Improving Sales Performance
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Improving Sales Performance
Fast-Tracking Sales Success: What New Hires Need in Their First 90 Days with Alina McComas
In this episode, we’re uncovering what high-performing sales organizations do in the first 90 days to turn new hires into confident, capable contributors.
Matt is joined by Alina McComas, VP/Senior Consultant at The Center for Sales Strategy, who expands on the strategies she outlined in her article for the 2025 Talent Magazine. Alina shares what new hires really need to succeed and what leaders can do to support them from day one.
Alina offers practical, actionable advice, including:
- How too many sales leaders think their job is done once they’ve hired a talented seller
- Why you should make adjustments to your onboarding plan based on the individual’s innate talents
- And, finally, why you should set clear expectations for what success looks like in their role on day one.
LINKS:
Welcome to Improving Sales Performance, a podcast highlighting tips and insights aimed at helping sales organizations realize, and maybe even exceed, their goals. Here we chat with thought leaders, experts and gurus who have years of sales experience from a wide range of industries. I'm your host, matt Sunshine, ceo at the Center for Sales Strategy, a sales performance consulting company. In this episode, we're uncovering what high-performing sales organizations do in the first 90 days to turn new hires into confident, capable contributors. I'm joined by Alina McComas, vp, senior Consultant at the Center for Sales Strategy, who expands on the strategy she outlined in her article from the 2025 Talent Magazine. Alina shares what new hires really need to succeed and what leaders can do to support them from day one.
Matt Sunshine:Alina offers practical, actionable advice, including how too many sales leaders think their job is done once they've hired a talented seller, why you should make adjustments to your onboarding plan based on the individual's innate talents and, finally, why you should set clear expectations for what success looks like in their role from day one. All right, alina, let's jump right into this. I loved your article, by the way. In your article, you offer some great insights into getting new hires ramped up quickly, and that's a big topic. Everyone wants to do that. These days, it's becoming increasingly more important. In your experience, what's the most common onboarding mistake sales leaders make?
Alina McComas:Yeah. So I think there's a couple things that I see fairly regularly. First, it's not setting expectations of what performance looks like and kind of those future benchmarks from day one, right, really giving that new hire the ability to see what's expected of them as they enter this role, as they're in this role, so they know what they're working towards. I think that's a big area where you can help a new hire pretty quickly early on. I think the other big miss is that they don't coach enough, right, and it looks slightly different in different organizations For some, right, some of the sales leaders that I work with really believe that you know what.
Alina McComas:I hired really talented people and my work is done. Right, I hired really talented people. They're adults, they're professionals and they should be able to just hit the ground off and running, and so they don't think about it. With respect to talent is, you know, critical for success, right, having that foundation, having that innate ability. But you still need to coach and develop that talent, and that's a big mistake. What they need and is going to help them get to where they need to go, or they just let them go into the field to quote unquote gain experience. Right, they just need to do it. They just need to get out there. They need to do it and they don't go alongside them to see what they're doing well, or, you know, provide them that coaching that is needed to really develop them.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, it's interesting you bring up setting the expectations from the jump. It's not uncommon when I'm talking to newly hired people, whether they have experience or no experience, and they're on the job two, three, four days and I'll get a chance to talk to them and I'll say like hey, how's it going? Just something very innocent like that and I get and it's almost it, it this could be a quote. It's not, but it could be a quote. Cause this? I hear this all the time. I don't know. I mean I guess I'm just fine, no one's really talking to me, I'm just finding stuff to do and trying to stay busy. Yeah, what I mean that you think about that. Someone's first experience at your company is they don't know if they're doing a good job. They don't know if what they're doing is right. They're just trying to stay busy and find things to do. What a job. They don't know if what they're doing is right.
Alina McComas:They're just trying to stay busy and find things to do. What a mess. Yeah, I think I'm doing what I should be doing.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, I think so. No one's told me, but all right. So it's very common to hear people talk about the first 90 days, and so the first 90 days are kind of you're in this make it or break it period, whether or not someone has that formally said or informally said, I think generally speaking, people think let's see what you got for the first 90 days, few months that you're here, the first 90 days. So what should success actually look like during that first 90 days for your new hire?
Alina McComas:Yeah. So I think a big thing is that they're actively doing the job that you hired them to do. Right, and that sounds simple. But I'll see a lot of organizations where you know you got them 60 days in and they're not. They're not going out on calls, right, they're not setting appointments, they're not setting, you know, proposal meetings or presenting proposals or closing business in that first 90 days.
Alina McComas:And I hear sales leaders say you know what, it just takes longer and longer for their people to get acclimated. And that goes back to setting those expectations. Right, If you know what you're heading for, if you have a clear vision of where you should be, at certain points, all of a sudden you know where you should be and you can actually get there. And so when I think about success within those 90 days, again it's doing the job that you hired them to do.
