Your new SDR has completed onboarding.
Product training? Done.
CRM training? Done.
Company presentations? Done.
But how do you know they’re ready for real customer conversations?
I’ve seen SDRs complete product training, CRM training and internal certifications.
Then struggle when a prospect gives an unexpected answer.
So I’d rather ask them something simple.
Explain what your company promises customers. In your own words.
Then tell me how you’d find out whether any of that matters to the person you’re speaking with.
Now it gets interesting.
Do they immediately start explaining the product?
Or do they become curious?
Can they recognise an interesting answer, stay with it and ask the next question?
And what happens when the conversation takes an unexpected turn?
That’s what I’d want to observe.
Not whether they remember slide 27 of their product training.
Completing onboarding tells me what someone has finished. It doesn’t tell me what they can do.
That’s why I want to hear them in real conversations as early as possible.
Before their first customer conversations, I also want them to investigate how the company presents itself, explain what they’ve discovered in their own words and practise responding to unexpected questions.
Not to catch mistakes.
To understand how they think.
Readiness becomes visible when people must think, adapt and respond in a real conversation.
Let them try. Ask what they noticed. Let them think about what they’d do differently.
Then practise again.
This is where Sales Enablement can help: connecting onboarding, practical coaching and real customer conversations so new SDRs can develop the confidence and judgement to work more independently.
What evidence would convince you that a new SDR is ready to speak with customers?
#SDROnboarding #SalesEnablement #SDRCoaching
