Reference no: EM132245551
FOR PROFESSIONAL SELLING:
McPherson & Co. is a distributor of test equipment used in mining and oil applications. It represents a handful of different manufacturers who engineer solutions for wide-ranging environments. When Jasmine Harris, of Barsh Engineering, got the call from Eddie Schmidt at McPherson, she was excited. For over a year she worked to get McPherson to carry Barsh's geothermal test equipment, but there was no progress—until today, when Eddie asked if the Barsh Geo-Core Xcel would handle conditions in the North Sea oil fields.
“I don’t know,” Jasmine replied. “I’ve personally not had any customers drilling in that area, but I will ask our senior engineer and find out. What’s the situation?”
“We’ve got a really good shot at landing some business from Royal Dutch Shell, but we’ve got some holes in our product line,” Eddie replied. “I’m really thinking of making this an all-Barsh pitch, which would be about a $400,000 contract. Or I may give Shell two solutions, one all Barsh and one a mix of other products.” He went into detail about the conditions in which the Geo-Core would have to work so Jasmine would know what questions to ask.
After the call, Jasmine called the senior engineer and asked if the product would work. Assured that it would, she went to work on a great proposal. Not only would a $400,000 sale represent a month’s quota, she knew that McPherson was good for five times that in its other accounts. This opportunity was huge!
Eddie called Jasmine immediately when he got her e-mail with the proposal attached. “This looks great! I think the all-Barsh approach is best, so that’s what we’ll go with. I’ll submit this to Shell tomorrow.”
Two months later the first Geo-Cores were installed and operational. But within a week it was obvious that they weren’t up to the demanding weather conditions of the North Sea. The machines were breaking down on average about every four hours. Eddie called Jasmine, quite upset with the results, particularly because Shell now wanted to cancel the entire agreement.
Questions
1) Assume you are Jasmine. What should you do?
2) Does the stage of the buyer–seller relationship matter? Which buyer is most important, Royal Dutch Shell or Barsh?
3) Your first call after hanging up with Eddie is with the senior engineer who gave you the wrong information. He claims there is a simple fix, but an engineer will have to make the trip there to do it, and that will be about a $5,000 trip. First, what would you say to your manager who has to sign off on that expense? Second, how do you handle the buyer?