We all know that ramp time is a KPI for inside sales organziations. From our 2015 inside sales research, we also know that the percentage of companies with 5+ month ramp time has tripled since 2010.

Online survey software company Qualtrics takes this seriously. And judging by their Glassdoor reviews, they are nailing it. 

Recently, I had a chance to speak with Charlie Besecker their Head of Sales Development, Sales Enablement and Professional Development. I asked him a few questions that I thought would be of interest to the inside sales community.

When did onboarding become a mission for Qualtrics?

When given the assignment of revamping our onboarding process, I asked what our ultimate goal was, "How will we know when we’ve been successful?" The response was daunting: “You know how Xerox, IBM, and Pitney Bowes, became synonymous with world class training and are spoken about for decades to come? Like that.”

As cheesy as it is, we started with a

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I opened my email this morning and was bombarded by advice on how to end the year with a bang.

For most of us, those with longer sales cycles, that horse has left the barn. Trying to course correct now is too little, too late.

I'm sure you've spent countless hours on strategy and planning for next year. I'm asking you to spend 5 more minutes. As inside sales leaders, the next few days and weeks are the perfect time to assess your readiness for 2015.

I've created a 2015 Readiness Scorecard to make it easy for you.

With the scorecard you can assess your team's readiness for 2015 against:

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If you could build an SDR or inside sales team anywhere in the US, where would you choose?

Would you go for college graduate rich Massachusetts?
Tech mecca California? Or low tax, low cost of living Georgia?

 As companies struggle to hire talent in their local markets, this is becoming more than a theoretical exercise. Last week, I polled 54 sales leaders and asked them:

Here's how they responded:

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ZipRecruiter’s VP of Inside Sales, Kevin Gaither, was tasked with hiring 25 inside sales reps in just three months. This is his story.

Kevin joined ZipRecruiter in the summer of 2013. By January 2014, he’d grown the inside sales organization to a dozen reps, proving out both the concept and model.

With greater than 8K inbound leads per month, it came time to scale.

Four months and 700 candidates later, Kevin hired 23 reps (and lived to tell the tale).

Kevin shared three things he did right.

1) Approach the hiring process like you would a sales process.

Kevin’s ‘hiring funnel’ included:

• 7 ‘stages’
• A 4.5 hour process per hire
• Starring roles for himself, his Managers, and Reps
• 3.5% conversion rate from candidate-to-hire

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