Stavanger Safety Equipment Solutions

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Stavanger Safety Equipment Solutions

Contents
Problem Definition

Page 3

Situation Analysis

Page 3 ~ Page 4

Recommendation

Page 4 ~ Page 5

Conclusion
References

Page 5 ~ Page 6
Page 6

Problem Definition
Stavanger Safety Equipment Corp. is a Canadian manufacturer which sells a broad
range of safety clothing and equipment to individuals as well as distributors such as
police and the fire departments. This company has several branches as well, such as
the Ontario sales management, which has several problems in sales when the new
manager Henry with a MBA certification firstly gets into the company. The problem
definition can be summarized as belows.
Although the sales of the Ontario sales has greatly increased over the past 3 years and
the actual total sales and gross margin have all achieved the target ones, seeing each
item of the data respectively, such problems emerge as the unbalance between the
individual customers and the distributors and the difference of efficiency among the
three salesmen. The problems mentioned above greatly worried the new sales
manager a lot, and the most urgent thing for him is to find solutions to these problems.
Situation Analysis
In order to solve the problems mentioned above, Henry has to visit the three salesmen
and discuss with them about the deficiency according to the sales data.
The first one comes the meeting with Antony Jones. The statistics show the goals
have all been achieved instead of the sales for individual customers. When this is
being mentioned, Antony argues that he feels better after communicating with
distributors and emphasizes that he is good at managing distributor accounts. Whats
more, he wishs Henry would try to trust him to deal with everything by himself. I
suggest that Henry should increase the target sales to distributors and lower that of the
individual users relatively, which can make full use of Antonys advantages and
realize his potentials.
The second one is the meeting with Tom DVideo, whose sales can even agree with
the target one in the three years. Some people are not satisfied with him or even
annoyed because of his bad habits and behaviors. However, he himself maintains that
his private affairs have affected a lot and he needs some time now to make everything
right and better. However, in my opinion, I think that as a salesman, Tom does have
the responsibility to separate the private affairs from his duty job, which is viewed as
the fundamental principle. And his habits and behaviors of meeting others are
obviously not eligible. In this case, I suggest that Henry should give him the last
chance, maybe a quarter. Decisions will be made depending on his working
performance. If he is able to perform well in this quarter and be qualified as an
eligible worker, he will be given the chance to continue working in the company.
Otherwise, he will be dismissed.
The last one is the meeting with Bud Carson, the oldest salesman in the company. The
largest problem is that Buds sales quota was growing at a slower rate than the annual
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price increases. When talking with Henry, Bud looks very reasonable and aggressive,
which puts Henry in a delimma. If I were Henry, I will reduce some of his quota of
the total sales because in his words, he may feel dissatisfied with the volume of his
sales. Whats more, he says that he is not happy with the way the company pays him
the commission. Therefore, I think Henry should do a precise evaluation and make a
standard of how the commission policy is related to the discount and other factors.
Then, Henry can give Bud a reasonable response.
Instead of having interviews the salesmen, I am fully convinced that Henry should do
some other research on the market of safety equipment. Since the situation of the
market changes quickly, the strategies of the company should follow the trend of the
times. For example, many factors of the market should be renewed frequently such as
the up and down of the demand (which decides the plan of target), the market price
and the feedback of customers (which may decide the sales price), the renovation and
the recycle of the products (which is beneficial to the coming out of the new
territories), etc.
Recommendation
In my opinion, there are two large parts of the recommendation. The first part is about
the management of workers, which demonstrates how a new sales manager can
manage to get along with his employees and find out solutions to their weaknesses. As
a new manager like Henry, he should be both easy-going and strict, and it depends on
occasions. One of the most important things is to establish prestige in the department.
Take Henry as an example, he should try his best to promote his position in his
workers mind and everyone should respect him no matter he is a newcoming or an
old staff such as Bud Carson. Whats more, some incentive measures are evitable. We
can see that almost every famous company has a set of incentive measure. Take
Henrys situation for example, this company is now limited by the target and
everything is based on the sales of target. It seems whether the target is reasonable
and can be reached or not are not important. As a result, there comes salesman like
Tom DVideo. In order to change the situation, the incentive measures should be used
gradually. For example, set the basic standard and carry out the Bonus Policy, which
means the more you sell, the more money you will get. Whats more, sales is a special
job in which a competitive mechanism is beneficial. Therefore, Henry can recruit
another two salesmen in the first year, and make a policy that who make the least
sales will be eliminated from the company during a year. And a new salesmen will be
recruited the next year and then followed by this cycle. And one point that should be
cautious is that each quarter should have a conference where Henry should give the
five people a comparison and encourage them at the same time.
The second part is about the management of the company or the the whole
department. As can be seen in the part of situation analysis, a lot of evaluations and
researches based on the data analysis should be done well. So, a group would better
be established to do this job particularly. Of course, it should be reported to the boss
of the company, and if this idea is approved, Henry can apply for recruiting group
members and lead them. Another way is to persuade the boss the set a new department
which is parallel to the sales department and hire the professional people to manage it,
which can enhance the efficiency and reduce the pressure of Henry as well. Moreover,
according to the market, a lot of changes can be made. For instance, enlarge the scale
of the company to form the brand effect and actions of cooperation or merger can be
taken if the market is not very good. In additon, new products or service can be put
into practice, such as recycling sencond hand equipment, importing foreign advanced
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equipment, etc. Besides, developing new markets is also an available strategy. Henry
can hire salespeople from other countries, because communicating with foreigners is a
big challenge because of the difference in various cultures, so local salespeople have a
huge advantage. Last but not least, considering the special characteristics of safety
equipment and the special users of that, Henry can select the users, no matter
distributor of individual, who can maximum the profit and then put emphasis on such
customers.
Conclusion
From the case, I think that for a new manager, managing a company or a whole
department is not a simple thing. It requires you to think comprehensively, not only to
manage all the staffs well but also to think of the whole company well, and what
enables one to be qualified as a good manager is not only the ability of dealing with
affairs, but also the personal characteristics, the emotional quotient and the insight of
the market and the future are all of great importance. Only by possessing these
characteristics can a manager lead his team to successful achievement.

References
H.F.(HERB) MACKENZIE, 2008, Sales management in Canada, Page 178-183
Johnston, M.W&Marshall, Greg, W,2013, Sales Force Managemen

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