By: Mohd Ariff Hamid (Ariff)
Studies indicated that sales are one of the oldest professions in the world since human civilizations existed. In a business environment, the sales training department is responsible for designing, delivering, or outsourcing sales training programs for the salespeople. Greco et al.’s (2019) study revealed that the sales world now has shifted more focus on the importance of sales training as a new tool to keep ahead of the competition and to better manage sales complexity and changing job demands.
As a certified training professional and previously worked in one of the Fortune 500 companies sales training operations, I had witnessed that it is common for organizations facing financial pressures to target and ax their training budgets when looking for easy budget cuts. But was it the best choice?
Building on the idea to improve training professional’s role as evidence to complement my future job application, and relevant to my educational leadership program at VIU, I have chosen my thesis topic to explore what strategies were employed by some Fortune 500 companies when designing a sales training program. After getting the approval from REB in October 2020, using SurveyMonkey as a survey platform, I posted an invite in 3 of my LinkedIn groups that I have joined and actively participated in before I launched my survey. I also sent invitation emails to my friends and ex-colleagues who are in trainers’ roles or are leaders in sales training operations. Surprisingly, by the beginning of December 2020, I successfully collected 99 respondents from my online survey. Wow! I felt happy with myself!
Although I have not finished with my thesis yet, I learned and experienced so much while doing it. I am willing to share with anyone about my tricks and tips while doing this thesis. Please ask me anything.
Talk soon!
Hello Ariff. Your life experience and your thesis topic sound very interesting. It’s great how many survey responses you’ve gotten already. I think that professional development is not always emphasized in our schools and I wonder if you have any suggestions for how to implement professional development in the education system more effectively? As well, have you thought about how you could possibly expand on your research once you are done with your thesis? Best wishes!
Hi Melissa, thank you very much for your comments. In my previous experience working for a Fortune 500 company, the HR department has a dedicated position called Learning & Development (sometimes also known as Training & Development) that works closely with other managers to ensure every employee gets an equal opportunity for career development which will be required for yearly increment process. I am not too familiar with how the Canadian education systems work but do existing teachers in school get any training whatsoever, at least on a yearly basis or something, like personal development kind of training? In my experience, in the Fortune 500 company, training is required for performance appraisal purposes.
On the question about how to expand my thesis, once I started to work, I will propose my thesis outcomes to be implemented in that firm. I also plan to expand on the same thesis topic for my Ph.D., though not immediately after this.
Thank you Melissa!
Hi Ariff, I will really look forward to hearing how your analysis is coming along…I am so curious about the story that your data will tell.
Sincerely,
Bonnie