Reference no: EM131443053

Well-Built Furniture had a banner year selling attractive home-office furniture to customers in a large metropolitan area. At a monthly executive meeting, sales rep Harry presented his idea to develop a new service: For an additional cost, customers could have a Well-Built service representative assemble the unit in their home. Harry had talked to enough customers to know the service would be a huge success. Every customer he talked to, loved the idea. Harry started planning right away. He was projecting the costs of training the reps when a guy from marketing strolled up to his desk and started asking about what the competition was doing. Then he asked if Harry could come up with numbers to show how the added service would increase revenue...and, more importantly, raise profits. Harry was tempted to ask, "Isn't that your job?" but he'd been around long enough to know you don't talk to other managers that way. Besides, the questions made him a little nervous. What if the idea wasn't as profitable as he'd thought? Maybe he was rushing into it. Maybe he should come up with some numbers, but how? He didn't even know where to begin. What would YOU do?