Scheduling sales force training: Theory and evidence

    Authors

    A. Krishnamoorthy; S. Misra;A. Prasad

    Comments

    Authors: contact us about adding a copy of your work at STARS@ucf.edu

    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Int. J. Res. Mark.

    Keywords

    sales force; training; compensation; optimal control; COMPENSATION PLANS; TURNOVER COSTS; MODEL; Business

    Abstract

    To have a productive sales force, firms must provide their salespeople with sales training. But from a profit-maximizing perspective, there are also reasons to limit training: training is expensive, it has diminishing returns. and trained salespeople need to be compensated at a higher level since their value in the outside labor market has increased. Due to these reasons, the following inter-related questions are not straightforward to answer: (1) How much training should be provided and how should training be scheduled over time? (2) How should compensation vary with training? (3) Should salespeople be asked to pay for some or all of their training? An analytical model is developed and analyzed using optimal control theory to provide answers to these questions. Thereafter, an empirical investigation is undertaken that broadly corroborates the analytical findings. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

    Journal Title

    International Journal of Research in Marketing

    Volume

    22

    Issue/Number

    4

    Publication Date

    1-1-2005

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    427

    Last Page

    440

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000234310700004

    ISSN

    0167-8116

    Share

    COinS