Quiz 11: Changing World of Sales Management

Business

ALLIANCE ADHESIVES PLASTICS, INC. Background As one of four regional sales managers for Alliance Adhesives and Plastics, Inc., you have just received summary details from a study of the company's national field salesforce. The study was done at the request of the vice president for sales and marketing and used a variety of assessment tools to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the company's 97 salespeople located across the United States. Based on these results, the vice president for sales and marketing has assigned your four-person regional managers team the task to develop a step- by-step program that will move the company forward toward a revitalized and more effective salesforce. In response to the company's new marketing strategy designed to "get close to the customer," the salesforce was completely reorganized a little over four years ago, moving from a strictly geographic-based territory system to a specialized selling force organized around the different served markets. As a result of the reorganization and transformation of the company's salespeople into a salesforce specialized around served markets, definite improvements were realized in account penetration and customer retention. Nevertheless, spot checks randomly made across various customers indicate that there is still much room for improvement. Customer satisfaction levels are still low, and the company has some difficulty keeping good accounts. Current Situation Customers give Alliance salespeople strong marks for product knowledge-probably a reflection of the existing training program, which has intensive initial and recurrent training on the wide variety of products offered. Suprisingly, while customers rate the salespeople high for their product knowledge, they also indicate that Alliance salespeople appear somewhat arrogant and self-centered. Many of the responses show that, overall, the salesforce does not care about the customer and does not attempt to pressure and persuade buyers rather than offering creative or customized product solutions. Based on the information given, what are the major problems facing the sales organization?

Free

Essay

The current sales organization often faces major problem. Following are mentioned below: • It is often seen that salesperson does not take efforts, to resolve the customer's complaints. They often show lax attitude in addressing the customer's problem. For example , late delivery of products, damaged merchandise or invoice errors. • Salesforce does not attempt or even take out time to fully explore, and understand the customer's problems or new applications, that require novel solutions. • Salesperson attempts to pressurize and persuade buyers, rather than offering creative or customized product solutions.

Q 2

ALLIANCE ADHESIVES PLASTICS, INC. Background As one of four regional sales managers for Alliance Adhesives and Plastics, Inc., you have just received summary details from a study of the company's national field salesforce. The study was done at the request of the vice president for sales and marketing and used a variety of assessment tools to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the company's 97 salespeople located across the United States. Based on these results, the vice president for sales and marketing has assigned your four-person regional managers team the task to develop a step- by-step program that will move the company forward toward a revitalized and more effective salesforce. In response to the company's new marketing strategy designed to "get close to the customer," the salesforce was completely reorganized a little over four years ago, moving from a strictly geographic-based territory system to a specialized selling force organized around the different served markets. As a result of the reorganization and transformation of the company's salespeople into a salesforce specialized around served markets, definite improvements were realized in account penetration and customer retention. Nevertheless, spot checks randomly made across various customers indicate that there is still much room for improvement. Customer satisfaction levels are still low, and the company has some difficulty keeping good accounts. Current Situation Customers give Alliance salespeople strong marks for product knowledge-probably a reflection of the existing training program, which has intensive initial and recurrent training on the wide variety of products offered. Suprisingly, while customers rate the salespeople high for their product knowledge, they also indicate that Alliance salespeople appear somewhat arrogant and self-centered. Many of the responses show that, overall, the salesforce does not care about the customer and does not attempt to pressure and persuade buyers rather than offering creative or customized product solutions. What changes in the recruiting and selection of salespeople would you suggest? Why?

Free

Essay

In this day and age of competitive environment, various changes have taken place in the recruitment and selection of salespeople. Following changes can be suggested and they are mentioned below: • Companies can adopt internal recruitment method for hiring the salesperson. This method is quite cost-effective, and fewer resources are required to recruit the candidate. Moreover, it helps in internal growth of a company. • Companies can focus more on attitude than a skill, while selecting the candidate. This is so because, skills can be taught but attitude can't be changed. Attitude plays a key role in sales jobs, as salespersons are the only intermediary between the company, and the customers. • Selecting the quality candidates helps in preventing the costly turnover of staff, and increases the likeliness of high- employee morale and productivity.

Q 3

ALLIANCE ADHESIVES PLASTICS, INC. Background As one of four regional sales managers for Alliance Adhesives and Plastics, Inc., you have just received summary details from a study of the company's national field salesforce. The study was done at the request of the vice president for sales and marketing and used a variety of assessment tools to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the company's 97 salespeople located across the United States. Based on these results, the vice president for sales and marketing has assigned your four-person regional managers team the task to develop a step- by-step program that will move the company forward toward a revitalized and more effective salesforce. In response to the company's new marketing strategy designed to "get close to the customer," the salesforce was completely reorganized a little over four years ago, moving from a strictly geographic-based territory system to a specialized selling force organized around the different served markets. As a result of the reorganization and transformation of the company's salespeople into a salesforce specialized around served markets, definite improvements were realized in account penetration and customer retention. Nevertheless, spot checks randomly made across various customers indicate that there is still much room for improvement. Customer satisfaction levels are still low, and the company has some difficulty keeping good accounts. Current Situation Customers give Alliance salespeople strong marks for product knowledge-probably a reflection of the existing training program, which has intensive initial and recurrent training on the wide variety of products offered. Suprisingly, while customers rate the salespeople high for their product knowledge, they also indicate that Alliance salespeople appear somewhat arrogant and self-centered. Many of the responses show that, overall, the salesforce does not care about the customer and does not attempt to pressure and persuade buyers rather than offering creative or customized product solutions. What changes in sales training would you suggest? Why?

Free

Essay

Sales Training is an essential requirement for any company, as it helps in maintaining or improving the salesforce's performance. More importantly, if sales training is well-designed and executed, it can produce fastest return on investment that a company can make. Following changes can be suggested in sales training : • Major traits such as skills, attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors must be carefully assessed by the sales manager, before proceeding with the sales training. • Performance testing can be conducted, to determine the proficiency of the salespeople in a particular area, such as product knowledge etc. • A customer survey can be done by the company, to know the issues faced by them, while dealing with the salesperson. The weak areas of salesperson can be improved through sales training effectively.

Q 4

ALLIANCE ADHESIVES PLASTICS, INC. Background As one of four regional sales managers for Alliance Adhesives and Plastics, Inc., you have just received summary details from a study of the company's national field salesforce. The study was done at the request of the vice president for sales and marketing and used a variety of assessment tools to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the company's 97 salespeople located across the United States. Based on these results, the vice president for sales and marketing has assigned your four-person regional managers team the task to develop a step- by-step program that will move the company forward toward a revitalized and more effective salesforce. In response to the company's new marketing strategy designed to "get close to the customer," the salesforce was completely reorganized a little over four years ago, moving from a strictly geographic-based territory system to a specialized selling force organized around the different served markets. As a result of the reorganization and transformation of the company's salespeople into a salesforce specialized around served markets, definite improvements were realized in account penetration and customer retention. Nevertheless, spot checks randomly made across various customers indicate that there is still much room for improvement. Customer satisfaction levels are still low, and the company has some difficulty keeping good accounts. Current Situation Customers give Alliance salespeople strong marks for product knowledge-probably a reflection of the existing training program, which has intensive initial and recurrent training on the wide variety of products offered. Suprisingly, while customers rate the salespeople high for their product knowledge, they also indicate that Alliance salespeople appear somewhat arrogant and self-centered. Many of the responses show that, overall, the salesforce does not care about the customer and does not attempt to pressure and persuade buyers rather than offering creative or customized product solutions. What changes in sales management leadership would you suggest? Why?

Essay

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