Question

I choose a product as Toyota cars

1) Identify the trends and changes that are occurring in the Canadian external environment that impact your chosen product’s Canadian marketing plan. Specifically, consider trends and changes in the areas of (CREST) Technology, Regulatory, Economics, Demographics, and Socio-Cultural happenings in this marketplace. Research and analyze at least 3 Canadian CREST factors. Explain for each of the factors you have selected the positive or negative implications the environmental factor could have on your chosen product’s marketing plan.Also provide recommendations (action plans) as to what you plan to do to alter your current marketing plan to address this implication, again based on the factors you selected. How may this trend impact your Product, Price, Promotion or Place strategy…and Why?

Answer 1

Introduction to CREST Technology in the Canadian Market place:

The model's factors will vary in importance to a given company based on its industry and the goods it produces. For example, consumer and B2B companies tend to be more affected by the social factors, while a global defense contractor would tend to be more affected by political factors. Additionally, factors that are more likely to change in the future or more relevant to a given company will carry greater importance. For example, a company which has borrowed heavily will need to focus more on the economic factors (especially interest rates).

Furthermore, conglomerate companies who produce a wide range of products (such as Sony, Disney, or BP) may find it more useful to analyze one department of its company at a time with the CREST model, thus focusing on the specific factors relevant to that one department. A company may also wish to divide factors into geographical relevance, such as local, national, and global.

The basic CREST analysis in Macroeconomic theory includes four factors:

• Political factors relate to how the government intervenes in the economy. Specifically, political factors have areas including tax policy, labour law, environmental law, trade restrictions, tariffs, and political stability. Political factors may also include goods and services which the government aims to provide or be provided (merit goods) and those that the government does not want to be provided (demerit goods or merit bads). Furthermore, governments have a high impact on the health, education, and infrastructure of a nation.
• Economic factors include economic growth, exchange rates, inflation rate, and interest rates. These factors greatly affect how businesses operate and make decisions. For example, interest rates affect a firm's cost of capital and therefore to what extent a business grows and expands. Exchange rates can affect the costs of exporting goods and the supply and price of imported goods in an economy.
• Social factors include the cultural aspects and health consciousness, population growth rate, age distribution, career attitudes and emphasis on safety. High trends in social factors affect the demand for a company's products and how that company operates. For example, the ageing population may imply a smaller and less-willing workforce (thus increasing the cost of labour). Furthermore, companies may change various management strategies to adapt to social trends caused from this (such as recruiting older workers).
• Technological factors include technological aspects like R&D activity, automation, technology incentives and the rate of technological change. These can determine barriers to entry, minimum efficient production level and influence the outsourcing decisions. Furthermore, technological shifts would affect costs, quality, and lead to innovation.

Expanding the analysis it further subdivides into:

• Legal factors include discrimination law, consumer law, antitrust law, employment law, and health and safety law. These factors can affect how a company operates, its costs, and the demand for its products.
• Environmental factors include ecological and environmental aspects such as weather, climate, and climate change, which may especially affect industries such as tourism, farming, and insurance. Furthermore, growing awareness of the potential impacts of climate change is affecting how companies operate and the products they offer, both creating new markets and diminishing or destroying existing ones.

Other factors for the various offshoots of this Technology include:

• Demographic factors include gender, age, ethnicity, knowledge of languages, disabilities, mobility, home ownership, employment status, religious belief or practice, culture and tradition, living standards and income level.
• Regulatory factors include acts of parliament and associated regulations, international and national standards, local government by-laws, and mechanisms to monitor and ensure compliance with these.

More factors of Power Matrix Module of CREST Include:

• Inter-cultural factors considers collaboration in a global setting.
• Other specialized factors discussed in chapter 10 of the SPELIT Power Matrix include the Ethical, Educational, Physical, Religious, and Security environments. The security environment may include either personal, company, or national security.
• Other business-related factors that might be considered in an environmental analysis include Competition, Demographics, Ecological, Geographical, Historical, Organizational, and Temporal (schedule).

