Question

CASE STUDY 8.1: Building Motivation

Construction Products Inc. sells construction products to various retail and wholesale markets across the United States. Its only office is in Illinois, and so it sends sales representatives on the road to different territories to obtain orders and develop relationships with retailers. You are the newest sales representative and have been assigned to the Southeast territory. A typical workday for a sales rep involves stopping at numerous stores and talking with general managers while visiting the retail stores to view how products are marketed and displayed. On these visits, sales reps try to increase wholesale orders by improving the sales of Construction Products. Also, they complete market reports that are used by the Illinois main office for future forecasting of product demand. Most territories are responsible for about 50 retail stores and about a dozen wholesale accounts. Sales reps are expected to spend a lot of time in the stores focusing on optimizing product location within the store, training employees, and educating customers about the benefits of the company’s products. For example, a sales rep typically tries to get larger space in the store for plywood so that more can be sold. Employees and customers need to be educated on the different grades of plywood and how to match them with building projects. This is important since the stores carry competitors’ products in the stores.

After 6 months on the job, your boss has tasked you with increasing sales in your territory by 20%. You plan to meet this goal by explaining the benefits of your product and why it should be the product of choice. During store visits, you socialize with store employees but realize quickly that getting everyone on the same page is not going to be as easy as anticipated. You learn that most employees don’t really care if the customer gets the best material for their project. They get their paycheck regardless of how much of your products are sold. They listen politely but are not enthusiastic about your ideas. Among the 50 retail stores that you are assigned to, there are seven that agree to help you with increasing sales in their store. You plan to track the sales in these stores compared to the others that did not agree to help. After a month, you see only slight increases in the sales in the seven stores but you are encouraged. Sales are about the same in the other 43 stores. You realize that focusing on the seven stores will not meet your boss’s goal of increasing sales by 20%.

The next month, you try a different approach in your other 43 stores. In those stores, you spend time teaching employees about various building products so they can educate their customers. They seem to grasp an understanding of the benefits your product could bring to the customers compared to competitors’ products. They also seem to understand the applications and how to match your products with customers’ building needs. But when you ask them to teach customers what you had shown them, you were met with looks of confusion and aggravation. Although a bit reluctant, they agree to give it a try.

Checking the weekly sales figures over the next month, you notice that there has been little improvement in the sales of your product at these 43 stores. You ask your boss for advice, and he suggests that you speak with the manager of one of the retail stores to gain an understanding for the lack of motivation. You show him a printout of the sales numbers and how much income your products bring to the store as well as ask for his help getting employees on board with promoting the products. Since the store manager’s main concern is revenue for the store, he quickly agreed and offered his full support.

The store manager calls a meeting where he, the store employees, and you discussed techniques for product presentation and how employees can effectively pitch the product to customers. You left feeling confident that the employees would be effective since the goal was reinforced by their boss. However, on the next review, not only had there been no improvement in sales but the employees’ attitudes toward you had drastically declined. They either avoided you or were unfriendly when you tried to speak to them.

You realize you must come up with a completely different plan of attack to be successful and spend the next Monday morning considering your courses of action.

Discussion Questions

1. Relate the motivation techniques described in the case to those covered in this chapter. What have you tried already? What do you think should still be tried?

2. How is it different trying to motivate people who work directly for you compared to those who work for someone else (as in the situation with the store employees in the case)?

3. Explain the role that the retail store manager plays in motivating these retail employees. What can you do to encourage more support from the managers?

4. As a follow-up to this case, you started offering financial incentives (bonuses) to employees that met the desired sales increase. Discuss the pros and cons of using incentives to increase sales.

Answer 1

Ans.-1

In this chapter, we can see many motivation stories which were used by the sales representative to increase sales.

The first techniques are used by the representative was communication and support to increase sales in stores. As we know, the probability always works in every condition or business so that representative got help from seven stores because the manager of stores was thinking same as representative, they also want to increase the demand and number of customers but the main exam was to increase sale on those stores where managers and staff were not supportive.

In the sales sector, incentive plays a crucial role so that representative should offer income sharing to store managers to increase the sale.

Ans. 2

Working with own employees is much different than working with other’s employees because you can control own employees through self-made rules and regulations and you can create self-work environment while when we work with other’s employees we need to follow corporate rules. Other’s employees follow rules and regulations of their work environment and we support and participate in their work culture. It is important to share income with them until they will not work with you while own employees work for mutual interests.

Ans. 3

The role of a retail manager is important to increase the sale because if he or she sees self-growth working with you, he or she will help you to get the support of their employees. As we know, earning is the main objective in any business so if the manager find growth in their earning he or she will be helpful to you.

Ans. 4

During the follow-up, the representative needs to understand the business needs of the stores. Sometimes routine follows up can distract the interests of store managers and their employees so that follow up should be informal and professional because most of us prefer informal or friendly communication rather than formal and professional communication.