Business Development for Bankers: An Evaluation Study

The evaluation of commercial training was examined through the study of a specific training program for bankers. Two functional groups within a 20 billion dollar U.S. bank participated in the study and both were split into experimental (trained) and control (untrained) groups. Four levels of evaluation were implemented in this study; they include: (1) trainee opinions about the training, (2) change in trainee behavior during training, (3) changes in trainee on-the-job behavior. and (4) organizational results or bottom-line measurements. Some measurements used existing performance tracking programs within the bank, while others were developed by the experimenter and implemented by bank personnel. For Levels 1 through 3, the trend of the results is in the direction of improved selling knowledge and performance, but the changes are modest. Level 4 results. on the other hand, show a significant increase in performance among the trained group when compared to the untrained group. Evaluation studies using the four-level method are feasible to conduct in banking environments and most procedures used in this study can and should be replicated in other environments