| dc.description.abstract | Dale Carnegie Training is a Global Training and Development Organization. The company is privately held and organized into local franchises. The Dallas-Fort Worth franchise (DCT-DFW) has experienced significant salesperson turnover over the past ten years (2012 to 2022). This branch's turnover is significantly higher than the average for the Dale Carnegie organization and sales positions in general. Such high attrition is unsettling for the owner and has negatively impacted the company's financial bottom line. In order to address the ongoing issue of retention, the franchise has tried various adjustments to its compensation models, organizational structure, leadership, and reporting arrangements over the past 10 years, but none of these efforts have improved this trend.
Based on the literature and on our initial conversations with key stakeholders, we focused our study on three factors that may have led salespeople to stay or leave this organization. These three factors are 1) Socialization as defined by the 2003 Barksdale et al. model, 2) the impact of leader support, and 3) the role of compensation. As part of this investigation, we reviewed and analyzed relevant documents from the organization, and we surveyed and interviewed former sales employees of this branch from the period 2012 to 2022. We also interviewed the owner and his leadership team to fortify our findings.
Our study found that salespeople experienced a strong sense of belonging and thoroughly enjoyed the onboarding training that made them better people. And that leader support, specifically from the branch owner, was the most cited reason for salespeople staying. However, we also found that a lack of clarity in roles, expectations, goals, performance targets, and compensation led to role ambiguity, stress, and lower performance, leading to sales employees leaving the organization over time. We found that job candidates who already shared an affection for the Dale Carnegie brand, based on direct or indirect experience, performed better, and stayed longer than sales employees who had no emotional connection to the organization. | |
