Exam 8: Training

Proctor & Gamble's management realized that their salespeople needed greater working knowledge of how to sell across functional areas to customers. As a result, Proctor & Gamble provided training for its salespeople on:

As an outside sales training specialist, it is in your best interest to show a strong relationship between your program and subsequent performance. Which of the following factors would you suggest your clients measure to see if their investments have "paid off"?

Effective sales managers know that development and training should be done only by professional trainers.

As a sales manager for a medium-sized e-commerce company, you realize that frequent training is important because of the dynamic nature of the industry. Fortunately, you know that the outcomes, intended or otherwise, of sales training could include:

The effectiveness of outside consultants as training specialists is sometimes limited for all of the following reasons except:

The main problem with on-the-job training is that:

As the new sales manager of Dan-Dee Toys, you must decide whether to continue funding a centralized (in-house) training program or change to a decentralized one. Which of the following is/are NOT an advantage to decentralization?

Customer input into sales training can offer interesting insights into advanced sales training programs.

According to purchasing agents, one of the most common problems they encounter is that salespeople are inadequately trained.

If a firm can afford the cost, centralized sales training is always more effective than decentralized training.

Your company is moving toward a flatter organizational structure next year. You want to keep all of your salespeople productive and happy, but you realize that this will become more difficult because of fewer advancement opportunities. You decide to meet with your salespeople to let them know of the changes because this is an excellent time to provide:

A sales manager who wants to provide a market/industry orientation to new sales recruits would give information on all of the following except:

Cross-tabulations can involve examining salesperson performance data by certain sales force characteristics, such as years of experience.

The low success rate of training programs reinforces the old concept that good salespeople are born, not made.

Inadequate sales training is not viewed as a very significant problem by most sales executives and purchasing managers.

You have just completed a cross-tabulation analysis from the data you received on your sales force and customer base. The results suggest that the newest salespeople have the lowest closing ratio of your sales force and the senior salespeople with more than 7 years experience appear to have low new account numbers. From this analysis, you can confidently do the following:

You have just been promoted to sales manager at your insurance company and are in charge of 8 salespeople, three of which have been with the company less than a year. You know that most turnover occurs between 12 and 15 months of employment in your industry, so you decide to develop a high quality training program for your sales force. Which of the following is true with regard to the research on sales training and turnover?

Training salespeople on a decentralized basis moves the learning process closer to the customer and introduces a higher measure of realism.

Using ____________as sales trainers lends credibility to a sales training program because these people have successful sales backgrounds. They know how to sell, and they know what skills trainees need in order to perform well in the field.

With respect to using company records in analyzing training needs (and according to your text), companies typically use which of the following data analysis techniques to determine sales training needs: