How Should Firms Onboard New Salespeople? The Relative Efficacy of Centralized vs. On-the-Job Training

摘要

A review of the sales literature suggests an increasing interest in sales training (e.g., Cron et al. 2005; Lassk et al. 2012),but there is a limited number of studies that have considered the impact of the initial training of salespeople (i.e. onboarding) and to the best of our knowledge, no prior study has considered the differential impacts of centralized training compared to on-the-job training of newly hired salespeople. Considering this, we ask two questions: (1) Whether it is better to conduct the onboarding of newly hired salespeople through centralized training or on-the-job training? (2) Whether the decision to do so should be influenced by a sales manager's ability to be involved in both the onboarding and early development of those newly hired salespeople who report to him?