A 30-60-90 sales onboarding template is a 12-week plan for a new rep, with live deal work, coached calls, tested knowledge and a manager-ticked evidence check each week, and gates at days 30, 60 and 90.
The template
Copy this into a sheet, one tab per new hire. Each week has deal work, coached calls, knowledge delivered as a pre-read and tested on the next call, and an evidence check the manager ticks.
- Day 30Deals in the buyer's words
- One buyer-confirmed fact per deal
- One solo buyer conversation held
- Day 60Behaviors on real calls
- Coached behaviors on two sampled calls
- A dated next step the buyer agreed on every open deal
- Day 90Stages that hold
- Buyer evidence at each stage
- Stages hold in the forecast call
| Week | Deal work | Coached calls (15 min each) | Knowledge, tested on the next call | Evidence check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Co-own two live deals from day two; sit in on a buyer conversation | Brief (day 3), debrief (day 5) | Method standard; product story; ideal customer | Rep states each deal in the buyer's words |
| 2 | Take the discovery part of a co-owned call | Brief, debrief | Discovery questions for the top use cases | One buyer-confirmed fact per deal, quoted |
| 3 | Own a third deal, early stage, alone | Brief, debrief | Pricing; commercial terms | Problem owner named on the new deal |
| 4 | Run a full buyer conversation solo | Brief, debrief; manager samples one recorded call | Objection patterns from recent team calls | Day 30 gate |
| 5 | Own two to four deals | Weekly call on the deal with the least evidence | Competitive positioning | Dated next step on every open deal |
| 6 | Multi-thread one deal: a second contact | Weekly call | Mutual plans | Second contact named, with their words |
| 7 | Prospect into own accounts (if the role does) | Weekly call | Messaging for the ideal customer | First self-sourced conversation booked |
| 8 | First late-stage conversation | Brief before it; weekly call | The paper process: legal, security, procurement | Day 60 gate |
| 9 | Full book or territory | Fortnightly call | Negotiation | Paper process mapped on a late-stage deal |
| 10 | Forecast own deals for the first time | Brief before the forecast call | Forecast categories and the evidence each needs | Stages hold under the manager's review |
| 11 | Handoff to customer success on a closed or pilot deal (if any) | Fortnightly call | The handoff | Handoff notes in the buyer's words |
| 12 | Normal workload | Final brief and debrief; manager samples two recorded calls | None new | Day 90 gate |
| Gate | Passed when |
|---|---|
| Day 30 | Each co-owned deal stated in the buyer's words; one buyer-confirmed fact per deal; one solo buyer conversation held |
| Day 60 | Coached behaviors present on two sampled calls; every open deal has a dated next step the buyer agreed to |
| Day 90 | Deals carry buyer evidence at their stage; stages hold in the forecast call; behaviors present on two sampled calls |
How to use it
- Fill in the deals before the start date. Name the two co-owned deals and the tenured rep who runs their conversations in weeks one and two.
- Write the marking standard next to the gates. One sentence per coached behavior with a yes and a no example. In our call-scoring research, trained experts marking the same calls disagreed on 18% of scores, so gates marked from memory drift.
- Book every coached call as a recurring invite. Two a week in month one, one a week in month two, fortnightly in month three. Spacing them follows the research: across 63 studies, spaced practice beat massed practice, d 0.46 (Donovan & Radosevich 1999, summarized in our Game Winning Kickoffs field study).
- Attach three questions to every pre-read. The rep answers them out loud on the next call. People tested on material kept 56% a week later, against 42% for re-readers (Roediger & Karpicke 2006, in the same field study).
- Tick the evidence check every Friday. A miss gets a date in the next week.
- Read the gate, then adjust. A rep who passes day 30 early moves faster; one who misses gets the same week again with a different deal.
- Adapt by role. For SDRs, replace deals with a live account list and sequence; see how to coach SDRs and for SDRs.
The reasoning behind each row is in how to build a 30-60-90 sales onboarding plan, and the full program is in our sales onboarding guide. Across 117 studies, skills held or grew when training used people's own scenarios and their managers were trained on the same thing (Taylor, Russ-Eft & Chan 2005, summarized in our Game Winning Kickoffs field study), which is why the deals start in week one.
