About Transportation Insight (TI) & Nolan Transportation Group (NTG)
TI & NTG are industry-leading logistics providers bringing over two decades of multi-modal expertise and technology to the logistics industry – ranking among North America’s top 15 logistics companies. TI & NTG service more than 14,000 shippers and over 80,000 carriers through their proprietary Beon™ digital logistics platform – a single point of access to their mode-agnostic network and services, from port to porch™. The service and digital product portfolio span across North America, offering domestic freight and parcel transportation solutions, warehousing, data intelligence, and supply chain consulting. The 2022 Supply Chain and Procurement Awards recognized NTG as a leader in ‘Building a World-Class Logistics Ecosystem.’
For more information on TI & NTG, visit transportationinsight.com and ntgfreight.com.
One component of TI & NTG’s success? Equipping their sales teams with quick, impactful onboarding training found right at their fingertips, so they are always up-to-date and ready for any situation.
“We’re years into our digital transformation and investing heavily in our proprietary technology platform, Beon. We’re making the people we hire more productive through better use of technology and continued education at all levels, from any location,” says Natalie Cook, NTG’s VP of Talent Development.
Through the partnership with Learn to Win, TI & NTG has revamped their onboarding training – delivering personalized, industry and company-specific materials that help new team members ramp up to productivity in record time.
Growing Beyond PowerPoint
When Natalie Cook founded the talent development team at TI & NTG in 2020, she recognized a key need in the organization. The company was growing at a rapid clip, and the legacy new hire onboarding process was proving difficult to scale.
Previously, onboarding training was an in-person, week-long process. This presented logistical challenges and time constraints, especially as TI & NTG grew to onboard as many as 250 new team members per month!
It was no longer possible to pack every new hire into a single hotel conference room and train them through a series of PowerPoint lectures. Natalie saw an opportunity to build upon the strengths of this tried-and-true method.
“Training can feel like drinking from a firehose. For team members new to the logistics industry, sometimes there are 35 to 40 new vocabulary words on a single slide. New team members must become fluent in the lingo of our industry. So how can we help them retain and master all that new information?”
- Natalie Cook, VP of Talent Development at NTG
A Training Platform Designed for Rapid Growth
TI & NTG launched a partnership with Learn to Win based on its ease of use and the insight it provided during the pre-training stage.
“I love that Learn to Win is so easy to use, whether updating content or pushing out new material, it is super simple. Just having the app on your phone versus having to download a PowerPoint makes it easier for reps to get used to the terminology and services in our company,” says Cook.
As companies like TI & NTG continue to onboard sales reps virtually, new advantages to this virtual-first approach have made themselves apparent. Using a platform like Learn to Win, sales trainers deliver training in short, 3-5 minute bursts, right to the devices their reps already use.
“The training we’re doing now is leaps and bounds better than the training that I first went through,” says Cook.
Make Every Second of Training Count
Previously, when new hires arrived on their first day of training completely ‘cold’.
“Most of them have never been exposed to the logistics industry, they’re fresh out of college. They might have a bit of a sales background, but not a lot of them are coming in with a ton of logistics background,” says Cook.
The first four days of that entire week-long training were devoted to familiarizing the reps with the company and logistics-specific vernacular. As a result, training was often limited to only the foundational topics.
Using Learn to Win, team members are provided with pre-training courses that quickly ramp them up on the critical basics. From different equipment services to industry-specific jargon, they are empowered and feel more confident when they walk through the door.
“We’ve reduced the time we have to spend on covering those basic topics,” says Cook. “This freed up valuable time to spend training on other important information.”
Pioneering a New Way of Training
“Now, the new team members get two full weeks of training before they ever get on the phone. So the first week, we’ve built an entire course around what the company is, how we operate, and the important information to learn about our company. And then the following week is where we dive into more sales-specific training.”
The Learn to Win partnership has helped TI & NTG onboard sales reps more efficiently, engaging them on important materials and helping trainers understand what content and messaging is resonating.
“It's not that I spend less time on training, I'm just training on higher-value topics because the team already knows the basics. I can now use that time to teach them how to really solve problems for our customers and provide solutions, as soon as they start making calls.”
- Natalie Cook
For Natalie, TI & NTG’s approach to training is a competitive differentiator. “Starting a new job is terrifying – it’s easy to forget that. People are so eager to learn and do well when they join a new job, and they’re looking for companies that invest in their growth. This is one way that we show right off the bat that our company practices what we preach – from the minute new team members walk in the door.”
