Question

As a technical sales engineer, Avery is responsible for selling her company’s integrated circuit test systems. Each of these systems costs approximately one million dollars and Avery’s sales goals are to sell at least ten of these systems per revenue quarter.

These sales expectations are in place because Avery’s company is trying to go public (IPO). In order to do so, they must be profitable for five quarters in a row. Therefore, there is enormous pressure from the company’s investors and board to meet the assigned sales goals.

As the end of the fifth quarter approaches, Avery realizes she is one sale short of reaching her goal. When she approaches her manager to let him know that she will not be meeting her goals, he explains to her a way to get around the problem. He tells her that when he was a sales engineer, he would approach customers who he knew would soon be purchasing a system. He would get the customer to place the order and receive a price discount if they come to the factory, be shown an empty shell of a system that was not yet built, and sign paperwork documenting their acceptance of the unbuilt system as if it was already built. That way the order could count as part of this quarter’s profits, but the customer would not have to pay for the order until the next quarter.

Avery’s manager explains that when he was a salesperson the practice was a common way of meeting sales goals. Additionally, he suggests to Avery that he would look the other way if she were to falsify a customer acceptance report and reminds her that the company will only be able to go public if she meets her sales goal. If she fails to meet her goal, the IPO will be postponed at least a year and so will her IPO profits and the profits of all the other employees and shareholders.

a.       List the main reasons Avery has for going along with her manager and the reasons why she should not.

b. You now need to determine what Avery should do and to justify your judgement. To justify your judgement provide a principle that will make the reasons you side with (from a) more important than the reasons for Avery not doing what you think she she do.

c. Now justify your principle -- Why non-selfish reasons does anyone have for accepting this principle?

Answer 1

A) Avery should go along with her manager and do as he says because her actions that way will be strongly directed towards the interests of her organization as well as the interests of employees which if compromised by not following managers advice will result in loss for organization as well as employees Since her failure to meet her goal, will result in IPO getting postponed for almost a year and and her IPO profits and the profits of all the other employees and shareholders will be compromised, thus she should better go with her managers opinion and strategy.

She should not go with her manager because making customer sign a contract for a product by showing him as if it is ready which actually is not prepared at all will constitute mispresentation and deception which might result in company facing lawsuits. Moreover it is completely unethical or unreasonable to deceive customer by using him for personal interests.

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B) I think Avery should not exploit the customer by deceiving him for order that could count as part of this quarter’s profits for meeting her sales goal. I use the contract law as soon rule which says that any intentional hidden facts , deception or failure of disclosure wil be termed as mispresentation and will be subject to lawsuit.

C) Since customer interests stand a priority for business so this action of Avery is completely against customer interests and prohibited under contract law, it can also hurt the customer loyalty. Moreover if the customer is provided with the notion that product is ready , later the failure to deliver the product in time, might make the customer to suffer losses, increasing risk of facing lawsuits and it also is immoral in part of business conduct thus non selfish reasons should be a ruling here.

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. Thanks dear student.. Hope this helps :)

Good luck :)

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