Scheduling Sales Force Training: Theory and Evidence

Posted: 23 Jan 2003 Last revised: 4 Feb 2009

See all articles by Anand Krishnamoorthy

Anand Krishnamoorthy

University of Central Florida

Sanjog Misra

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business

Ashutosh Prasad

University of California, Riverside (UCR)

Date Written: 2005

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.

Keywords: Sales force, Training, Compensation, Optimal control

JEL Classification: M3, C6

Suggested Citation

Krishnamoorthy, Anand and Misra, Sanjog and Prasad, Ashutosh, Scheduling Sales Force Training: Theory and Evidence (2005). International Journal of Research in Marketing, Vol. 22 , pp. 427-440, 2005, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=367220 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.367220

Anand Krishnamoorthy (Contact Author)

University of Central Florida ( email )

College of Business Administration
4000 Central Florida Blvd.
Orlando, FL 32816-1400
United States

Sanjog Misra

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business ( email )

5807 South Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637
United States

Ashutosh Prasad

University of California, Riverside (UCR)

900 University Avenue
Riverside, CA CA 92521
United States

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