Positive Implications

• Create wealth and jobs around the world. Inward investment by multinationals creates much needed foreign currency for developing economies. They also create jobs and help raise expectations of what is possible.
• Their size and scale of operation enable them to benefit from economies of scale enabling lower average costs and prices for consumers. This is particularly important in industries with very high fixed costs, such as car manufacture and airlines.
• Large profits can be used for research & development. For example, oil exploration is costly and risky; this could only be undertaken by a large firm with significant profit and resources. It is similar for drug manufacturers who need to take risks in developing new drugs.
• Ensure minimum standards. The success of multinationals is often because consumers like to buy goods and services where they can rely on minimum standards. i.e. if you visit any country you know that the Starbucks coffee shop will give something you are fairly familiar with. It may not be the best coffee in the district, but it won’t be the worst. People like the security of knowing what to expect.
• Products which attain global dominance have a universal appeal. McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Apple have attained their market share due to meeting consumer preferences.
• Foreign investments. Multinationals engage in Foreign direct investment. This helps create capital flows to poorer/developing economies. It also creates jobs. Although wages may be low by the standards of the developed world – they are better jobs than alternatives and gradually help to raise wages in the developing world.
• Outsourcing of production by multinationals – enables lower prices; this increases disposable incomes of households in the developed world and enables them to buy more goods and services – creating new sources of employment to offset the lost jobs from outsourcing manufacturing jobs.

Criticisms or Negative Implication

• Companies are often interested in profit at the expense of the consumer. Multinational companies often have monopoly power which enables them to make an excess profit. For example, Shell made profits of £14bn last year.
• Tax avoidance. Many multinationals set up companies in countries with the lowest tax rate. They funnel profit through the countries with the lowest corporation tax rates – e.g. Bermuda, Ireland, Luxemburg. For example: in 2011, Google had £2.5bn of UK sales, but only paid £3.4 million UK tax. A tax rate of 00.1% despite having a global-wide profit margin of 33%. (tax avoiding companies) This means the multinationals are ‘free-riding on smaller companies who cannot attain the same creative tax accounts.
• Cash reserves – Apple has cash reserves of $216bn, 93% of which is overseas. This represents deadweight welfare loss. It is not being used for investment
• Their market dominance makes it difficult for local small firms to thrive. For example, it is argued that big supermarkets are squeezing the margins of local corner shops leading to less diversity.
• In developing economies, big multinationals can use their economies of scale to push local firms out of business.
• In the pursuit of profit, multinational companies often contribute to pollution and use of non-renewable resources which is putting the environment under threat. For example, some MNCs have been criticised of outsourcing pollution and environmental degradation to developing economies where pollution standards are lower.
• ‘Sweat-shop labour’ MNCs have been criticised for using ‘slave labour’ – workers who are paid a pittance by Western standards.
• Outsourcing to cheaper labour-cost economies has caused loss of jobs in the developed world. This is an issue in the US where many multinationals have outsourced production around the world.

Evaluation

• Some criticisms of MNCs may be due to other issues. For example, the fact MNCs pollute is perhaps a failure of government regulation. Also, small firms can pollute just as much.
• MNCs may pay low wages by western standards but, this is arguably better than the alternatives of not having a job at all. Also, some multinationals have responded to concerns over standards of working conditions and have sought to improve them.

THE PRICING STRATEGY

Price optimization is one of the key factors in every business operation as it can raise prices whilst improving sales volumes at the same time. Savvy pricing managers will implement it and focus on building their business to cater to the most profitable customer. However, that sounds easier in theory than it is in practice as numerous companies utilize simple pricing policies without identifying important market indicators like the products that are most profitable and customer demands, among others.

Therefore, the decision-making processes are based on the lack of knowledgeable information which leads, in most cases, to bad pricing policies that don’t perform nearly as well as they ideally could and should. Pricing policy has a direct impact on total business revenue and as such, must be carefully thought out. There are best practices companies use to determine and develop their pricing policy. In this article, we’ll show you some of those practices and how they affect sales.

Cost-based pricing policy

Cost-based pricing is determined by adding a fixed profit percentage to the overall cost of a product or service. The end results is a selling price that aims to cover all the costs during production or delivery stage and attain a certain level of profit.

The policy is simple and fast to implement as it doesn’t require much market and competition research. That is why cost-oriented pricing is also extremely popular because it uses information managers can obtain very easy. In addition, the company can easily present a case for defending its prices as they cover the costs for the most part.

