What are the Best Practices to Conduct Sales Training?

[Excerpt] Annually, companies in the U.S. spend over $70 billion on training and an average of$1459 per salesperson. This is almost 20% more than what companies spend on workers in all other functions. However, the returns on investment from sales training tend to disappoint. Studies demonstrate that participants in traditional curriculum-based training forget more than 80% of the information taught within 90 days. Nonetheless, sales training can still have significant positive impact if appropriate training strategies are employed. Therefore, this report will detail some of the best practices for sales training in the each of the stages of training: pre-training, during training, and post training

What are Some Effective and Innovative Approaches to Succession Planning?

[Excerpt] As baby boomers are leaving the workforce and competition for top talent reaches an all time high, succession planning is increasingly important for companies if they want to maintain organizational resilience. However, 57% of organizations do not plan for succession. Of the organizations that do implement a succession plan, there are three top mistakes that are often made: they fail to formally implement a systematic and formalized succession plan, they fail to plan below the CEO role, or they fail to develop transition strategies for the future. These mistakes can prove to be costly to a company; if key leaders leave and there is a delay in replacement - or worse, no replacement - morale drops, productivity suffers, and turnover increases. Therefore, companies need to build a succession plan that addresses these potential mistakes before any damage can affect an organization

Adjuvant vs. salvage radiation therapy in men with high-risk features after radical prostatectomy: Survey of North American genitourinary expert radiation oncologists

INTRODUCTION: The management of patients with high-risk features after radical prostatectomy (RP) is controversial. Level 1 evidence demonstrates that adjuvant radiation therapy (RT) improves survival compared to no treatment; however, it may overtreat up to 30% of patients, as randomized clinical trials (RCTs) using salvage RT on observation arms failed to reveal a survival advantage of adjuvant RT. We, therefore, sought to determine the current view of adjuvant vs. salvage RT among North American genitourinary (GU) radiation oncology experts. METHODS: A survey was distributed to 88 practicing North American GU physicians serving on decision-making committees of cooperative group research organizations. Questions pertained to opinions regarding adjuvant vs. salvage RT for this patient population. Treatment recommendations were correlated with practice patterns using Fisher's exact test. RESULTS: Forty-two of 88 radiation oncologists completed the survey; 23 (54.8%) recommended adjuvant RT and 19 (45.2%) recommended salvage RT. Recommendation of active surveillance for Gleason 3+4 disease was a significant predictor of salvage RT recommendation (p=0.034), and monthly patient volume approached significance for recommendation of adjuvant over salvage RT; those seeing <15 patients/month trended towards recommending adjuvant over salvage RT (p=0.062). No other demographic factors approached significance. CONCLUSIONS: There is dramatic polarization among North American GU experts regarding optimal management of patients with high-risk features after RP. Ongoing RCTs will determine whether adjuvant RT improves survival over salvage RT. Until then, the almost 50/50 division seen from this analysis should encourage practicing clinicians to discuss the ambiguity with their patients

Calculation for Moment Capacity of Beam-to-Upright Connections of Steel Storage Pallet Racks

Steel storage pallet rack structures are three-dimensional framed structures, which are widely used to store different kinds of goods. For the easy accessibility to stored products, pallet racks are not usually braced in the down-aisle direction. The down-aisle stability is mostly provided by the characteristics of beam-to-upright connections, and the characteristics of upright base connections. In this paper, calculation for moment capacity of beam-to-upright connections is carried out. A mechanical model is presented firstly. Based on the model, moment capacity is related to the failure capacity, directly determined by the failure mode, of the topmost tab of the beam-end-connector and the corresponding upright wall. Different methods to predict the failure capacity are derived for two types of failure modes, i.e. crack of tab and crack of upright wall. The new method has shown a satisfactory agreement with experimental results demonstrating the reliability of the model in predicting the moment capacity of beam-to-upright connections