KYG Instruments, a firm that produces manufacturing equipment for various industries, experiences an influx of new sales employees due to a recent expansion. Despite possessing a vast amount of sales experience, most of the new employees perform poorly. This is because the new recruits possess inadequate technical knowledge about the products sold by KYG. To address the issue, the HR department decides to implement a training program using the instructional design process. As part of the process, the HR department's first step should be to:___________.
1. ensure that sales representatives do not feel undervalued.
2. identify that the sales representatives need technical training.
3. identify senior product engineers to train the sales representatives.
4. chart the methods that should be used to train the sales representatives.
5. announce the objectives of the training program.

Based on the scenario being described within the question it can be said that the HR department's first step should be to Identify that the sales representatives need technical training. This is because as stated in the passage, the sales representatives are performing poorly because they do not posses the required product knowledge, therefore providing them with the technical training and correct knowledge would drastically increase their performance and sales rates for the company. So this should be HR's first step and top priority.