Updating a 3-week-long onboarding program to help new BDRs start closing faster

Virtuagym, the leading software solution for the fitness industry, serving over 15 million consumers, 5,000+ businesses, and 30,000 trainers across 80 countries, was preparing to double its BDR team under Philip Feldman, its Business Development Manager.
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At the time, Virtuagym’s onboarding program consisted of Excel spreadsheets and assignments. In order to set up an onboarding program for a new hire, Feldman would have to manually set up and update a spreadsheet for each new team member. After that, new BDRs would work their way through the spreadsheet, checking off each assignment.
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Having gone through the onboarding himself, Feldman knew it wasn’t going to help him support his rapidly growing team as well as he would have liked. What’s more, the existing onboarding setup made it impossible to evaluate his new hires’ progress, provide specific help as needed, or predict their future success.

From 3 weeks to 6 work days: new, outcome-focused onboarding program in Wonderwerk

Wonderwerk looked like an ideal solution to make that positive impression on new BDRs, as well as set up the new team members for success.
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The first step in moving the onboarding program to Wonderwerk was auditing the existing training and reusing relevant and current content. Virtuagym was able to reuse about 50% of its existing training in the new Wonderwerk onboarding program.
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The program was set up to help new BDRs start making calls sooner, replacing the old training with shorter modules that included specific targets new hires needed to hit. The new onboarding program took only 6 work days.

2x more demos in half the time, not to mention the employee turnover rate reduced by 70%

After implementing the onboarding training, Virtuagym saw an increase in new BDRs’ productivity.
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Moreover, Wonderwerk provided an overview of each BDR’s strengths and weaknesses, so that Feldman could help his team level up with on-demand modules.
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Finally, by developing a strong onboarding program, Virtuagym was able to gain an upper hand in hiring and retain more BDRs.

New BDR team members more productive

After Virtuagym launched its Wonderwerk onboarding, new BDRs were able to make much better use of their time:

• Time to first demo booking reduced from 4 weeks to 2 weeks
• 2x demos booked within the first month

‍Assigning new trainings with Wonderwerk no longer took manual updates. The Excel spreadsheets were a thing of the past.

Supporting the new hires? Also possible without having to spend a lot of time on diagnosing a specific issue.
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Since Wonderwerk integrates with Salesforce, all milestones and KPIs are automatically tracked, from time to first call to time to quote. This means it’s easy to see the business impact of onboarding training on performance. It also means that Feldman can get real-time updates on his team’s successes and pinpoint precisely where new BDRs might need a little more help.

This support, along with the information covered in the training, helps BDRs feel more confident in their skills, even if they have no previous business development experience.

Another advantage for Feldman and the training development team: as Virtuagym started implementing new tools, iterating on onboarding program content, and creating additional training modules, Wonderwerk made it easy to keep content consistent.

Additional productivity improvements: as-needed training modules that can be assigned with a few clicks

After developing the onboarding program, the Virtuagym team realized that Wonderwerk can also be used to deliver additional training modules to help BDRs build specific skills when they need them.

BDR productivity has been steadily rising over time. Initially, the number of bookings per BDR after completing onboarding was 6 per month. A year later, Feldman’s team got the average number of bookings per BDR to 14 per month, more than doubling it.

An unexpected benefit: getting an edge in hiring and achieving a steep drop in employee turnover

The onboarding program in Wonderwerk and the just-in-time modules for new BDRs also meant that it was easier for Virtuagym to recruit new talent and attract motivated BDRs eager to learn. BDRs now learn about the onboarding and training programs during interviews, and feel certain that they’ll be supported in their professional development. Moreover, it means that Virtuagym trains new hires to follow its process from the start.

This ability to develop BDRs became an additional advantage for talent retention: new hires are now getting the training they need to succeed — and stay with Virtuagym.