The onboarding trap: fast ≠ effective
Why back-to-school season is the perfect reminder that great onboarding takes more than speed.
It’s September. New faces, new routines, a fresh notebook or two.
The energy? It’s giving la rentrée (aka back-to-school season in French). Only this time, it’s not school - it’s onboarding season.
For GTM teams, that means welcoming new reps, CS managers, or partner folks and getting them “ramped” fast. But here’s the trap: ramp time is not the same as readiness.
The pressure to onboard fast
Revenue leaders love a short ramp. Time-to-first-deal, time-to-pipeline, time-to-productivity… All going down means it’s good, right?
Not always. Here’s what often happens instead:
new hires get a one-week info dump
they’re flooded with decks, tools, and acronyms
then sent into the field under pressure to perform
a month later, they’re confused, inconsistent, and quietly rebuilding their own version of “how to do the job”
Onboarding ends, but performance is just beginning.
Common onboarding traps
Here’s what I see again and again in scaling GTM orgs:
Front-loaded info -> everything in week one, nothing retained
Product-heavy focus -> not enough on how we actually sell, support, or partner
No connection to the real world -> theory without peer shadowing or manager feedback
No reinforcement plan -> no follow-up, no coaching cadence, no documentation
No defined ramp goals -> reps complete onboarding but have no idea what success looks like
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. But here’s the good news: onboarding doesn’t have to be perfect - just purposeful.
What great onboarding actually looks like
Great onboarding isn’t fast. It’s frictionless. It builds confidence, consistency, and actual behavior change. And it’s built on three core levers:
#1 Manager & peer enablement
New hires should learn how we actually work, not just what the playbook says. That means:
shadowing high-performing peers
sitting in on real calls and meetings
getting coaching from their manager from week one
#2 Structure & documentation
Clear onboarding tracks, milestone-based progress, and a central place to find everything they need. Docs and templates alone won’t drive performance, but they’re essential scaffolding.
#3 Practice & iteration
Real-world exercises. Call roleplays. Prospecting practice.
It’s not about what they’ve “read” - it’s about what they can actually do.
If you just want a fast onboarding, focus on docs & practice. But if you want an onboarding that’s effective, focus on managers, peers, structure, and repetition.
Because onboarding isn’t a one-week sprint. It’s the first 30-60-90 days of shaping how people think, speak, and operate inside your GTM motion.
Your onboarding is your enablement engine
If your onboarding is messy, your enablement programs will always feel reactive. If it’s strong, everything else scales faster.
I’ve seen teams invest in decks, training, certifications - only to watch it all fall flat because onboarding didn’t give people the right foundation to begin with.
At Scaling Edge, onboarding is always part of the conversation.
Whether you need to design it from scratch or optimize what’s already there, I help GTM teams build onboarding programs that actually stick - and scale.
📘 The Enablement Handbook includes my onboarding checklist and planning framework.
💭 Need to rethink onboarding for H2? Let’s talk about how to build one that drives real performance.
— Ambre