Nevertheless, the main drawback of a cost-based pricing policy is its ineffectiveness. Determining costs before pricing is not suited for today’s markets as costs vary depending on volume. In turn, as the price forming is driven solely by costs, this significantly reduces profitability because these prices don’t reflect the true value of the market. In fact, they are closer to being completely opposite to strategic prices as there is no consideration of market conditions.

Joel Dean, professor of business economics at Columbia University, says that “cost is usually the crucial estimate in appraising competitors’ capabilities”, which is what a cost-based pricing policy completely ignores. It also ignores the role of customers, which are two main reason why it usually affects sales in a bad way as it doesn’t take into account these vital factors in order to determine what specific products it wants to manufacture, as well as the quantity of it.

Value-based pricing policy

In this case, the optimal price is a combination of customer’s perception of the value of offered goods and production costs. Companies that use this approach from their prices based on market research such as customer demands, expectations and preferences, financial resources and competition.

Value-based pricing increases profitability by creating customer satisfaction through product’s value attributes. This approach emphasizes the value of your goods and presents the motivation for customers to pay more as they are modeled on what customers want. Also, managers must perform extensive market research and compare what their company is offering with those of their competitors, in order to pinpoint their value, advantages, and disadvantages. That way, they can get a clear picture of what sells on the market and what doesn’t.

Demand-based pricing policy

Similar to value pricing, there is no immediate concern regarding costs. The focus of demand-based pricing is on customer behavior and the quality and attributes of own goods, thus satisfying the level of demand. The prices are formed by accounting both the cost estimates at different sales levels and projected revenues from sales associated with estimated prices. The vital part of the process is accurately

The vital part of the process is accurately determining demand that is the amount of products or services that the company can sell so that the prices can be formed. Thus, a manager needs the assistance of a market expert, preferably a comprehensive software suite with high levels of automation, to estimate increases or decreases in demand. In turn, this will result in prices that will help a business stay ahead of its competition because they will have a comprehensive summary of the ongoing demand trends and thus, produce adequate quantity and quality of products.

Competition-based pricing policy

Finally, we have a policy that forms prices by looking what others are charging. After identifying competition, a company first assesses its own goods and then prices them lower, higher or equal to the competition.

As is the case with cost-based pricing, this policy can be set up quickly as it doesn’t include thorough market data, meaning it’s not as accurate as demand pricing. Still, it enables a business to select different pricing strategies to achieve its goals. Because it can set a higher, lower or on par price compared to its competition, a company can quickly attract and influence customer perceptions of their products because they already have a pre-established customer base.

As an example, company A can set its prices above those of its competitors, which could suggest to customers that its products feature higher levels of quality. This can be seen on an example of Harley-Davidson, who uses much of the same parts suppliers as other big bike companies like, Kawasaki, Yamaha, and Honda. However, because they set their prices above those of the competition, their above-the-market pricing, along with customer loyalty and a certain sense of mystique, signals quality to customers and makes it easier for them to opt for the premium they pay for.

This can be seen on an example of Harley-Davidson, who uses much of the same parts suppliers as other big bike companies like, Kawasaki, Yamaha, and Honda. However, because they set their prices above those of the competition, their above-the-market pricing, along with customer loyalty and a certain sense of mystique, signals quality to customers and makes it easier for them to opt for the premium they pay for.

Effect on sales

Every pricing analyst and expert knows that profit is optimized for every product when the price reflects the customer’s readiness to pay. As Warren Buffet once said:

“Price is what you pay, value is what you get”

meaning business need to look from the customer’s perspective. Hence, pricing must be constantly evaluated based on the customer return and feedback. That is why cost-based pricing policy is a bad fit as it produces little customer return, hence lower sales. The other three pricing policies all have their advantages with one joint factor – market research. Each policy demands a thorough understanding of market trends, competition, customer demand, and needs, as well as production operations for minimizing costs and increasing profit.

This can be a time-consuming and expensive process, which is why the best option here is to utilize an expert pricing software that can provide valuable insights and help make an informed decision. As this requires a large survey of market conditions, an ideal option would be a highly automated software that offers comprehensive solutions for your pricing needs. It could also provide you with an analysis of how competition reacts to your pricing on a regular basis. The key is to make a customer-appealing pricing policy that will balance competitive pricing with satisfactory profit margins by focusing on the value the company delivers to its customer.