A filled-in example (illustrative)
This example is illustrative. Jo joins as an AE selling HR software to retail chains; the team runs MEDDPICC.
| Week | What happened | Evidence check |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Co-owns a 90-store chain (discovery) and a 30-store chain (pilot proposed); sits in on the 90-store call | States both deals in the buyers' words: yes |
| 2 | Runs discovery on the 90-store follow-up; the HR director says rota errors cost store managers a day a week | Buyer-confirmed Metrics on the 90-store deal: yes |
| 3 | Takes a 12-store chain alone | Problem owner named: yes |
| 4 | Runs the 30-store pilot review solo; manager samples it | Day 30 gate: passed, with Economic Buyer still inferred on both larger deals |
| 6 | Gets the 90-store HR director to introduce the CFO | Second contact named: yes |
| 8 | Brief before the 30-store contract call surfaces an unmapped security review | Day 60 gate: passed; Paper Process added as next week's job |
| 10 | First forecast: commits the 30-store deal | Stage holds under review: yes |
| 12 | Two sampled calls marked | Day 90 gate: passed |
Gate review questions
Each gate is a 30-minute call between the manager and the rep, with the rep's deals open. Ask the questions in order. The rep answers from the deals and the recorded calls, and the manager checks each answer against them before ticking the gate.
Day 30
- "Tell me each deal as the buyer would describe it." Listen for the buyer's words and the buyer's problem.
- "What is one thing the buyer has confirmed on each deal, and when did they say it?"
- "Walk me through your solo conversation. What did the buyer agree to at the end?"
- "Which pre-read questions are you still unsure of?"
Day 60
- "Which deal has the least evidence, and what is the next question you will ask on it?"
- "Show me the next step on every open deal. Who agreed to it, and on what date?"
- "On the two calls I sampled, where did the coached behavior show up, and where did it not?"
- "Who is the second contact on your multi-threaded deal, and what have they said?"
Day 90
- "Take me through your forecast. Why is each deal in that stage?"
- "What is the paper process on your most advanced deal, and who owns each part of it?"
- "What would you change about how you were onboarded?"
End each gate with a decision written in the sheet: passed, passed with one item to fix by a date, or repeat the month with a different deal. The last day 90 question is for the next cohort. Collect the answers and change the template before the next start date.
Three ways teams misuse a 30-60-90 template
Filling month one with courses. The template turns into a training calendar and the deals start in month two. Fix: keep week one's deal column filled before anything else. Sales onboarding and ramp time explains why the first 30 days run on a deal.
Ticking activity. "Completed pricing module" goes in the evidence column. Fix: the evidence column only takes things found in the rep's deals or on recorded calls.
Writing it and not running it. The coached calls drop out of the manager's week by week four. Fix: book them as recurring invites on day one, or hand them to one of our AI sales experts. The rep starts a call, talks the deal through, and the expert briefs and debriefs it in the team's method and remembers it; day one shows the first session. If the template is for a whole cohort, the coached calls are the column most likely to go empty, so talk to us before week four.
FAQ
What is a 30-60-90 day sales onboarding template? A 30-60-90 day sales onboarding template is a week-by-week plan for a new rep's first 90 days, with gates at days 30, 60 and 90. A useful one lists, for each week, the rep's deal work, the coached calls, the knowledge to learn and test, and an evidence check read from the rep's own deals.
What should a new sales rep do in their first 90 days? Co-own live deals from week one, run a solo buyer conversation by week four, own several deals with dated next steps by day 60, and forecast their own deals by week ten. Product, pricing and process knowledge arrive as pre-reads beside the deals, each tested on a coached call.
How do you measure a 30-60-90 onboarding plan? Read the three gates from the rep's deals: buyer evidence captured, dated next steps, coached behaviors on sampled calls and stages that hold in the forecast. Compare the gate dates with your last cohort; that comparison is your ramp time. Quota attainment confirms the result later, usually a sales cycle after the behaviors appear.
Can the template be shortened to 60 days? Yes, for short sales cycles. Compress by merging weeks with the same deal work and keep the coached calls and gates. Do not drop the day 30 gate or the forecast week; those are the checks that tell you the rep is running the method.