Centroid Computer Corporations: The New Sales Manager Case Study Samples

1. Do you believe Alan is doing a good job in his new sales management position?
Alan’s previous success as a sales manager could be attributed to his hard work, obedience, and the eagerness to learn from his senior managers. However, in his new position as a regional manager, he is subconsciously infringing on his junior sales force work. His closeness with the sales force is a clear manifestation of a transformational leader who aspires to achieve organization goals through emotional intelligence and teamwork development. Delegating two days every month with every sales person helps in identifying personal or work-related issues that could contribute negatively to the overall departmental output ( Hair, Anderson, Mehta andBabin:26)
In sales and marketing, self-confidence by sales persons is a core factor in convincing potential customers to buy the products and services. It is imperative for Alan to oversee the sales person as they deliver presentations without interference. Such a strategy will build their confidence as well as creating a platform for Alan to assess every person’s points of strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise, his actions would demoralize the sales team resulting in poor performance. Further, he should resist the mental perception of underperformance in his absence and provide the team with periodic freedom to operate on their own. The approach will foster sales and marketing strategic innovations among the workers.
2. Describe the functions that Alan should be performing as a sales manager

Providing the Team with necessary resources

As regional manager, his core responsibility is to amass adequate resources needed by the team to steer aggressive marketing and sales output. Some the resources include, audio and virtual presentation equipment, marketing modules, product brochures and refreshments.

Promoting teamwork and motivation

The sales team requires constant motivation and open discussions to assess their performance and suggest possible strategies to improve the current output. Alan has the overall role to organize brainstorming and benchmarking sessions with the team and possible inclusion of executive managers. The approach empowers the team’s morale and renews their objectives. Approximately, Alan should hold two meetings per week and set at most one hour for a personal talk with every employee in order to reinforce their sales strategy and anticipated sales targets.

Analyzing the region's performance based on team capacity, revenue, and region potential

Upon receiving the monthly sales, Alan should lead in regional performance assessment with a key emphasis on the success and weak factors influencing the performance. His job includes drafting the expected sales targets and the accompanying operation expenses against the real output. The performance report should be forwarded to the senior ranking managers to implement the recommendations.

Organizing seminars and training for the team

Seminars and training are essential to the employees in expanding their work-based knowledge. Workers gain sales strategy and communication skills shared by senior managers from rival companies. The benchmarking approach empowers the team for innovation, ethical and moral growth. Monthly meetings especially during weekends could serve the team positively towards career development.
3. Do you believe Alan’s behavior will have a long-term negative effect on those people who have had a problem with his way of supervision?
Yes. The problem will burst in the future, and reduce the region's sales growth if Alan does not change. Continues worker dissatisfaction lowers his motivation and builds individualism rather than collectivism. Sales people deserve more of periodic advice rather than persistent interruption in their duties as exhibited by Alan. Instead, Alan ought to instill the character of servant leadership among the workers where, every person owes a personal liability to his or her neighbor’s actions and the overall regional performance. In addition, Benchmarking sessions is the appropriate platform for Alan to reprimand the lazy teammates and provide appropriate techniques to boost sales output. Web-based technology such as video conferencing could save Alan persistent appearance in fieldwork supervision and instead observe the team’s presentation in the office for evaluation. Conclusively, Alan ranks as a potential sales manager, whose skills could accelerate the company’s growth in computer and software market advantage over their rivals.

Work Cited

Hair, J., R. Anderson, R. Mehta, and B. Babin. "Introduction to sales management and its evolving roles." Building Customer Relationships and Partnerships. Cengage learning Inc, 2009. 26-27. Print.