THE PRODUCT STRATEGY

Beyond individual-product strategy is platform strategy, where the focus is on multiple products. There are two very different types of platforms: digital platforms in technology, and physical platforms in other fields.

A digital platform is an ecosystem designed to enable different groups to co-create value through “plug-and-play” capabilities. The technology infrastructure of the platform touches customers and developers beyond the firm's boundaries. LinkedIn, Facebook, Google and Amazon—in fact most technology businesses—have platform-based business models.

Physical platforms in other industries refer to product family or product portfolio platforms intended to reduce manufacturing and development costs for new products. In this case a platform is a common architecture, collection of assets, component designs, subsystems, or other elements shared by several products. Given that the components and subsystems have already been debugged and tested, the resulting products should have higher quality. Since platform development occurs less frequently than product development, major platform decisions do not need to be made as often. This has the potential to foster lean product development. However, there are downsides: high upfront costs, risk of platform obsolescence, risk of platform recall affecting numerous products, and potential duplication of effort

THE PROMOTION STRATEGY

• assessment of investable funds
• selecting business area
• choice of product
• determining optimum output
• sales promotion

Almost any business decision can be analyzed with managerial economics techniques, but it is most commonly applied to:

• Risk analysis – various models are used to quantify risk and asymmetric information and to employ them in decision rules to manage risk.^[6]
• Production analysis – microeconomic techniques are used to analyze production efficiency, optimum factor allocation, costs, economies of scale and to estimate the firm's cost function.
• Pricing analysis – microeconomic techniques are used to analyze various pricing decisions including transfer pricing, joint product pricing, price discrimination, price elasticity estimations, and choosing the optimum pricing method.
• Capital budgeting – investment theory is used to examine a firm's capital purchasing decisions.^[7]

CONCLUSION

To understand why that’s so difficult, we combed the academic literature, conducted numerous one-on-one interviews with senior sales leaders, and led several studies of our own. We found that successful companies recognize that the sales process for new products requires different allocations of time and must overcome different objections and barriers by comparison with the traditional approach. We also found that people who excel at selling new products have traits and behaviors different from those of people who successfully sell existing product lines—and that the best companies develop organizations and cultures to support salespeople in rising to the challenge.

A New Technology in Sales

To better understand what makes the sales process for new products different, we surveyed 500 salespeople at B2B companies across a wide variety of industries, from technology to financial services to industrial products. We wanted to understand how they spend their time during the process and how the challenges they face vary as it unfolds.

Demands on time.

We found that selling new products requires greater intensity and consumes much more attention. On average, salespeople spend 35% more time meeting with customers throughout the sales cycle than they do when selling established goods and services. Since much of that time is spent educating customers on how the product will change their current business practices, these meetings are typically conducted in person, with 32% more time spent in face-to-face meetings. And because committing to a completely new product requires broader consensus within a targeted company, salespeople spend 30% more time meeting with customers’ cross-functional teams. Given that time is a salesperson’s most precious resource, that’s a costly investment.

Barriers to closing.

We asked people to report when they met resistance and what their biggest challenges were in each of the six stages common to most sales processes: (1) sales inquiry, when the initial call is made; (2) needs recognition, when the salesperson helps the customer better understand his or her needs; (3) evaluation, when the customer begins to consider various products; (4) solution development, when the customer sits down with a limited set of suppliers and works out potential solutions; (5) decision, when the customer decides whether or not to buy; and (6) after-sale maintenance, which takes place when the product is being used.

One important finding is that resistance to the sale typically occurs later in the process for new innovations than for established products. That’s because customers are often curious about new products, so more of them will say yes to an initial meeting. One buyer who rarely accepts appointments with sales reps commented, “I will always listen if someone brings me a new idea. I want to make sure we are staying current with the best of what is being done in our industry.” But as the process continues, customers become more hesitant to abandon the status quo.

The challenges faced in the sales process change over time. In the first two stages, the biggest barrier is that customers think they have only limited information about the product because the salesperson is not revealing something important about it. Similarly, in the next stage, evaluation, they often worry that they still don’t fully understand the product.

A big shift occurs in the solution-development stage. At this point customers turn their attention to how their business practices would change if they decided to adopt the product. The two biggest issues are: Customers don’t like open-ended situations, which create uncertainty and raise doubt, and they worry that their way of doing business will get disrupted. Also, the buying unit typically expands at this point, and some of those just joining the process wonder, What will happen to me? Similar concerns are raised in the decision stage, as customers continue to focus on risk and how people in the organization will be affected, worry that they will regret a decision to buy, and wonder whether they can accurately predict their switching costs.

