At Velocity Transport, our people are our greatest strength. We maintain that standard by hiring new team members based on culture fit, rather than prior experience alone. This mindset truly sets Velocity apart, but it also means that we have to take a totally unique approach to training and onboarding to ensure that our growing team can continue to serve our customers in the most effective way possible.
In this blog, we’ll be discussing that process at a high-level, from signing an offer through completing the on-the-floor probationary period. A topic that will come up early and often during this discussion is mentorship, which comes from many different types of people at Velocity. If you hear nothing else when reading this blog, hear this:
What makes you successful at Velocity is coachability. If you lean into coaching and stay hungry for more, you’ll find success here.
With that said, let’s dive in!
So, you’ve been hired by Velocity Transport
After completing interviews and receiving & signing your offer, your initial orientation and training classes will be scheduled. When hiring Customer Sales Representatives, we always hire in groups.
Hiring in groups and conducting training in a classroom setting is critical, in our eyes. It builds comradery among a hiring class, lets us continue to reinforce our culture, and allows the team to grow together. Everyone learns at a different speed and has different strengths, so when new hires can play off of their classmates’ strengths to learn and augment their own, everyone is more likely to succeed.
Phase 1: In-Class Education & Job Shadowing
Welcome to Velocity Transport! In just 90 days, you’ll be a full-fledged Customer Service Rep with the most exciting team in freight brokerage & logistics!
This phase covers the first two weeks of your time here. The goal of this phase is to provide education regarding every phase of the transportation lifecycle and to give trainees an opportunity to apply our different technology tools in practice.
We begin by discussing Velocity. This includes our history, our core values, and our place within the industry. From there, we provide a comprehensive overview of our in-office software platforms, like Outlook® and Microsoft® Teams, as well as the specifics of our phone system. We then transition to an overview of the transportation brokerage industry.
Finally, we outline the specifics and differences between the Customer Sales and Carrier Sales roles. Specifically discussing the Customer Sales role, we walk through every step of the job, which includes:
- Lead Generation
- Using Hubspot & Zoom
- Sales Conversations
- Cold Calling
- Sales Pitches
- Overcoming Objections
- Quoting
- Customer Operations
- Account Development/Account Management
- Building Loads in Velocity’s TMS
At this point, most trainees are anxious to get on the sales floor and put these skills to use, which is where job shadowing comes in. Trainees get to watch our best Customer Sales Reps in action, learning some tricks of the trade and seeing how every Velocity team member has developed their own approach & processes.
Phase 2: Training On The Sales Floor
Congratulations, you’ve made it to the sales floor! From here, you’ll begin the stair-step process of becoming a full-time Customer Sales Rep. During this time, you’ll be mentored by more experienced reps as well as the Velocity leadership team. In addition to that, you’ll continue working alongside your training class, learning and growing with your peers.
Something that drives our Customer Sales team to succeed is the sales board. This is a leaderboard you can see on many TVs around the office that shows off the sales numbers for every single Rep on the team. New hires during this training period are featured in a separate section of the board, and when their probation period is complete, they’ll transition to the non-training portion of the sales board and be part of the competition!
Meetings
As you gradually become more independent, there are a series of set meetings designed to monitor your progress and provide any specific insights you need. These structured meetings continue long after training, to ensure your continued growth. They occur at the 45, 90, and 150-day marks. After that, there is one at the 6 & 12-month checkpoints, then every year that follows.
During these meetings, we have frank conversations about your progress and briefly touch on metrics (we’ll talk about metrics reviews in a moment). “Tough love” is a common phrase thrown around at Velocity, and for good reason.
We believe in telling our team members what they need to hear, even if it isn’t the most fun news to share. We are never rude or hurtful, but we also never shy away from saying what needs to be said. This simply leads to the greatest success and proves to our team that they can talk to us about absolutely anything.
Outside of these check-ins, we have two other meetings on a weekly basis, which both include the entire Customer Sales team.
The first is the metrics meeting, where we discuss where everyone stands compared to their goals, shine a spotlight on those leading in the sales standings, and provide peer-driven support for those who need some help.
The second meeting is all about each Rep’s individual sales pipeline. Here, we have an open dialogue about the new opportunities each Rep has identified, the specific hurdles to signing this new business, and help to determine the expected success of these new deals.
Beyond these check-ins and weekly meetings, all other meetings occur as needed.
Mentorship
During the training period, mentorship will be the key to your success. Mentorship and advice come from many different stakeholders at Velocity, including managers, more experienced Reps, and the company leadership team.
A strength of the Velocity team is the diversity of our leadership. They’ll continue to provide hands-on training regarding:
- Our Customer Relationship Management Platform (CRM), Hubspot
- Our Transport Management System (TMS), MercuryGate
- The Sales Process
- Developing Consultative Sales Pitches
- Market Quoting
- General Market Intelligence
Phase 3: Welcome to the Team
You’ve made it!
As you reach the end of your 90 days, you’ll be ready to transition out of training and truly begin your career at Velocity Transport. Because your training was built around tiered growth, there aren’t any major changes you’ll notice at the 90-day mark. You’ve ramped up to get here, so beyond joining the tenured Customer Sales Reps on the board, you won’t notice many other changes.
Just because you’ve completed your probationary period doesn’t mean you’re on your own. While you do have a lot of autonomy and you’ll be building your own book of business, you still receive as much training and mentorship as you need. From honing your sales pitch, to overcoming specific customer obstacles, to growing your understanding of market intel, we’re here for you.
This continued performance improvement will lead to greater success. When we talked about being coachable and staying hungry at the very beginning, this is precisely what we were talking about. In addition to training you to excel in the world of freight brokerage, we hope we also taught you how to stay coachable. That’s what will set you apart at Velocity Transport, and that’s what helps set Velocity apart in our industry.
We hope this overview got you excited about joining the team and reassured you that you’ll be supported as you grow with us. We discussed the Customer Sales Rep role in detail here, but don’t think we’ve forgotten about Carrier Sales Reps. We’ll be discussing their onboarding processes in a future post.
