The manager of a large retail furniture store found that sending his least productive salespeople to a week minus long motivational training workshop resulted in a 15 percent increase in sales for those employees. Based on this success comma the manager decided to spend the money to send all of his other salespeople to this workshop so sales would increase for everyone. Explain the pitfall of this statement.

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Business

Keagan Beck

7 August, 00:20

The manager of a large retail furniture store found that sending his least productive salespeople to a week minus long motivational training workshop resulted in a 15 percent increase in sales for those employees. Based on this success comma the manager decided to spend the money to send all of his other salespeople to this workshop so sales would increase for everyone. Explain the pitfall of this statement.

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Brennen Skinner · Answer 1

The pitfall (trap) of this statement is that the motivational training course was very effective in getting bad salespeople to work better and sell more, but that doesn't mean that the same course will be effective to motivate good salespeople into selling more or selling 15% more.

What works for one group of employees doesn't generally work the same way for everyone. You have to consider the specific characteristics of the initial group: unproductive and inefficient salespeople. Maybe the course was actually capable of motivating them, but its effectiveness over other types of salespeople is not necessarily the same.