Alina McComas:There should be an expectation on by this point, whether it is four weeks in or five weeks in, you should be consistently setting two, three, four CNAs a week, right, you should be consistently going out on one or two proposal meetings. And by you know, week six, week eight, you should have a win under your belt, and this is what that win should look like right, Really allowing them to see where they're headed. You know, it's kind of like if you can see it, you can make it right. It's kind of that mentality of giving them where they should be, as opposed to just saying you know what, we're going to put you on a guarantee for a year, because it's going to take you a year before you get to where you need to be, and then we can't figure out why it takes them so long to perform at the level that we need them to.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, it's kind of like in TFM when we talk a lot about the self-fulfilling prophecy. Right, we talk about Roger Bannister like nobody had ever broken the four minute mile until somebody. Everyone said it was impossible, Couldn't be done, no one will ever do it. And then one person does it and immediately after that person did it, others were able to do it because it kind of unlocked it, it made it real. If we're telling people it's going to take a year, well then it's going to take a year, but if all of a sudden we start telling them, no, here's what you can accomplish in 90 days. We set those expectations. I think that you're dead on. I think that's such an important point. I'm glad that you focused on it. So let's talk about talent assessments and here's what I want to know engage, ramp up, get the person started correctly. You know, as you look at, specifically when it comes to new hires, that you're making.
Alina McComas:Yeah. So one of the things that I recommend to all of my clients is take advantage of the talent team right. So you have the assessment, you have a look into their talents. You brought them on because they're extremely talented. Now you need to really think about now that they're on your team. You need to think about how do you coach to that individual, based on what is needed to get them to perform.
Alina McComas:So I typically recommend, once you hire that individual right, once you know that they're going to be starting, you have a feedback call with the talent team. Even if you had that pre-hire call right, that pre-hire call had a different focus and a different energy. With that call, now that they are going to be on your team, ideally before they even start, have that call with the talent team and understand their talents and how you can best coach that individual. And I would also recommend that you make adjustments to your onboarding plan based on that person right, based on the innate ability and how that person is hardwired. Really take advantage of the talent team and then, at the 60-day mark, right between 60 and 90 days you should be scheduling another feedback call with the talent team, because 60 days in, right now you have real world experience.
Alina McComas:You're seeing them move about on your sales team. You're seeing how well they're scheduling appointments or how they're not scheduling appointments right. You're seeing what they're doing well, what they're not doing well. You've employed some of those coaching strategies. Maybe some are working exceptionally well and some aren't driving the exact result that you want. So I would always recommend, around that 60 to 90 day window of a new hire coming in, you should have another feedback call with the talent team to talk to them about here's what I'm seeing from this person, here's what I need to see more of, or here's what I need to see that I'm not seeing, and work with them to develop additional coaching strategies for that individual.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, I want to go back to something that you said I think it was one or two questions ago. We were talking about expectations and you made the comment. I believe that it's super important, but we all know, even though it's super important, it's sometimes skipped For whatever reason. It's sometimes skipped that you work with. How do you coach them to clearly define expectations specifically so you don't overwhelm the new hire? What's that balance?
Alina McComas:Yeah. So I think you know it comes to being very clear, right? People feel overwhelmed when they don't know what's what. The next thing is that that's coming, or how they're going to get there, or they feel like they're not supported. So what I would say is, when you are setting those expectations, it's critically important that you sit down, you have a conversation with them and you provide them with a roadmap of how they're going to get there, right? So if you're telling somebody, hey, the expectation you're starting today, this is your first sales job or this is, you know, the first time you've worked in this industry and there's going to be a lot of things that you learn, but we're expecting you in four or five weeks from now that you're going out on two or three meetings a week, that feels incredibly overwhelming, right. But if you're then sitting down with them and saying, okay, here's the expectation, I want you to know where you're going, but here's the roadmap of how we're going to get there, right? So this week we've got some online training that's going to help you really understand who you should be focusing on.
Alina McComas:Then you and I are going to sit down and have a conversation around that learning. I'm going to answer any questions that you have. We're going to talk about some of the areas where we do well, what a good prospect looks like for our business, and then I'm going to have you go out and find I'm going to have you go out and find I'm going to have you go out and qualify on this specific set of criteria, and then we're going to get together again and we're going to review them and you're going to take me through on on how you develop right. It's that coaching, that back and forth. And once you have that, then we're going to work on what you're going to say. So take it in bite-sized pieces but really show them how you're going to get there so that at the moment in week three, week four, week five where they're picking up the phone, they're sending emails that they feel as though they've been supported in the process and they understand the expectation that they're working towards.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah. So let's kind of walk through what we've discussed, you know, so far. We talked about this idea or this important initiative of getting people ramped up as quickly as possible, and we talked about some of the things that absolutely have to occur in that first 90 days to ensure that they're going to have success, and then we talked about the role that talent assessment plays and how to do coaching based on that, and then the role that setting the right expectations plays. So I think that's a good summary of where we are at this point. But now, as we kind of keep going on this journey of this new hire, you've mentioned and you've written about several times this idea of early wins and just how important they are. So what are some good examples of some achievable, meaningful early wins?
