions. In a virtual setting, your sales team can live chat, learn, and host call blitzes together. New SDRs can also see milestones and achievements and get inspired to climb the leaderboard.
To maximize the results of your training process, you should also support those being shadowed. “Sales leaders and managers average 6-9 meetings a day,” Dale points out. They often don’t have the bandwidth to support new SDRs fully.” This means that alongside a solid shadowing program, you need to help your existing team.
A key part of this support system is cutting down the amount of admin your managers have to complete during shadowing. You can do this using Orum's call library which enables SDRs to view all call data in one place, listen to recordings, and even receive playlists with suggestions from managers so they can learn from the best rather than having to ask queries.
First solo calls
As your SDR begins making their first solo calls, they’ll encounter real-time objections, start honing their doubt-handling skills, and gain insight into which messaging resonates most with prospects.
This is a critical stage for building confidence and efficiency. So it’s important to provide continuous sales coaching during this period to help SDRs refine their approach and make necessary adjustments based on early feedback.
Time frames, factors, and metrics
Dale says that an SDR’s first solo call should take place after the first four weeks on average. They should then be shadowed for four more weeks by a designated mentor or a fellow team member.
Key sales performance metrics to look out for in this stage include:
- Lead qualification rate, which shows how effectively an SDR identifies leads likely to convert
- Conversion rate, which shows the percentage of leads converted into opportunities
- Follow-up efficiency, which indicates how quickly and effectively the SDR follows up on initial calls
How to optimize sales ramp-up time
You can significantly decrease ramp-up time with automated tools. Using Orum’s AI-powered live conversation platform, your SDRs can:
- Transcribe sales calls and view common objections to get up to speed more quickly
- Increase call volume by automatically avoiding voicemails, filtering out bad numbers, and navigating phone directories.
- Effortlessly clean and update lists based on call outcomes and sequencing to stay focused on leads
- Set up pre-recorded voicemails and sequences to reduce downtime.
By helping your new hires avoid manual work in the early stages of training, you help them get used to focusing on value-driven tasks and maximizing productivity.
Sales ramp up
The final stage of the onboarding process focuses on transitioning the SDR from training to full sales productivity.
As Dale says, “Every SDR onboarding program should be very clearly structured and mapped to goals which allow your new hires to ramp up and make money while still building a pipeline.”
Time frames, factors, and metrics
Typically, the ramp up toward your SDR reaching their full sales quota looks like this:
- Four weeks at ¼ of eventual sales goal
- Four weeks at ½ of eventual sales goal
- Four weeks fully tenured
However, you should also adjust your sales ramp-up time based on the length of your sales cycle and the experience level of your new sellers. Longer average sales cycles or less experienced SDRs may require an extended ramp period to ensure sustainable performance.
How to optimize sales ramp-up time
At this stage, you’ll assess SDRs on the full range of KPIs including:
- Call connect rate, which shows the percentage of calls that result in a conversation with a decision-maker.
- Follow-up rate, which shows the number of follow-up calls or emails made to prospects after initial contact.
- Time to first contact, which shows the average time an SDR takes to reach out to a new lead after they enter the system.
- Average call duration, which shows the average length of calls SDRs have with prospects.
- Lead source performance, which shows how different lead sources perform in terms of conversion rates and revenue.
So, as your SDR progresses, call analytics become increasingly important. Orum uses the milestones you set to help you give reps automated, personalized feedback.
For example, if you set a goal for a team member to boost their connect-to-conversion rate, you could send them an automated message tracking their progress after a successful call. You can also create real-time feedback loops to help drive continuous improvement.
Creating a strong support system for your SDRs
By giving new hires a strong support system, you can spot opportunities to surpass average ramp-up time benchmarks and accelerate the process.
You can also improve overall team performance by reducing the manual workload for managers and maintaining high morale across the team.
This involves:
- Providing all the basic information your SDR needs before their start date
- Encouraging cross-team collaboration while making sure your team members have enough time and the right resources to help your new hires
- Using an all-in-one sales tool like Orum to streamline shadowing, optimize performance tracking, and cut manual work to save time
With these steps in place, you can make sure every new hire is engaged and reduce turnover in your team.
This has a direct impact on quota attainment, time to productivity, and customer satisfaction. As you scale, you’ll be able to grow your pipeline without worrying about underperformance in key areas.
Optimize ramp-up time
Help your SDRs reach their quotas faster with automated features, shadowing tools, and performance support.
Request a demo
