Once you have selected the best-qualified salesperson, two steps should be taken to ensure that this person becomes a productive member of your staff. First, give the new employee a thorough orientation to your business operation. Provide the orientation before the person begins working. This should include a review of your company’s history, philosophy of doing business, mission statement, business policies, compensation plan, and other important information.

Second, initiate a training program to help the person achieve success. Sales training that is carefully planned and executed can make a major contribution to the performance of every salesperson.27 Nabisco Corporation developed a two-day professional selling program that helps sales reps plan for and deliver professional presentations. The cost of the training was about $1,000 per enrollee. A careful evaluation of the program indicates that the training resulted in additional sales of more than $122,000 per salesperson and yielded almost $21,000 of additional profit per rep.28 Study results indicate that salespeople have a more positive view about their job situation, greater commitment, and improved performance when their sales managers clarify their job role, how to execute their tasks, and how their needs can be satisfied with successful job performance.29 Figure 17.3 provides a framework for developing an effective sales training program.

Even salespeople with great potential are handicapped when the company fails to provide adequate training. Keep in mind that, in the absence of formal training, employees develop their own approaches to performing tasks.

The size of the firm should not dictate the scope or format of the training program. Even the smallest marketing organization should have a formal sales training program. Online training often reduces training costs. A program should have three dimensions:

1. Knowledge of the product line, company marketing strategies, territory information, and business trends

2. Attitude toward the company, the company’s products and services, and the customers to be served

3. Skill in applying personal selling principles and practices—the “doing” part of the sales training program30

An important part of the sales training program is foundation-level instruction. This aspect of sales training focuses on the basics. If salespeople are to plan and execute a sales call successfully, they must first master certain fundamental selling skills—the skills that form the foundation for everything salespeople do in their careers. The steps that make up the six-step presentation plan (approach, need discovery, presentation, negotiation, close, and servicing the sale) represent fundamental selling skills.