From the sales organization’s perspective, this pattern is problematic and difficult to overcome. Because people with new products to sell can book lots of initial meetings, they feel a sense of accomplishment: They are getting in front of customers and creating relationships with prospects who previously might not have taken their calls. The initial customer enthusiasm is seductive and persuades the salesperson that his or her time is being put to good use. But as the process unfolds, it becomes clear that many of those curiosity-driven meetings were never real opportunities, leaving the salespeople with little to show for their efforts.

The training needed.

In general, organizations don’t do enough to help salespeople navigate this complex process. Our research suggests that what usually passes for training when a product is launched is merely a product showcase in disguise; the main challenges that will arise during the sales cycle aren’t addressed. At the launch meeting, product development teams typically devote too much attention to the product’s bells and whistles, believing that their primary goal is to get the salespeople excited enough about the innovation to take it to all their customers. Early in the cycle, not only must the salesperson provide the right product information, but customers must feel they have the right information. That involves establishing trust and demonstrating a deep understanding of the customer’s challenges. Later in the cycle, the salesperson must help the customer understand, assess, and manage the risks and the people issues associated with change. Too few companies help salespeople learn to do this.

Sales teams would be better off spending their time developing a psychological profile of the ideal customer. What traits suggest that a prospect might be willing to adopt a new way of doing business? What behavioral clues signal that he or she is serious about making a purchase rather than simply learning about a new technology? Does the prospect’s organizational culture support learning and change? For prospects who best fit the profile, the sales team should map out all the steps that will need to be taken—and all the people who will need to be met. This exercise is creative in nature, because the goal is to envision what should be new and different in the sales process. The team should ask, “Will the buyer need to create new evaluation criteria before a sale can be made? Which groups in the buying organization stand to lose power, and how might they be mollified? Do we know everyone who will be affected by the change? If not, how can we develop the network we need?”

Training when a product is launched can be merely a product showcase in disguise.

Although the sales team won’t have all the information required to get this perfectly right the first time around, working through the exercise will help avoid major stumbling blocks and focus on finding the right types of customers.

What Makes for Successful Salespeople?

To learn what traits and competencies characterize people who thrive selling new products, we began by analyzing the characteristics of just over 2,500 salespeople from five leading companies in industries including digital media, pharmaceuticals, and industrial products and services.

They take the long view.

Our first observation: The most successful salespeople manage their time more deliberately than other salespeople do. On average, they divert their attention from existing products and services and use less time on administrative work in order to spend 4.5 more hours a week selling innovations. They invest more time up front identifying good prospects, ruthlessly targeting a few customers who are likely to adopt rather than spreading their attention over many accounts. We also found that a focus on long-term outcomes with customers is closely associated with success. One customer described a favorite rep this way: “His philosophy was that if he could help us do better, then we would ultimately spend more money with his company, and in the long run we would all do well.”

They have different concerns.

Successful salespeople perceive barriers very different from those that others see. They are concerned about people and process issues at the buying organization and about whether the sale will stall if the buyer lacks the evaluation criteria to make a purchase. They worry that the customer will see the switching costs as being too high, or that too many people will be heavily invested in the status quo. In contrast, other salespeople focus on their product knowledge, worrying that they lack descriptive information or that the information they’ve received is unclear.

They exhibit more resolve.

Although grit matters in most sales, it is even more important when selling new products. Setbacks often occur late in the process, causing salespeople to feel that the rug has been pulled out from under them. As one senior sales leader told us, “Salespeople will never turn down the opportunity to sell new products. They view them as another arrow in their quiver and immediately see them as a key to their success. But whether they put sustained effort into selling them is another matter.” Those with a long-term orientation focus on the future payoff and develop coping strategies to deal with the obstacles they encounter along the way.

They have a learning mindset.