Alina McComas:Yeah, you know it's oftentimes what you're going to find is it's going to vary slightly Depending on the individual that you're bringing in their level of experience, their skill set, and so you need to make adjustments to that.
Alina McComas:But often those early wins are really going to be around activity so how they're reaching out or what type of outreach they're doing, how quickly they're able to engage prospective clients and schedule meetings, whether it is with prospects or scheduling introduction meetings with accounts that are on their list right or accounts that they are going to be managing in this role.
Alina McComas:Something that can be an early win often which I think is it's an activity-based win, but it is critical, as I hear so many organizations struggle with it, is logging all of their activity in the CRM right Of just making sure that they're getting all of their information in there and really thinking about the number of leads that they're adding to their pipeline and so really thinking about those activity-based right, those leading indicators, those activities that happen earlier on in the sales process but are foundational to the successful outcome, and how do we get them doing those and doing that, often early, and celebrating that along the way.
Alina McComas:You know you could also look at things based upon the individual that you're bringing on, with respect to how well they're collaborating with others on the team. You know if they're using internal tools, or you know how they are participating in group meetings, whether those are sales meetings, and are they coming in prepared, are they asking really good questions? Right, those are small wins that you can celebrate from a successful standpoint. You know it's you and I have talked about this a number of times over the years. Right, there's a lot of clues that drop along the way to success and it's identifying what those you know, almost like those breadcrumbs along the way, that if we're doing step one and we're doing step two and we're doing step three, and we're doing those consistently and doing them well, that you're going to see a lot of the revenue wins come as a result of that.
Matt Sunshine:You're going to see a lot of the revenue wins come as a result of that. So, yeah, I agree 100%. So in some of the organizations that we work with, the sales manager is the hiring manager, is the recruiter, is the person that does the. They do everything. But we also have plenty of clients that we work with where there is a hr role. Um, they're, they're fortunate enough to have a company where there is actually an hr role. So, from your point of view, where should that handoff happen between the hr role in the onboarding process and then the frontline sales manager's role in that? Where's the responsibility, where's the handoff?
Alina McComas:I mean honestly, for me it's day one, right.
Alina McComas:I mean every organization is slightly different, but the sales manager should be responsible from day one.
Alina McComas:They might be doing things with HR with respect to getting their badge and their parking space and their computer and all those kinds of things, but the manager needs to play an integral part in day one from the standpoint that they should be building a relationship with their new hire and investing in them from day one. Right, the conversation around expectations needs to happen as close to, if not always on day one as possible. And that relationship I mean think about it from the standpoint of a new hire coming in right that if their manager isn't involved at that level until a week or two weeks in right, all of a sudden it's like, well, they're too busy for me, they they're, they're not interested in me and my development. I I'm a firm believer that, whether it's it's a formal handoff of you've sat with HR for two days and now your manager is kind of responsible for your onboarding. Again, I think every organization is slightly different, but I think the manager has to play a role in that from the very, very start.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah. So last question for you, this is I love this. I mean I could. I could ask you a million more questions, but I'm not going to. I'm going to ask you one more question. So what's a great question? That a manager could, or should ask their new hire in their first week on the job to really start building that trust and that alignment so that this gets kicked off the best way possible.
Alina McComas:Yeah. So question that I love is just asking them what does great support from a manager look like to you? Because everybody's a little bit different, everybody has different expectations, and it allows you to show them that you're investing in them and what's important to them you know, and just learning how you can best support them and build that trust right. And build that trust early on by understanding what's important to them.
Matt Sunshine:And yeah, that's a great question. I don't think it probably sits as well on day one as it does on day five, maybe right Because you've had a chance to get to know the person a little bit better. They probably feel a little bit more comfortable with you after meeting with you a few times, but sometime in that first week, asking them that question, you could really see how that would start you off on the right foot of growing, developing that person and making sure that they realize that you are vested in them having success, which, by the way, sales managers should be vested in their salespeople having success, right.
Alina McComas:Yeah, I also think that it can go a long way to open the door to honest and open dialogue with that new person. Right it's, it's open and ended enough where you can really get some good insight and kind of see how does this person really want to be supported, supported, and you know, hopefully you've got a little bit of insight to that before you brought them in, because if it's an answer that you're not interested or that you don't want to know, that you've. You've learned a little bit of that through the interview process with them.
Matt Sunshine:That's exactly right. All right, alina, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. I certainly appreciate it. I know everyone listening really appreciates it because you're such a wealth of information for anyone that would like to get a hold of Alina or to continue this conversation or any conversation on this sort of a topic. I'll put her information in the show notes, but you can always reach out to her on LinkedIn that's a great way of doing it and direct message her. I know she's highly responsive there, and thank you everyone for tuning in and listening and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Improving Sales Performance.
Alina McComas:Thanks for having me, Matt.
Matt Sunshine:This has been Improving Sales Performance. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, join us every week by clicking the subscribe button. For more on the topics covered in the show, visit our website, thecenterforsalesstrategycom. There you can find helpful resources and content aimed at improving your sales performance.
