To establish training as an investment rather than as a maintenance issue, Hot Rivet recommends using performance metrics and controls to underpin boardroom confidence in training and thus convince executives to invest in new projects. If companies then choose to save money in the short term, they also know that they face lower sales productivity, missed communication between different disciplines (e.g. sales and marketing), loss of efficiency, loss of morale, higher sales and marketing costs, will miss out on market opportunity and as a result have less cash remaining to reinvest for the long term.

Hot Rivet starts by aligning the sales culture to the overall business strategy (or strategies). This enables the management to see which engagement process is required and from this a properly aligned training curriculum can be designed.

To realize training's promise, you may wish to consider the following questions:

"How can training be fully incorporated into the business-planning process?"