Vivint SolarAs VP of Human Capital at Vivint Solar, I was tasked by leadership with redesigning our sales onboarding program after we identified a critical pattern: reps who didn't start selling within their first week were far more likely to quit within 90 days. With annual turnover running as high as 150%, this was a costly problem that demanded a fundamental rethink of how we brought new reps into the field.
I led the redesign of onboarding into a compressed 3-day sprint that got reps knocking on doors within 48 hours of joining, a dramatic shift from the previous disjointed paper-and-online program that required reps to complete full paperwork and training before ever stepping into the field. The new model paired bite-sized digital training modules with live, real-world selling experience, so reps were learning and earning simultaneously rather than sitting through administrative delays before getting real exposure to the job.
The results were significant and measurable within six months of rollout: 90-day retention for new reps rose sharply, average time-to-first-sale dropped dramatically, and our punishing annual turnover rate fell substantially as a direct result. By rethinking the very structure of onboarding around speed-to-field and immediate skill application, I was able to directly address the root cause of early attrition and materially improve the economics of scaling a sales organization.
