How to Onboard a New Sales Rep: A 30-60-90 Day Plan

A new sales rep's first 90 days start to shape the habits they'll sell with for years. In that time they learn who to call, how to open a conversation and whether they can keep going when nobody calls back. Your job as their manager is to give them a structure, coach the work and allow enough time to see what it produces.

At my last company, I hired a rep with limited sales experience. We sold print: marketing materials, direct mail, point of purchase displays. On his first day I gave him a plan and told him, “If you do this, you will open your first account by week 8.” He opened it in week 7.

Eight weeks was the target I set in that print business. Set yours around your sales cycle. If a first order usually takes six months, define the progress you expect by day 90: qualified opportunities, meetings with decision-makers and agreed next steps.

This is the 30-60-90 day plan I'd use with a new rep today:

• Days 1–30: Learn the customer, build a target list and start a consistent outreach cadence.
• Days 31–60: Turn outreach into conversations and qualified opportunities. In a business like ours, work toward the first account by week 8.
• Days 61–90: Manage the pipeline more independently and build a plan to grow the first accounts.
• Every week: Meet for 30 minutes to review the work, practice a conversation and agree on what comes next.

Before day one: Put the plan on one page

A new rep can't hit a target nobody wrote down. Before they start, put four things on one page:

• Who they sell to: The industries, company sizes and locations that fit what you sell.
• Their outreach cadence: Which touches they make, how often and how they track them.
• Their scripts: The first call, the follow-up email and the main points for a first meeting.
• Their milestones: What progress should look like at 30, 60 and 90 days, including a first-account target that fits your sales cycle.

In a business like ours, that could mean aiming for one new account by week 8, then using the rest of the 90 days to build the pipeline and look for repeat business.

Hand the page to the rep on day one and go over it together. That is Lean Sales in practice. It writes down the right customers, conversations and cadence so a new rep can follow them before they have the experience to improvise.

Days 1–30: Learn the customer and build the habit

Judge the first month on the quality and consistency of the work: choosing the right accounts, practicing the conversations and completing the planned outreach.

Build the list. Have the rep pick 50 companies that fit your ideal customer profile. For each one, they write down why it fits and one question they still need answered. If 50 feels like a lot, start with 20 and build from there. My free Ideal Customer Profile booklet walks through how to choose them. Review the first few together before they build the rest.

Learn the scripts. Give them a script for the first call and the follow-up attempts, plus the emails that go with them. Scripts keep a new rep consistent when they're tired or nervous. Have them practice until they can explain why they're calling and ask a useful question without sounding like they're reading. Eventually they'll live the scripts instead of read the scripts.

Start the cadence by week 2. At my last company we ran a 5×8 program: five outreach methods, eight touches of each per day. Ours were phone calls, personal email, marketing email, notecards, and marketing mail. That adds up to 40 touches a day, or 200 in a five-day week.

Those are daily totals across the target list. A call and a personal email to the same contact, for example, count as two touches. For a new rep today, I'd have them record each contact attempt and schedule the next one so they can see who has heard from them and when. Once a buyer responds, the rep should follow the conversation and the agreed next step instead of continuing the original sequence automatically. We managed all of this in a CRM so there was less thinking in the process and more doing.

Your methods and numbers might differ. Choose a pace that leaves time for relevant messages and follow-up, then protect time for it every morning.

Shadow and practice. Bring the rep into your own calls and meetings. After each one, ask what they noticed. Use part of the weekly coaching session to roleplay the call they'll make most often.

Your job this month: check activity daily for the first two weeks, then review it in the weekly session. Look at a few actual emails and call notes as well as the totals. Expect slow replies, and tell the rep to expect them too. Silence in week 3 alone doesn't mean the plan has failed.

Days 31–60: Turn outreach into opportunities

As conversations develop, your coaching expands from making contact to helping the rep understand the buyer and move an opportunity forward.

Prepare for each meeting. For a routine first meeting, start with five to fifteen minutes of focused preparation: something about the person, their company and their industry. Larger or more complicated opportunities may need more.

I watched two reps call on the same customer about a year apart. The first walked in straight off three days of PTO with no prep, and nothing came of it. The second learned the customer's background ahead of time, brought real ideas and walked out with a follow-up meeting booked. Preparation gave that second rep something useful to discuss. Teach yours to be the best-prepared person in the room.

Bring two ideas. Teach the rep to arrive with two possible ways to help the customer get a better result. Then ask questions to find out whether those ideas fit. With my print customers, that habit earned me a reputation as the “idea guy,” the one who made the order better instead of only taking it.

Leave with a next step. When there's a fit, agree on a specific next step and a date: “Would you be okay if I got back to you next Wednesday with two ideas?” Record what each person agreed to do. If there isn't a fit, record why and move on.

