"Sales training provides salespeople with additional knowledge, skills, and abilities to help improve selling capabilities and subsequently firm performance. Although selling firms continue to invest billions of dollars in sales training, sales academics and practitioners are unaware of the many mechanisms that inhibit or promote the link between sales training and salesperson performance. Prior research has shown that social support in the form of both supervisor and peer support is a major factor that influences the effectiveness of training initiatives. In addition, it is widely acknowledged that as compared to passive learning, active learning enhances individual learning. To date there has been no research that has focused on the link between sales training and sales performance when considering supervisor and peer support, along with continuous individual learning. Adopting views from social capital theory and the theory of situated learning, I develop and test a comprehensive sales training transfer model, focused on identifying the interactive influence of sales training and social support in the form of knowledge and friendship networks on individual salesperson training transfer performance. In addition, I report how findings from this research can be utilized by sales organizations to increase individual learning through the identification, development, and support of intra-organizational social networks."--Page ii.
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