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Case Study The National Sales Manager

Rama Rao has been promoted to National Sales Manager and must get all regions to meet new quotas. One region, led by Kumar Gaurav, has a more controlling management style that is less responsive to market changes. Rao initially gives Gaurav leeway but as his region's sales decline, Rao must decide whether to accept gradual change or take more drastic action to improve performance.

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Ankit Kale
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804 views3 pages

Case Study The National Sales Manager

Rama Rao has been promoted to National Sales Manager and must get all regions to meet new quotas. One region, led by Kumar Gaurav, has a more controlling management style that is less responsive to market changes. Rao initially gives Gaurav leeway but as his region's sales decline, Rao must decide whether to accept gradual change or take more drastic action to improve performance.

Uploaded by

Ankit Kale
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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CASE STUDY

THE NATIONAL SALES MANAGER


Rama Rao, formerly a Regional Sales Manager of Century Soap Company, has recently
been promoted as National Sales Manager. Pankaj Mohan, Rama Rao's immediate superior, had
told him that when he would join his new job his primary task would be to bring up all four
national sales regions to a set sales quota while pursuing a new strategy of rapidly capitalising on
emerging regional market trends. But, Rao anticipated problems with one regional sales
manager, Kumar Gaurav. Although he liked the man personally, he felt that Gaurav exerted
excessive control over operations in his region and that the result was a lack of initiative on the
part of the district sales managers who reported to Gaurav and the sales people themselves.

While still a regional manager, Rao had often pointed out to Gaurav what he regarded as
the advantages of delegations. He had noted that when a regional manager insists on approving
all key decisions by his or her district managers, and countermanding decisions made without his
explicit consent, his or her subordinates tend to protect themselves by taking no risks and
deferring even minor decisions until they can be cleared by the regional manager. The result,
Rao predicted, would be a less flexible response to market pressures and a reduced share of the
market.

However, Gaurav had not taken these comments seriously; he believed in making sure
that every subordinate knew that he or she was under firm control. ‘I have learned the hard way,’
he liked to say, ‘that if you do not make sure that every salesperson is doing the job right, some
of them won't do their job right’.

At the time of his promotion, Rao resolved to put his biases aside and give Gaurav a fair,
unprejudiced chance. During his visits to Gaurav's region, however, Rao was distressed to find
that many of his fears seemed to be borne out. Salespeople were reluctant to make decisions that
might have improved the market position of the company's products without the approval of their
district manager, who, in turn, was often reluctant to grant that approval without checking with
Gaurav. The result was a conservative and a mostly uniform approach to an increasingly volatile
and segmented market with, at best, sluggish adoption to local circumstances. Thus, Gaurav's
region was falling behind the others in meeting the new sales quotas.

1
Even so, Rao clung to his resolve to keep his preconceived feelings from affecting his
judgment. He felt that as differences in managerial style were to some degree a matter of taste, it
would be unfair to insist that all his managers operate his way. He was also aware of the informal
grapevine between the four regional managers and he feared that if he made an issue over what
was essentially a philosophical difference between him and one of his subordinates, the others
might hear of it and lose some of their respect for him.

At a monthly meeting with Pankaj, Rao confessed that the deviations between forecasted
and actual sales were due almost entirely to the inability of one region-Gaurav's-to keep pace
with the records of the other three. In fact, under the new strategy, sales had even begun to
decline in Gaurav's region. Pankaj said that Rao's initial reluctance to insist on a change in
management style was perhaps understandable, but as more than a year had now passed since
Rao had assumed his new job, his continued inaction could hardly be justified. ‘You should not
have waited until the tide began to run against us in that region’, said Pankaj. He accused Rao of
bending over backward in order to preserve his image of himself as a fair and judicious person.
Pankaj did not, however, specify the action he wanted Rao to take.

Rao then called in Gaurav for a private meeting; Gaurav interpreted the situation entirely
in terms of fortuitous problems-a 'streak of bad luck, as he put it-and the ineptness of a district
manager whom he proposed to fire. Rao noted that the sales deadline was roughly uniform in all
districts of Gaurav's region and that whatever the district manager's faults might be, she could
not be blamed for the region's poor showing. He then asked Gaurav to attempt a sharp and
sustained change of approach, delegating broadly to his district managers and encouraging them
to do likewise. Although, Gaurav was skeptical, he agreed to try.

During the next several weeks, the sales decline was arrested in this region, although
virtually none of the lost market share was recovered. Gaurav went to some lengths to assure
Rao of the extent to which he had delegated decisions. However, he also reported that the policy
was working no better than he thought it would, because the district managers continued to seek
his ‘advice’.

2
At this point, Rao recognised that abrupt changes in the behaviour of the district
managers were most unlikely, especially as they had been selected by Gaurav himsef on the basis
of their compatibility with his management style. Rao's real problem was to decide whether he
could accept at best, a gradual change in the way this region operated or whether he would have
to take more drastic action.

QUESTIONS
1 What are the issues in this case?
2 Contrast Rao's and Gourav's attitudes toward authority and delegation. Which is more
effective?
3 Was Pankaj remiss in not giving Rao specific instructions for dealing with Gaurav? Why or
why not?
4 What should Rao do now?
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