Title

Scheduling Sales Force Training: Theory And Evidence

Keywords

Compensation; Optimal control; Sales force; Training

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. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Publication Date

12-1-2005

Publication Title

International Journal of Research in Marketing

Volume

22

Issue

4

Number of Pages

427-440

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2005.09.001

Socpus ID

30044448468 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/30044448468

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