Joan Revello, the sales manager for Trecourt Valve and Fittings, reorganizes its sales force
Other than having a robust sales force, Joan should consider other supporting factors that will assist salespeople to get their work effectively done. As much as salespeople are working for hand, there is a need to see some effort from the management that creates new pathways of selling their products. In the entire discussion, the emphasis has been placed on the role played by salespeople in increasing the sales of the company, there have been no internal product differentiation or improvement that the company has embarked on.
The company seems to be suffering from two main issues, customer retention, and customer creation. To retain customers, the salespeople need to collaborate with organizational goals and policies, they need to work together and have a sense of belonging as well as attainment of the same corporate objectives. Joan should embark on customer review and after-sales services, this is where she should contact the old customers and seek their advice on the performance of the business and how they would like to see things done in the future; with such a move, the company is more likely to move further and its sales increase.
The fiancé competition in the modern business world calls Joan to enact aggressive marketing campaigns that are likely to see the business acquire more customers; in today’s increased competition, companies are embarking on an integrated policy where they develop customer retention and customer acquisition approaches, both should be given equal strengths and power.
Joan and the sales management team seems to make decisions from brainstorming an issue, they forget the inputs that they can get from customers themselves as well as the salespeople on the ground. it is high time that Joan thinks of restructuring the decision-making approach and involves junior staff who are mostly on the ground and have sound information on what is going on as well as the likelihood of change.
Joan’s alternatives for organizing her sales force
Joan has a number of alternatives for organizing his team; other than having one salesperson as the one given the task of growing the company’s accounts portfolio, then she can utilize the sales force to do both tasks. After the combination of the sales zones, Edmonton and Calgary, Joan should not be the one in the sole of control of the branches but should give Brad Luchak and Tomas Causi the control. When employees are given high responsibilities, with well motivations policies, they are likely to work harder. Such an approach will create healthy competition in the company that will probably increase the sales of the company.
Jayne Alexander is a recent hire, although he is respectful and seems to be working hard for the good of the company; the condition of the market should not rely fully on her to take care of its new accounts ventures. Joan should not assume that the new entrant has the potential of holding new customers as well as developing and retaining their customer loyalty. Joan should be the overall decision-maker in the department; she should make decisions after getting the right information from his sales staff; Brad Luchak and Tomas Causi should be encouraged to use their experiences to give market information on the department. Joan should always aim at using research and development tools to make sales decisions.
Joan’s choice of a salesperson to reassign to new account development
The decision about whether Brad or Tom should be reassigned to new accounts is dependent on their people skills and their personal ability to create and retain healthy business relationships with their customers. Joan is at crossroads, she has to grow the number of clients as well as maintain the existing number; to do this it will call for objective analysis, appraisal, and evaluation of his staffs’ potentials.
Performance management and appraisal results analysis are the tools that Joan has to determine the success of the team, she should ensure that the staff with high people skills and who better understands the needs of customers are given the main role of managing new accounts. The cost of attaining a new customer is much higher than the cost of maintaining them, the company should ensure that staff are well trained, monitored, and coached on how they should retain their customers.
If I were in the position of Joan, I would implement customer-retention management strategy; strategies that look into the needs of the customers, and aims at aligning all company’s decisions, policies, and strategies to customer needs. CRM programs not only address salespersons-customers relations but also aim at improving internal products and policies for the good of the company. I believe such a policy can save the situation and offer long-term solutions to that mere restructuring of the sales department.