An Assessment of Training and Salesforce Productivity in the Nigeria’s Manufacturing Industry: Lesson From NASCO Company Ltd, Jos

Abstract

Training is very important and so viable that organizations cannot do without it. If organizations want to succeed and even achieve goals and objectives, reliance on the skills and knowledge of their sales force to deliver products and services to the market place becomes imperative. Deploying and sustaining a highly skilled and competitive sales force requires a strong management commitment towards effective initial and on-going training solutions. A remote training program is capable of delivering a continuous curriculum of training solutions to meet the needs of both new and veteran members of the deployed sales force. The problem under focus was to assess the impact of training on sales force productivity in the Nigeria’s manufacturing industry, using Nasco company Ltd, Jos as a case study. The data obtained from secondary sources were analyzed and the hypothesis formulated was tested using regression analysis. The result from the hypothesis tested revealed that there is a significant relationship between investment in training and profit of Nasco Company Ltd. Based on our findings we recommended that: rather than outsourcing the distribution of its products, Nasco Company should train its sales force personnel. Since investment in training of the sales force enhances the company’s productivity as well as company’s profit, the company under review should invest more on the training of its sales force. Key Words: Training, Sales force, Productivity.