Question

Problem Solving Exercise #4 Instructions

Read the following descriptions of Quest Specialty Travel and its problem.

Company description: Quest Specialty Travel is a tour company in San Diego, California, that organizes adventure, cultural, and educational tours. Quest travelers enjoy activities ranging from hiking to hang-gliding while becoming familiar with the culture of the region—the food, the people, and the history.

Quest sponsors tours to five regions of the world: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania (including Australia and New Zealand). Customers are usually traveling for pleasure, though Quest occasionally organizes business trips.

Problem: Typically, the late spring and summer months are the most popular times for personal travel. For the last five years, the top sales months have been April-August. This year, however, sales did not increase during these months. For the first time in five years, Quest annual sales are declining—they now expect to make less this year than last year.

1. Identify the problem.  Explain.

2. What data did you use to help you with the problem.

3. What data or information did you use to observe current conditions?

4. Provide a statement on how you would summarize this problem.  

Answer 1

1. Identify the problem.  Explain.

Agenda- To find the reasons for “No sales growth for the current year compared to the previous five year”.

The Reasons-

Old-School Selling Techniques

In the present market, there are still some old school techniques which work, but not efficient as the most recent techniques. The company would have been still using the sales people to make cold call leads or even go door to door for the sales activities, this is without a doubt to be considered as one of the top potential reasons for the sales drop at your company. These models of sales techniques just do not work anymore.

Ignoring the Competitors

The company quest’s competitors in the market could have potentially have come out with a new innovative marketing strategy campaign or even a top-of-the-line technique that is highly unmatched by the competitors, and this would be the reason for Quest Specialty to struggle with the recent sales activities.The competitors might have been concentrating on new locations or places which are not covered by anyone in that geographical location. Quest Specialties will have to keep their competitors on their radar at all times, so that they can always react effectively.

2. What data did you use to help you with the problem?

There are four main key metrics to be used for any sales analysis. The same has been used to analyze this case too.

· Sales growth- Over year to date

· Sales target - Assigned over the past five years

· Opportunities - How well they have been used over the past 5 years

· Competitor Analysis- Comparing the strengths and weaknesses of the competitors.

3. What data or information did you use to observe current conditions?

Its more important in the sales analysis to concentrate on the current conditions of the sales. In this case, I have considered the following key factors which would give a clear picture of the current condition of the company’s performance

· Sales to date graphs- By comparing the previous year’s reports

· Product Performance- Comparing the different tour packages and their performances

· Lead conversion Rate. - Conversion analytics will allow the sales team to continuously optimize the sales performance in order to steadily improve the customer satisfaction rate.

4. Provide a statement on how you would summarize this problem.  

It is always not just enough to view the company’s sales trends for the company’s overall business. Quest Specialties will have to narrow it down to the specific locations, sales channels and also product lines. This rough view is considered more important when trying to understand the sales performance as a whole.

In the analysis we will have to consider what is mainly contributing the most to your success or even narrow down to the causes of the failure reasons. If the company will be able to drill-down to a very precise levels would make sure that Quest Specialty Tours will understand all the aspect of the company’s performance.

Thanks & Goodluck!!

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