ALLIANCE ADHESIVES & PLASTICS, INC. Background sale tha cer do tak ap se pe s on

Question

ALLIANCE ADHESIVES & PLASTICS, INC. Background sale tha cer do tak ap se pe s one of four regional sales managers for Al- liance Adhesives and Plastics, Inc.,.you have just received summary details from a study of the company's national field salesforce. h study was done at the request of the vice prasident stles and marketing and used a variety of assess- ment 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 sa into a salesforce specialized around served markets, def 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. lespeople inite 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. Surprisingly, while customers rate the

Explanation / Answer

1. On the basis of the given information one of the major problem faced by the sales organization is that they are product centric. However, a sales organization should be consumer centric and should put most priority to the customer satisfaction rather than product. This results in not only unsatisfied customers but it also results in poor performance in terms of customer retention. This particular fact was also highlighted in the sales force report that the company have some hard time I keeping good terms with its customers.

Another major problem in the sales organization is the freedom they have to deal with the problem at hand. It seems their activities are well defined and they are not free to choose any new idea from the customers. This binds them to stick to some of the standard solution which might not actually help the customer and thus result in lower customer satisfaction levels.

2. One of the problem mentioned in the case about the attitude of the sales people is that they are arrogant and self-centered. Although the attitude can be modified to some extent with the help of various trainings. But, it would be very helpful for the organization if they can hire the salespeople with the desired kind of attitude. However, care should be taken to maintain the same level of product knowledge which is desired by the consumers.

Secondly, having specialized salesforce is good as we have seen some of the benefits over the geography based system. Now, different served markets are focused on which is beneficial for the company. However, such a structure requires good team work. Thus at the time of hiring they should go for the individuals which are more comfortable in situations where team working is required.

3. Given the fact that the salespeople are great at the product knowledge this means there is no need to improve in product based trainings at this stage. However, I feel there is a need for training in two areas where there is a scope of improvement.

a. Training on soft skill development: As we have seen in the case that consumer’s dissatisfaction is mainly because of the attitude of the employees this is an area where there is a scope to improve a lot.

b. Training of customer interaction: Another area of major improvement is in the way the customer problems are handled. There is a need to sensitize the employees towards the problems faced by customers and make them more receptive to the suggestions offered by the customers. This will make the customers more involved in the interaction proves which will help building good bonds to facilitate customer retention.

4. . In case of the sales management leadership as we can see they have provided the salesperson with very few decision making authorities. This has made them to follow the specific well defined steps to solve the problems faced by the customer. According to me, the management should decentralize some of the powers to the salespeople and give them some freedom to make the decision in the best interest of the customer. This was the company will become more receptive to the customer suggestions which might help in making better products. At the same time, it will generate useful insights from the customer while solving their problems.

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