Cut Ramp Time in Half
New reps get on real calls before they're ready — and they crash. CloseCombat gives them a safe place to fail, get scored, and build the reflexes they need before any of it costs you a deal.
3–4mo
Avg. ramp without training
Daily
Practice cadence
Zero
Deals lost to practice
The gap between listening to calls and being on one is enormous
The traditional onboarding playbook goes: product training → job shadow → listen to recordings → hit the phones. The problem is the last step. New reps freeze on objections they've heard a hundred times. They pitch before they've asked a single discovery question. They get flustered by silence. The market trains them — but slowly, expensively, and on real opportunities that get wasted while they find their footing.
The old way
- Product training with no practice component
- Shadow calls — passive, no reps, no feedback
- Listen to recordings — zero pressure, zero transfer
- Hit live phones — learn by losing real deals
CloseCombat
- Live voice practice from day one of onboarding
- Scored debrief after every session — not monthly
- Stage-specific progression: easy → hard over weeks
- Manager sees score trajectory before rep goes live
Why it works
Day-One Practice Without Any Risk
Within hours of starting, a new rep can run a full cold call or discovery session against an AI prospect. No shadowing required, no manager to schedule time with, no live opportunity at stake. They experience the real pressure of a conversation that pushes back — and they get an immediate scored debrief telling them exactly what to fix before they try again. The iteration loop that takes months on real calls takes days in training.
Structured Stage Progression
Start new hires on warm inbound or discovery calls at Rookie difficulty — lower-pressure stages where building rapport and asking good questions matter most. As their scores improve week-over-week, unlock cold calls, harder difficulty levels, and later-stage conversations. Build the full-cycle skill set in a structured sequence instead of throwing them into the deep end and hoping they surface.
Objective Readiness Signal
Instead of "they've been here six weeks, they should be ready," you have data. You can see when a rep's average score crosses your threshold, which objections they've consistently handled well, and where they still need reps. The conversation about moving to live calls is backed by numbers — not gut feel, not seniority, not how confident they seem in Slack.
Consistent Pitch Across Every New Hire
Every new hire practices against the same product description, the same objections, the same positioning. Your messaging doesn't drift rep-to-rep based on whoever trained them. By the time they're on live calls, the pitch is already muscle memory — and it's your pitch, not an improvised version of it they assembled from partial information.
How it works
Assign an onboarding track
Set the stages, difficulty levels, and minimum sessions per week for your new hire before their first week ends. They see it in their dashboard immediately.
Reps practice daily during ramp
Each session builds a scored history. You see their trajectory — not just whether they completed the assignment, but how their scores are moving week over week.
Graduate to live calls with data
When scores hit your threshold and key objections are handled consistently, they're ready. The benchmark tells you — not a gut feeling, not a milestone on a calendar.
A structured onboarding track in practice
The specifics that make it work in practice.
Week 1: Warm inbound and discovery calls at Rookie difficulty — focus is on asking questions, not pitching
Week 2: Cold calls at Rookie and Closer difficulty — learn to earn the right to pitch before pitching
Week 3: Demo follow-ups and proposal reviews — practice late-stage objections specific to those conversations
Week 4+: Nightmare mode — stress-test against brutal personas before they encounter one on a real call
Manager assigns each stage with a minimum session count and reviews score trends before unlocking the next level
Progress is visible in the team dashboard — no status check meetings needed to know where each hire stands
Sessions take 5–8 minutes each — runnable before stand-up, during lunch, between meetings
Structured onboarding vs. traditional ramp
How it stacks up.
Capability
CloseCombat
Traditional ramp
Practice from day one
Weeks in
Scored feedback every session
Monthly at best
Objective readiness benchmark
Manager gut feel
Stage-specific scenario library
Generic scripts
Zero real deals at risk
Every early call
Manager visibility on progress
Status updates
Consistent pitch across all hires
Drifts by trainer
Who this is for
Sales managers onboarding SDRs or AEs. Revenue operations teams building a repeatable ramp playbook. Founders whose first sales hire needs to be productive fast without extensive manager time.
Common questions
How do I know when a new hire is ready for live calls?
Set your own score threshold — for example, an average score above 65 across 15 sessions with consistent objection handling scores above 60. The data shows you when they've cleared it. You can also look at score trends rather than point-in-time snapshots to make sure improvement is real and not a one-session spike.
Can new hires use this on their own, or do they need a manager to set it up?
Both. Reps can self-configure sessions independently — it takes under two minutes. Managers can also push assigned scenarios with specific parameters so the rep's training stays on track during onboarding.
How many sessions should a new hire run during ramp?
The reps who ramp fastest typically run 5 sessions a week during onboarding — one per day, 5–8 minutes each. That's 20–25 sessions over the first month, which is more live practice reps than most reps get in their first quarter on real calls.
Does the AI know our specific product?
Yes. You enter your product name, a description, and your industry when configuring each session. The AI generates a persona whose objections and pain points are specific to what you're selling and the industry you're selling into.