Disscuss the Importance of Training and Developing the Sales Force?

Training and Development is imperative to the organization’s progress. Training helps addressing employee weaknesses and builds a reliable and skilled workforce. This will improve the employees’ performance and boost their self confidence, and innovation. By acquiring the needed knowledge and skills, employees can perform more efficiently and increase the overall productivity of the organization.

Knowledgeable and well trained employees are needed in every organization. It is important employees are able to perform all the tasks needed in order to reach the organizations needs and achieve the set goals. As times change, employees may stay behind in skills or may even lack training when it comes to new systems, technology or other procedures that the company may need in order to better performance. That is when the importance of training is more evident. An organization has a large responsibility for their success which is why training, development, and career development is

Training is an important facet of developing and managing human resources at any organization. Training should improve not only organizational efficiency and employee productivity but it must also improve employee skills and make employees feel valued. At Clapton Commercial Construction (“CCC”) Company’s Arizona location, it is important for the company to hire and retain good employees. To that end training and development should be essential and consistently provided to employees at all levels of the organization. Training program should be designed so that it is tailored to the particular function the employees perform in the company, and also so that the company as a whole works as a

“In order to develop required human resource competencies, organizational leaders need to align the selection, training, development, and removal of employees with the behavioral requirements of the desired change” (Spector, 2010, p. 102). Having a focus on training can be an important part of helping employees understand how their competitive environment is changing. Along with the importance of changing their behaviors.

Training provides a series of planned learning experiences for individuals and builds their technical skills and business competencies. Training also helps to improve efficiency and can motivate employees to do well. This helps to make positive changes to the way in which they work and make decisions. Development helps individuals use the training to meet their individual needs and ambitions. By training and developing its staff well, Marks & Spencer is in a position to develop a competitive advantage over its competitors [3].

Training and development is one of the many essential functions of human resource management; it is deemed as the planning learned experience by which employees are taught various aspects of a given job and most importantly how to perform a job and or a future tasks. The basis for training and development implementation is to mold an efficient employee who performs tasks effectively resulting in optimum productivity, which aids in an organization’s overall aspirations. Job training has been around for centuries and has been utilized to teach individuals task specific to a given job or industry; it differs from education which affords individuals general information regarding traditional topics such as science, math, history, reading, and writing. Over those centuries, a few training methods have been explored such as on the job training, classroom training, vestibule training, systematic training, and the most currently used computer training. Within each of these, training methods can be found imperative information to assist an organization successfully meeting objectives.

Companies who invested in training and development programs in the long run with show that their employees great assets to their company. “Employees may gain access to training they wouldn 't have otherwise known about or sought out themselves. Employees who feel appreciated and challenged through training opportunities may feel more satisfaction toward their jobs (Frost, 2016).”

For existing employees a training program also has numerous benefits: It will help them to continually improve their knowledge, skill sets and keep them fully engaged in their work.

Similarly, Longenecker and Fink (2005) assert that the benefits derived from training are manifold, and these include; exposure to new and better practices and ideas for application, leads to reflection, self-appraisal and retrospection, motivates employees to improve performance, encourages career development planning, helps identify specific performance problems and challenges an employee to think differently, to name a few. Other benefits are a more flexible workforce, improved performance of existing employees, decreased supervision, higher skill levels and reduced learning time, thus reducing learning costs, improved organisation morale, and to ensure for succession (Molander 1989).

“Training is the systematic process of altering the behavior of employees in a direction that will achieve organization goals. Training is related to present job skills and abilities. It has a current orientation and helps employees’ master specific skills and abilities needed to be successful “(Ivancevich & Konopaske, 2013, p. 395).

Establishing a training course encourage employees to be more accountable and motivated in the organization and evidently helps businesses to remain successful among its competitors. Employee development creates a self-purpose in employees and closes the gaps in knowledge to bring about a positive change in the work environment. Organizations that invest in training give their employees a better sense of loyalty to the company to work harder for the success of the organization. Additionally, due to the investment of training and employee development, employees feel empowered to go even further to get the job

Training and development provide employees the skills and knowledge to keep up with the company’s changes and growth. It can also help to develop and improve the corporate culture, its efficiency and its effectiveness; and helps in creating the learning culture within the company.

Having formulated a new strategy, an organization may find that it needs to either hire new employees or retrain the current employees to implement the new strategy. A study of 51 firms in the United Kingdom found that 71% of leading companies rated staff learning and training as important or very important compared to 62% of other companies. Another study of 155 U.S. manufacturing firms revealed that those with training programs had 19% higher productivity than those with out such a program. Another study indicated that a doubling of formal training per employee resulted in 7% reduction in scrap. Training is especially important for a differentiation strategy emphasizing quality or consumer service. For instance , Motorola, with annual sales of $17 billion, spends 4% of its payroll on training by providing at least 40 hours of training a year to each employee. There is a very strong connection between strategy and training at Motorola. For example, after setting a goal to reduce product development cycle time Motorola created a two-week training source to teach its employees how to achieve that goal. It brought together marketing, product development, and manufacturing managers to create an action learning format in which the managers worked together instead of separately.

Employee training programs are important in a business' success. Without an effective training program implemented the business could suffer from confused employees, ill direction and incompetence. The new employee can only excel further when taken through a properly planned training program.

Investing in training programs can make employees feel indebted to the company. Training is essential for the employees to perform special jobs because job requires particular skills and knowledge by which the job is much easier to perform as it is in the benefit of the employee. Qureshi et al (2007) concluded that training has a very positive influence on the performance of the employees. Danvila del Valle et al (2009), training provides employees with the skills, abilities and knowledge which give them confidence, they will make more effort and give their best at work in an effective