The role of a CE Onboarding Mentor

Week One

During new teammate’s first week they are focused on the following:

• Access and computer setup
• Company-wide onboarding: our values, being handbook-first, etc
• Learning about our value proposition and how we add value to our customers’ business
• Learning about the CE org: who we are, who we work with, how we help Sourcegraph be successful

By the end of their first week:

• Spend 30 minutes going over our 5 primary use cases and explain how we add value
• Talk about the CE team (pre- and post-sales) and what we do at a high-level

Week Two

During new teammate’s second week they are focused on the following:

• Continue orienting themselves to the company: all the different teams, our internal tooling and how we use it
• Start to learn our processes (pre and post-sales), learn about the different templates that we have and how we use them
• Working with you to identify some calls to start shadowing

What this means for the mentor in week two is:

• Tell them about the tools you use and how (SFDC, Looker, etc)
• Explain our “pre-sales” process and “post-sales” engagement
• Put feelers out to other CEs and identify 3 customer calls during week 2 and 3 for the mentee to attend.

Week Three

Week Three is the meat of the onboarding! This week the mentee is doing all things product so your involvement in this week is increased.

Their individual product onboarding subject areas are stored here. The goal is for them to focus on one part of the product, work with you their mentor to confirm their understanding of the product and then move on to the next one.

This means that for each feature they should:

• Read about it
• Watch some chorus videos where we demo or talk about it
• Do some activities to learn how it works in the app
• Talk to you about it

The goal is to focus deeply on each unique part of the product before combining it into a demo.

Mentors must make sure to check in with their mentee’s manager and share feedback on their progress and make necessary adjustments.

Focused conversations on:

• Search
• Intelligence
• Insights
• Batch Changes
• Extensions

Mentors must make sure there’s more customer meetings set up for their mentee to shadow this week and into week 4.

Week Four

Week four intends to take what the mentee has learned about the Sourcegraph product and explore how our features and products differentiate from others.

They will focus on:

• Github Search
• Grep
• OpenGrok

We are looking for them to be able to demonstrate an advantage / differentiator between Sourcegraph and Github Search, OpenGrok, and Grep.

In the check-in’s during week 4, mentors should focus on confirming any misconceptions on product knowledge and specific use cases and how we perform these activities differently / what’s the advantage and business benefit.

• Mentee familiar with Github Search and how we are different
• Mentee familiar with Grep and how we are different
• Mentee familiar with OpenGrok and how we are different

Week Five

The mentee’s onboarding is nearing completion meaning they are ready to start putting things together and preparing to lead customer calls. That means this week mentors will be working with mentee’s to kick off the CE demo certification process. CEs should be able to do a 10-15min introductory demo for each of the 5 primary use cases for Sourcegraph. Once a CE has received a score of “satisfactorily demonstrated” or higher from their manager for each use case, they will be considered demo certified.

Some resources that you should share with the CE mentee include the Demo Certification Rubric Guidance which outlines the characteristics of a satisfactory demo as well as demo shells for each of the five use cases:

• Code Security Demo Shell
• Developer Onboarding
• Code Health
• Code Reuse
• Incident Response

Mentors should walk through each of the demo flows with them from end-to-end to help them undestand “what good looks like”. Mentees should be encouraged to practice their deliver with others on the team too! Please check in with the mentee’s manager and share feedback on their progress and make necessary adjustments.

Expectations for their demo:

• They cover core features: search, code intelligence, insights, code monitoring, batch changes (stretch)
• They can provide an example use case of how each feature may be applicable to a customer

For this week mentors must make sure to:

• Share the demo certification resources with thier mentee
• Watch at least a few of their mentee’s demo certification attempts and provide feedback
• Reach out to the mentee’s manager and let them know they’re beginning to work on their demo certification

Week Six and beyond

After week 5, it’s now time to support their mentee as they progress towards their demo certification.

Once Mentors feel their mentee is ready to take a first call with a customer, their are expected to shadow any / all calls until they reach full certification. Once a new CE reaches certification then they should be able to run customer meetings alone.

Mentors will continue to mentor and provide support to their mentee until they close their first deal. There’s a lot of steps in between, from first call to closed/won. Mentors are encouraged to continue to meet with them weekly and provide them guidance and support.