Reference no: EM133170568

Building Motivation Construction Products Inc. sells construction products to various retail and wholesale markets across the United States. Its only office is in Illinois, and so it sends sales representatives on the road to different territories to obtain orders and develop relationships with retailers. You are the newest sales representative and have been assigned to the Southeast territory. A typical workday for a sales rep involves stopping at numerous stores and talking with general managers while visiting the retail stores to view how products are marketed and displayed. On these visits, sales reps try to increase wholesale orders by improving the sales of Construction Products. Also, they complete market reports that are used by the Illinois main office for future forecasting of product demand. Most territories are responsible for about 50 retail stores and about a dozen wholesale accounts. Sales reps are expected to spend a lot of time in the stores focusing on optimizing product location within the store, training employees, and educating customers about the benefits of the company's products. For example, a sales rep typically tries to get larger space in the store for plywood so that more can be sold. Employees and customers need to be educated on the different grades of plywood and how to match them with building projects. This is important since the stores carry competitors' products in the stores. After 6 months on the job, your boss has tasked you with increasing sales in your territory by 20%. You plan to meet this goal by explaining the benefits of your product and why it should be the product of choice. During store visits, you socialize with store employees but realize quickly that getting everyone on the same page is not going to be as easy as anticipated. You learn that most employees don't really care if the customer gets the best material for their project. They get their paycheck regardless of how much of your products are sold. They listen politely but are not enthusiastic about your ideas. Among the 50 retail stores that you are assigned to, there are seven that agree to help you with increasing sales in their store. You plan to track the sales in these stores compared to the others that did not agree to help. After a month, you see only slight increases in the sales in the seven stores but you are encouraged. Sales are about the same in the other 43 stores. You realize that focusing on the seven stores will not meet your boss's goal of increasing sales by 20%. The next month, you try a different approach in your other 43 stores. In those stores, you spend time teaching employees about various building products so they can educate their customers. They seem to grasp an understanding of the benefits your product could bring to the customers compared to competitors' products. They also seem to understand the applications and how to match your products with customers' building needs. But when you ask them to teach customers what you had shown them, you were met with looks of confusion and aggravation. Although a bit reluctant, they agree to give it a try. Checking the weekly sales figures over the next month, you notice that there has been little improvement in the sales of your product at these 43 stores. You ask your boss for advice, and he suggests that you speak with the manager of one of the retail stores to gain an understanding for the lack of motivation. You show him a printout of the sales numbers and how much income your products bring to the store as well as ask for his help getting employees on board with promoting the products. Since the store manager's main concern is revenue for the store, he quickly agreed and offered his full support. The store manager calls a meeting where he, the store employees, and you discussed techniques for product presentation and how employees can effectively pitch the product to customers. You left feeling confident that the employees would be effective since the goal was reinforced by their boss. However, on the next review, not only had there been no improvement in sales but the employees' attitudes toward you had drastically declined. They either avoided you or were unfriendly when you tried to speak to them. You realize you must come up with a completely different plan of attack to be successful and spend the next Monday morning considering your courses of action. 

Case Study Questions:

1. Why do you think you are failing to motivate the store employees to put their efforts to increase sales of your company's products?

2. What would be your new courses of action to meet the target of increasing sales by 20%?