Onboarding & management of Business Managers
Boost your Business Managers' success by making them love their job.
Hiring a good Business Manager is not enough. Conditions must be created for them to learn their job, progress, perform, and want to stay.
CoAct supports ESN, consulting companies, and engineering firms in the integration and management of their Business Managers.
25 questions · 5 dimensions · a score out of 100
Hiring is just the beginning.
A junior may have potential, follow several days of training, and know perfectly the objectives they are set to achieve.
That doesn't yet mean they know how to do the job.
Can they prepare a prospecting session on their own? Analyze a failed call? Qualify an opportunity? Prepare a candidate? Debrief a meeting? Understand why an action worked and decide what they'll do differently next time?
And above all: does their manager know how to help them progress in these situations?
Training imparts knowledge. Growing a Business Manager consists of progressively transforming this knowledge into skills.
The 5 conditions for an onboarding that makes progress.
We have structured our approach around five dimensions that allow us to assess an organization's real ability to progress its junior Business Managers.
Structure the system
Define where you want to take the junior, prepare their journey, clarify responsibilities, and avoid the quality of onboarding depending solely on the manager to whom they are attached.
Build the progression
Organize a real professionalization pathway with stages, prerequisites, levels of autonomy, and a coherent pace.
Learn by experience
Observe, train, practice, repeat, and gradually increase the complexity of situations encountered.
Organize managerial support
Give the manager the time, posture, and methods necessary to observe, understand, and help progress.
Monitor progression and ownership
Make the progression visible and allow the junior to gradually become an actor in their own development.
Does your company truly give juniors the conditions to succeed?
Two companies recruiting the same profiles can achieve very different results.
The difference doesn't always come from the candidates.
It can come from how the company prepares their arrival, builds their learning, exposes them to the field, involves their managers, and tracks their progress.
At the end of the questionnaire, you immediately receive your overall score and the details of your maturity level on each of the five dimensions. You can then provide some information about your organization to receive a personalized analysis of your system.
Onboarding sometimes starts before the first day.
The success of onboarding also depends on what you're looking for at the recruitment stage. CoAct can be involved from candidate selection to the first months of doing the job.
Assessment
Test, in particular, the candidate's curiosity and coachability through exercises, scenarios, and debriefings.
Diagnostic
Assess the maturity of the current system and identify priorities.
Pathway
Define what the junior should be able to do and build the trajectory to get there.
Practical Application
Transform knowledge into skills through experience.
Support
Help the manager play their full role in progress.
Progression
Measure achievements and gradually develop learning autonomy.
Managing a Business Manager isn’t just about commenting on their KPIs.
An indicator can show results are not there. It rarely explains why.
If a Business Manager gets few appointments, it could be about the call volume. But it could also be about their targets, preparation, pitch, chosen slots, ability to get a recommendation, or handling initial objections.
The manager's role is first to understand.
CoAct supports Business Managers' managers to help them observe practices, diagnose difficulties, develop their teams' reasoning, and progressively adjust their level of intervention.
Build. Do it together. Temporarily take the reins.
Not all situations require the same level of involvement.
Build
Take a step back, diagnose a situation, and design a system or new practices with the company.
Ex. Rethink an integration pathway around expected skills and levels of autonomy.
Do it together
Accompany managers and teams over several weeks or months to transform practices in everyday life.
Ex. Observe real situations, work on debriefings, and gradually evolve managerial practices.
Temporarily take the reins
Directly assume an operational responsibility when the company temporarily needs an experienced manager.
Ex. Lead an activity during a transition period.
Sometimes, accompanying is not enough. One must take responsibility for doing.
CoAct also intervenes in transitional management in operational roles of Sales Management, Business Unit Management, Operations Management, or Subsidiary Management.
The situations can vary: manager's departure, transformation period, rapid growth, reorganization, new activity creation, or temporary need to secure a team.
These missions also allow CoAct to remain directly confronted with the current operational realities of the professions we support.
BM-Coach
Extend support in daily life.
A commercial or managerial question rarely arises when training is scheduled.
BM-Coach provides Business Managers with training, resources, and an AI mentor directly usable in the situations they encounter.
BM-Coach can be used independently or to extend CoAct support.
An approach designed on the field and stays there.
CoAct was founded by Frédéric Le Pennec after more than twenty years in consulting and services: Business Manager, managing sales teams, Sales Director, Business Unit Director, and Subsidiary Director.
He continues today to intervene directly in organizations, both to support their managers and teams and to temporarily assume operational responsibilities in transitional management missions.
This permanent proximity to the field nourishes the CoAct approach: a method only matters if it works in the company’s reality.
Also share what can be used without us.
We regularly publish analyses, methods, and tools around onboarding and management of Business Managers. Some problems can already be solved with a good question, a clear method, or a directly usable grid.
Guide
ESN, don't hire juniors anymore… if you don’t give them the conditions to succeed.
A guide dedicated to the integration of junior Business Managers and the conditions that truly allow them to progress.
Let's talk about your Business Managers.
You want to challenge your onboarding, evolve your managers' practices or simply compare your situation with an external perspective?
A first 30-minute exchange is enough to understand the context and determine if CoAct can really provide some value.
We start with your situation, not a sales presentation.