Reference no: EM132290741
Sales Manager Project
Scenario: You have just been promoted to sales manager in a mid-sized b2b service and manufacturing firm. You are excited but a little nervous since you’ve never had to manage both people and a budget before. You realize fairly quickly that there would be no formal training of how to manage either. Your boss, the person who used to occupy your new sales management role, said she would be available to help you when she had the chance but she has become extremely overwhelmed as she is learning her new job as director of sales and marketing. She gives you a list of deadlines and ‘deliverables’ that need to be done but it is apparent that you will need to figure out this whole ‘manger thing’ largely on your own.
It is a Friday afternoon and you have just completed your afternoon meeting with your director. You had hoped the meeting would focus on some management coaching and instruction about some of your new responsibilities. This did not happen. Instead you were told about a problem she was working on with your salesforce overall. She said this was a big problem that needed to be resolved fairly quickly because it involved several upset customers. Some of whom are threatening to stop doing business with your company. Although she said this is urgent she said that she had been meaning to get to this for a while but got so busy with her transition into her new position she never had a chance. This gives you the impression that she wasn’t sure how to handle the issue and did her best to wait until she was replaced so she could pass the problem off to her successor (you). At any rate, you accept it’s your problem now and ask her what is going on. This is what you learn:
-Several customers are upset with several members of the salesforce regardless of territory or region. Although it’s not all of the salesforce, the problem doesn’t seem to be localized or contained within any one group of salespeople or territory.
-The reason the customers are upset is because their salespeople have begun lying about such things as delivery times, discounts, returns and refunds.
-After interviewing the salesforce you learn that in some instances the salespeople didn’t realize they were lying, they thought they could deliver everything they said, only to realize later, after talking with the delivery and warehousing people that they could not. Other salespeople knew they were lying but figured they had to lie in order to make their quotas. It sounds like they have rationalized the need to lie in order to get their bonus, get their commission, keep their jobs etc.
-The previous sales manager, in an effort to support the corporate strategy of growth did put a lot of ‘new business’ demands on the salesforce. You thought this sounded weird given how crowded your market is. You know the company wants to grow but you are wondering why the previous manager would do that with new business quotas instead of with something that might help the salesforce exploit their current market share.
You realize this is a multi-faceted problem with not just one problem (i.e. unhappy customers) but several problems leading to unhappy customers. You will need to present your solutions to these problems to the leadership team on February 13th 2019. In this presentation you will need to explain:
-How the corporate strategy (hint: or someone’s understanding of it) might be one of the chief contributors to this problem and then propose a solution (one outside source dealing with corporate strategies (another hint: in crowded markets).
-Although you understand where the salespeople are coming from and why they feel justified in lying to their customers, you are not okay with a salesperson ever doing that. How will you solve the problem of unethical selling (one outside source (hint: look up ethical selling and how to treat customers in the face of adversity)).
-What sort of proposal will you make to fix the antecedent issue (fancy way of saying the problem causing the other problems)? Hint: The fact that there seems to be a misunderstanding between the company and the salespeople regarding what the company can actually do might be something that needs to be addressed (one outside source)
This assignment is intended to show how chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, & 6 can influence one another. There is no one right answer to this assignment. I will first look to see that you attempted to cover three areas described above. I will look to see that there are at least three credible outside sources. After that I will evaluate the quality of the writing. It doesn’t need to be perfect but if you turn in your first draft, I’ll know and that will lead to a significantly lower grade. And finally I will evaluate the quality of the content you provide in your proposed solutions. If they make sense and seem like a possible solution, and are will supported with your outside references, then you will get the points.