While hiring at any organization, there are layers to the interviewing process, just to ensure the candidates have all the skills they need. But how many organizations do something about enhancing the skills of their employees after hiring them? While tech companies are growing at such a high rate, tech sales need to amp up and the way to do it is by prepping a solid team for it!
When it comes to tech sales, Infinityn leaves no stone unturned when amplifying the performance of their SDRs, and other members of the Account-Based Growth teams. To give the team a specific style of onboarding that has equal amounts of technical knowledge and personal development, Infinityn founded Infinityn Academy.
Take it from me, I graduated from Infinityn Academy (IA), and with this article, I intend to give you a breakdown of how IA changes the whole work dynamic at Infinityn, and it's something that’s surging our revenue growth. To get some insider insight, we interviewed Lorena Santana, the manager of Infinityn Academy, Ron David, Customer Success Director, who played a major role in instituting IA, and a few recent graduates whose transitions made it to the cut! Here's what you need to know…!
If only regular schools took this approach...
I know what everyone is wondering. Is this just a fancy name for a regular corporate training session? To quote the infamous meme, ‘Modern problems require modern solutions.' Tackling tech sales comes with improved customer experience. And when we claim that we want to solve the problems of our clients, we mean that quite literally!
We asked Lorena Santana to address this question in-depth and she obliged. “Infinityn aims at evolving tech sales at the same speed as tech companies. For this, we developed a Growth Process Outsourcing service that allows us to use intent data to predict client behavior and pursue them with targeted ads, building a trusting relationship with them, and finding solutions for their industrial problems.”
“To be able to build relationships with people from different parts of the globe, an employee cannot only rely on educational material to build knowledge. They need to identify their mojo, sharpen it, and become the best versions of themselves. We need our people to find a balance between automation and the human touch. Personal Development is a priority to us and during our onboarding sessions, we make sure to have an enablement for it!” She says.
Well now that we know, wouldn't it be amazing if our regular schools did that? If they taught us how to be confident, or how to identify our strengths and work on magnifying them? Ron David, who has been an integral part in forming Infinityn Academy, believes very firmly that a sales job is the best first job. It does wonders for your confidence, adaptability, and business skills. And if you’re a graduate of IA, any job after that is going to be something you can easily catch up to. And then you can move on to the next step!
“I’ve always believed in the concept of empowerment. If you nurture someone's strengths and give them knowledge, they will be able to get to their 100% performance capacity. So many of our recent employees came out of Infinityn Academy and got their first set of leads within a day or two. They build relationships and create a personalized sales experience for our clients, and that helped us scale!” He commented.
How to graduate from Infinityn Academy?
To know how to graduate from Infinityn Academy, you need to know their strategy. Anybody regardless of what post they’ve been hired for goes through the academy. The first three weeks are the main part of the onboarding. The fourth week concludes the efforts of the first three weeks and helps transition to the next stage.
The second month goes into shadowing other employees in the same department and applying the theory you learned in the first three weeks. The third month is the assessment period where the employee’s performance is assessed and their employment is confirmed. The intense training sessions conclude with a test, driving them to reach their 100% performance level.
According to the 2019 Sales Development Benchmark Report, it takes anywhere between 3 to 3.8 months for any individual to achieve their 100% performance level. The training material at IA is designed to achieve this level in 2 months. With our unique approach, the coaching sessions set a foundation for all things that will follow.
When we asked Lorena how one can graduate from IA, she said, “Technically you never graduate.” This is because IA is not something you learn from and leave. It’s a stable source of information and retreat even for those who have been at Infinityn for a long time. "It’s like having an older sister to teach you things as and when needed. And during every meeting for the Thursday Dialling Fever, we see how well everybody is catching up!" Lorena added.
Yes, we caught the Thursday Dialling Fever…
Okay look, I understand that catching a fever sounds a lot scarier now than it did two years ago, but this is the kind of fever that helps revenue soar and not your body temperature. Thursday Dialling Fever or TDF is a collective effort to reach our weekly targets.
This event was born out of our need to humanize the sales process. It brings all of our SDRs together every Thursday to attempt to make the highest number of calls possible to reach the quota of the entire week. So for those who have catching up to do for the week, TDF allows them to make the best of their hustle.
Run by the Infinityn Academy and managed with the help of our IT heroes, TDF has been one of our most promising initiatives so far. To compare the effect of IA’s unique approach, we dig deeper into what makes it such a personalized process.
Infinityn Academy gives a human face to the enterprise....
One of the biggest functions of IA is that it eases the transition for any new employees joining the team. Learning from his personal experience, Ron explained that Infinityn Academy does not only teach you about your duties but also about Infinityn as a whole. When you know what your colleagues are doing, you make a coordinated effort to leap closer to the company’s goals and align to help each other reach personal targets, too.
When someone joins Infinityn, the academy sets their first impression of us. They meet the team, build a sense of community, and learn about their role. Like finding the right fit for a puzzle, understanding exactly where they fit aligns the efforts of the team to get to their goals.
Where has it led us?
Knowledge empowers confident people, and this is a game-changer for customer experience. Infinityn has built a cultural ecosystem that impacts our work. We got some of our teammates fresh out of Infinityn Academy to speak about their experience, and this is what they had to say about it.
“We learned about Infinityn from scratch. But to put that into action, we were taught a lot of tactics. This was based on their experiences on what did and didn’t work out for them.” Says Marco Andrelli, our latest Account-Based Sales Developer (ABSD) who just completed his onboarding at Infinityn Academy. When asked about his key takeaways, he says, “IA boosted my confidence and my ability to pay attention to the details.”
Reza Md Arif, our Account-Based Intelligence Specialist (ABI), credits the academy’s treasure chest- Tresorit, for being able to break down complex information. “The fact that you can always go back to Infinityn Academy to learn new things, helps when you’re growth-minded.” He adds.
With a team that understands the mapwork, sales pipeline acceleration comes naturally. “Lorena explained all the steps for the two-month plan and it was all very clear from the beginning. We learned first the information, shadowed our teammates, learned some ideas about the trade, and started applying them. Knowing exactly what to do, helped do it so much better.” Giovanna Franco, ABSD commented.
The growth mindset at Infinityn keeps us hungry for both knowledge and success. And Infinityn Academy is in charge of nurturing this mindset. As we said earlier, IA is our catalyst to evolve in tech sales and numbers don’t lie!