1. What should Chase have said to the senior board to have received a higher training budget? How can Fletcher measure the benefits of a training program to justify its costs? Fletcher Ball Bearings, based in Lewiston, Maine, is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of precision bearings and bearing products. Fletcher sells its products to many industries, including aerospace, communications, health care, and defense. Ball bearings have many uses within these industries, such as gas turbine engines, fuel pumps, aircraft instruments, gyros, dental and surgical hand pieces, and electric motors. As one might expect, these are very complicated products and require a technical knowledge not only of the bearings themselves but also of the products of which they are an integral part.

The company is divided into several divisions, each with its own specialized sales force.

The Aero division manufactures and sells bearings for use in end products such as rotarywing aircraft (helicopters), fixed-wing aircraft, jet engines, missiles, actuators, landing gear, starters, and satellites. The Aero division attempts to hire salespeople with an aerospace or engineering education and relevant work experience. However, the level of expertise varies drastically among its 150 salespeople, and even those with the highest expertise do not know everything because the technology changes so quickly.