Write-ups for cases

Case 4: Lorrie Foods Inc. This case is about designing of the evaluation system of Lorrie Foods Inc. where The food distributor holds around 60 per cent market share of Gainesville. The top management consists of general manger, Tom Adair, marketing manager, Jennifer Walters and sales manager Warren Gottlieb. Lorrie foods have 3 product lines, food, paper and chemicals. Lorrie has currently 800 active accounts. New competition is growing the Gainesville market. Continental food services and Kraft are entering the competition. Tom adair and Jennifer walters are new to the firm and have established a set of strategic objectives for marketing and sales operations. At the current time, Gottlieb has been planning to establish an evaluation program of his salespeople. The evaluation of salespeople had been quite informal in the past months and Gottlieb had been planning to change that. He believed in the management by objectives and also counselled his people to set realistic goals and help each representative to attain those goals. Both Gottlieb and Walters realized that the current evaluation policies were inadequate. They needed to establish specific time periods for the evaluations and that these should be tied to an annual review of performance as well as salary. But they were having opposing thoughts with regards what criteria to be applied for evaluating the outside salespeople. According the gottlieb, the primary goal of the program should be to evaluate salespeople on the basis of sales and profit. He believed that sales and profit drive the companys bottom line of achieving success in the market. Walters felt that this was wrong. She believed that greater importance should be given to behaviour of the salespeople. Evaluation program should check the quality of customer feedback, amount of cooperation with the phone sales rep, administration quality and office behaviour. She also believed that large percentage of commission encouraged the sales and they need not be motivated for the selling aspect of the job. More importance needed to be given to the non-selling aspects of the job which would help maintain the position of the company in the marketplace. Case can be concluded as gottlieb seems to be objective-based and a believer of management by objectives. He only believes in setting realistic goals and helping the reps attain them on time. He did not give consideration to the non-selling aspects of the salespersons. I believe that this is totally wrong and I support the views of Jennifer walters as she believes in giving importance to the behavioural aspects of the sales people. The main aim of the company should always be customer satisfaction and this could be only achieved if the sales people have the right amount of attitude and behaviour. If I have to design the evaluation process for lorries sales force, then I will check the sales performance of the individual over a period of time and check the amount of sales done in a period of time and profit generated for the company. I would also check the behaviour of the salesperson which was enunciated in the selling process and also check the customer satisfaction. If all is fine, then I will decide on the commission aspect for the sales individual.

Case 5: Seal-Rite Envelope Company(A)

The case is about the analysis of sales volume in the organisation. Max Chernak is the president of the seal rite envelope company. Rose Douglas has been the sales manager for past 7 years. The case opens with the sales the manager looking through the stack of computer printouts on her desk. The president enters the scene and comments on her hardwork. Chernak is a person who believes in keeping the work as simple as possible. He does not believe in delegation. Rose Douglas believed in the sales analysis system which she had developed. The analysis included the stock number of the products bought, who sold them, when they were bought, and how much gross margin was realized from the order. Significant changes in the system was at once highlighted and printout of each sales orders was delivered to her home each Sunday morning. Douglas was obliged to defend her system by stating what she used to do and how much information she used to obtain about the daily operations of the company. Chernak was trying to question her with various kind of confrontations and she rose to challenge with each of them. Douglas also showed him one the sales item problem which was highlighted. Hearing this, Chernak instantly asked her what she could do about it. Douglas was not sure about the solution but she still didnt back out and replied to his question. Chernak at once replied that what she was doing was actually micromanagement. He said that it was good that she knew a lot of things about the daily operations of the company, but as a president of the company, he only wanted to know a few things, such as gross margins, total dollar sales, gross margins and expenses. The Case can be concluded as What we get to learn from the situation is that chernak, as a president, need not want to know the complete information of the lower management operations. Rose douglas should not have explained to him the complete steps of the operations which is being carried out. It would definitely offend the person who is at the higher level of job position in the same organization. President should be informed about the profits and total sales of the company. Rose douglas should have interacted calmly and shouldnt have been over-excited in the whole situation.

Case 6: Seal Rite Envelope Company(C) It is a case dealing with evaluation of telemarketing program that needs to be implemented in the onrganisation. To Increase Marketing efforts, Rose douglas, the sales manager, was given permission to start the telemarketing efforts in order to cover a large number of small account and build customer base. There were currently 4 categories: printers, paper wholesalers, company buying envelopes for routine mailing purposes, and companies buying envelopes for sales promotional purposes. Rose Douglas had been given permission to develop a telemarketing group to handle both outbound and inbound sales programs. She hired 6 people who were trained for becoming telemarketing consultant. The outbound sales calls would be to customers with frequent needs for envelopes and to smaller customers with infrequent needs. Max Chernak had asked for complete report on the telemarketing program after its implementation. During Christmas party, douglas got the opportunity to talk to steve hunter, firms top sales rep about the telemarketing initiative. She asked him about when should she evaluate the telemarketing executives. Steve suggested that she should do it on hourly basis. He also alerted her by saying that many bad things could happen in the initial one month time. There could arise daily problems which could affect the program badly. Douglas thought about it and pondered about the fact that she wanted to generate meaningful calls which could last for a longer time. She was concerned about what customers wanted to talk, efficiency of each day, and the kind of mechanical means used to measure the length and number of telephone calls. She also enquired howie masters about the kind of systems required for the implementation. He said that the equipments required were available. Douglas wanted to record the calls of the interaction between the telemarketing reps and the customers. This was actually illegal and the govt didnt support such attack on privacy. Douglas was getting too much concerned over this situation which was totally uncalled for. Case can be concluded as Telemarketers should be evaluated on daily basis. Hourly basis is too much aggressive and could also lead to extensive use of technology over a less period of time. This is not feasible as many other factors need to be considered during the telemarketing program. As far as recording of calls are concerned, this is against the rules of govt policy and also against the privacy of citizens. It should be restricted. Telemarketers should be evaluated not only on the terms of selling aspects but also on the terms of non-selling aspects as per the case of 14-1, which we solved before. The telemarketers should not be evaluated against each other as customer accounts which are being interacted to, will differ from one sales rep to another. So they should not be evaluated against each other.