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Case Analysis: Sales Force Training at Arrow Electronics

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Case analysis: Sales Force Training at Arrow Electronics Executive Summary – This case focuses on the training given to the fresh, out- of- college sales people at Arrow Electronics and the reasons on why the training programme failed to have the intended effect. Arrow Electronics was the first distributing company to recruit college graduates as a part of their sales force. To bring them up to the skill level required by field sales representatives, an elaborate training programme was put in place. By the second year the training programme proved to be really successful as the trained graduates became best in the business as field sales representatives. That was when the competitors poached them with higher salaries and promise …show more content…

A very well planned structured interview process was developed. Questions were so designed to bring out the qualities which they were looking for in the sales force. They conducted mock interviews with students to give the managers a hands-on experience. 115 associates were hired for the first sprout batch of 1984. Training – The sprouts went to company headquarters for a weeklong orientation and then they were sent to warehouses for two weeks. They had six months of on the job training post which they returned to headquarters for a week of sales skills training. The major problem with this structure was that managers across the company did not have time enough to mould the hires as the company wanted. Also the training varied from unit to unit. Whereas some were really god with their training, some other units really left the new hires to call dead accounts and gave very less importance to them. There was also resentment among the existing people as the college hires were getting high salaries right from the inception and were also touted to rise to the ranks of managers quickly. A much more formal training process was subsequently developed. Formal Training process – They rented Xerox’s training facility where sprouts would live for 13 weeks of classroom learning. Following it there would be 13 weeks of on the job training. Then 3 weeks of training before entering field permanently. GMs noticed

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