Gary Summy, Sales Management Association member and Director of Sales Development for Trane Commercial Systems, discusses ways in which an organization can quantify the effectiveness of its sales force training and development. Mr. Summy contends that training should be viewed as an investment in the organization versus an expense. And while ROI is a relevant metric when applied to capital expenditures and other investment options, it is an inadequate measure of sales training effectiveness. He suggests various alternative metrics that offer a two-fold benefit: they establish the initial business case for conducting the training in the first place, and provide a basis for measuring training’s ultimate impact.