Go on calls together. Lead the first few yourself while the rep watches. Then let them lead while you stay quiet. Debrief right after the call with three questions: What went well? What would you change? What's the next step?

Give the plan time to work. After week 3, my print rep came to me and said he wasn't having any luck in Columbus. He wanted to start working Cleveland and Cincinnati. I told him to stay with Columbus for the full 8 weeks, and if nothing had opened by then, we'd talk about the other cities.

He stayed with the plan. In week 7 he opened his first account, a small company in downtown Columbus.

Before you change the territory, check three things: Are these the right accounts? Is the rep completing the outreach? What are buyers saying when conversations happen? Low activity needs coaching. Repeated feedback that the accounts are a poor fit needs a change in targeting. A few quiet weeks alone aren't enough reason to start over.

In this plan, week 8 is the checkpoint for the initial prospecting approach. Day 90 is the broader review of the rep's progress. Set both checkpoints for your business. I wrote more about staying focused in how to find B2B prospects when your territory feels too small.

Days 61–90: Manage the pipeline and grow the first accounts

By month three, the rep should be taking more responsibility for their week. Your job is to help them see which opportunities deserve attention and what each one needs next.

Review the pipeline. Have the rep walk you through each active opportunity: the customer's need, who is involved in the decision and the next agreed action. A name on a list isn't enough. The rep should be able to explain why the opportunity belongs in the pipeline.

Answer customers fast. At our company, we aimed to acknowledge customer emails within fifteen minutes during business hours, even when the full answer would take longer. Sometimes the reply was simply, “Got your email. On it.”

Set a response standard your team can reliably meet, including who covers customers while a rep is in a meeting or focused on prospecting. When an answer needs more work, tell the customer when to expect it and follow through.

Plan the second order. Once the first account opens, have the rep learn what else that customer buys and how often. Write down the likely next need and when to follow up. The first order gets them in the door. The work that repeats is what builds a territory.

Step back as the rep earns it. Let them set their priorities for the week and walk you through their reasoning. Give them more independence as they demonstrate that they can plan, follow through and ask for help. Keep the weekly coaching session in place.

The weekly coaching session

Give it 30 minutes on the same day and time each week, and keep it on the calendar when things are going well. Use the same agenda so the rep can prepare:

1. 3 minutes — Check in. How are they doing? What's getting in the way?
2. 5 minutes — Review activity and conversations. Compare the work with the plan and look at what it produced.
3. 7 minutes — Review one call or opportunity. What happened, what did they learn and what would they change?
4. 10 minutes — Roleplay. Practice a situation they'll face this week.
5. 5 minutes — Agree on commitments. What will they get done, and what support do they need from you?

I had a salesperson on my team who could flip a bad day the moment we sat down and named what was going on. They didn't let one rough day write the rest of their week. You can only help with that if you ask. Starting there also helps you understand the rest of the conversation.

What to measure—and what to change

Results lag the work, so measure progress differently as the rep develops:

• Days 1–30. Review account fit, script practice, outreach quality and completed touches. What it should tell you: Can the rep identify the right buyers and consistently do the work?
• Days 31–60. Review conversations, meetings held, buyer needs and agreed next steps. What it should tell you: Is the outreach reaching the right people and creating opportunities?
• Days 61–90. Review qualified pipeline, proposals where appropriate, customer follow-through and first or repeat orders where the sales cycle allows. What it should tell you: Can the rep manage opportunities and accounts with growing independence?

Use the numbers to find the coaching problem. If activity is low, find out why and address it. If activity is on plan but replies are scarce, review the list and the message. If meetings happen but nothing advances, review discovery and next steps.

When the accounts fit, the work is consistent and buyers are moving forward, give the process time. At day 90, you should be able to explain what is working, where the rep still needs help and what the next period should focus on.

Five mistakes that slow a new rep down

• Judging the territory after three weeks. Use the checkpoint you agreed on, while reviewing account fit, activity and buyer feedback along the way.
• Piling on complexity. Too many products, options and tools at once leave a new rep unsure what to do first. Start with the few activities that lead to a sale.
• Letting them wing it. Without scripts and practice, each call starts from scratch.
• Coaching only when something goes wrong. The weekly session is where you reinforce good habits and work through problems while they're still small.
• Ignoring the mental side. A rep who believes they're failing may carry that into the next call. Help them name the bad day, look at the evidence and decide what to do next.

Pick the newest rep on your team. Write their 90 days on one page using the outline above, and put a 30-minute coaching session on both your calendars for the same time each week.

Your weekly coaching session keeps the plan on track. If your new rep also needs a regular place to practice, my weekly group coaching includes live training and roleplay on Wednesdays at noon ET for $89 a month per rep.

Give your new rep a clear plan, consistent coaching and time to work it. By day 90, you should both know what's working and what comes next.

Roy Waterhouse is the founder of Lean Sales Group, where he coaches salespeople on building trust and growing accounts.