Goal orientation also plays a role in success at selling new products. Some salespeople have a learning orientation—a desire to improve their abilities and a need to master difficult tasks. These individuals greatly value personal growth. Others have a performance orientation, craving praise for superior work or dreading poor evaluations. A recent study by Annie Chen of Westminster Business School and colleagues looked at how differences in goal orientation affected salespeople’s belief in their abilities and their motivation to sell new products. They found that those with a strong learning orientation were confident and eager to meet the challenge. Salespeople with a performance orientation fell into two camps: Those who framed the challenge as an opportunity for praise felt the same way that people with a learning orientation did, but those who dreaded poor evaluations worried they would fail and consequently were less likely to put effort into selling the product.

We looked at how goal orientation affects sales over time at one of the five companies in our study and found that performance suffers initially, when a product is launched, regardless of which orientation a salesperson has. Reps with a learning orientation spend more time acquiring new sources of information and experimenting with different strategies and less time selling; their performance tends to suffer more at first than that of performance-oriented salespeople. In effect, they are making a conscious trade-off—and the period of active learning yields a long-term payoff. Once they understand the market and have found effective strategies, their performance eventually stabilizes at a higher level than that of their performance-oriented peers. For managers this demonstrates that giving salespeople time to experiment and learn about the market will pay off in the long run, but you need the courage to weather an early performance dip.

They are knowledgeable, customer focused, and adaptable.

We identified several other characteristics associated with success in selling new products. Salespeople need both product knowledge and market knowledge—an understanding of market trends and customer buying patterns. Given the changes that will take place in the customer’s business if the offering is adopted, they need customer focus—a predisposition to meet customer needs above and beyond what is required. And the pace of change means they need adaptability to adjust their internal processes and style quickly according to feedback from the team, other managers, and market influences.

To examine whether all salespeople—the more and the less successful ones—recognize whether they have the needed characteristics, we compared how they and their customers rated their abilities on the above dimensions. The pattern was striking: Confident in their own abilities, most salespeople gave themselves high ratings across the board. Customers, however, gave them high ratings on product knowledge only—on most dimensions their evaluations were only about a third as high as the salespeople’s own, and less than a tenth as high on adaptability. The salespeople thought they were adjusting quite well to outside influences, but customers saw them as stuck in their ways. It is clear from this analysis that sales organizations need to provide guidance and support for their team members’ improvement.

A Culture That Supports New-Product Sales

Frontline sales managers play a central role in executing organic growth strategies, because they deal with the toughest people decisions on a day-to-day basis. During the product launch phase they help existing salespeople learn new behaviors and keep up morale when performance dips. If the company is building a sales force from scratch to support a new product, these managers are responsible for hiring people with the appropriate skills and abilities. If the company is launching a new growth strategy, they must translate it into actions that will work in the field—a challenging job, because they need to make decisions without knowing exactly what will work.

We found that the best companies use competency assessment and training programs to help frontline sales managers effectively meet those challenges. Competency assessments identify individual salespeople’s strengths and weaknesses by measuring traits and skills; their sophistication varies widely across companies. Many organizations don’t map and assess competencies at all—or if they do, it’s in a general way, not with an eye to selling new products. Companies may develop group training programs to address deficiencies in the sales force, but the main focus of such programs is to help people take stock of their own abilities.

Assess skills systematically.

The best companies take this a step further by customizing training to meet individual needs and tying assessments to performance. Metrics such as new-product sales productivity and new-product share of wallet are used to discern who is excelling in the marketplace. Managers use the assessments to guide one-on-one coaching sessions about specific behaviors that will lead to higher performance and to develop focused learning plans. During the launch phase of a new product, the companies don’t know exactly what skills will be needed for success, so they make an educated guess. They revisit their competency maps as it becomes clear who is thriving in the market and revise their training programs to overcome deficiencies. They create a culture in which salespeople aspire to grow.

The training required in these programs tends to be broad, encompassing both skill building and personal growth, because new products test salespeople’s self-confidence. For example, a media company told us that its salespeople were becoming so overwhelmed by the pace of change in the digital market that they could not engage with customers. They could ask the right questions to assess customer needs and had adequate product knowledge, but they couldn’t bring themselves to discuss solutions. A constant stream of digital disruptions shook their confidence in their understanding of the market, and they did not want to appear ignorant to their customers.

Train for knowledge and resilience.

The media company took a two-pronged approach to this problem. To address knowledge concerns, it created a market awareness training program. After that ended, it provided regular updates on trends in digital media so that salespeople could help their customers make sense of where the market was moving. But more important, it provided its people with coping mechanisms to make them more comfortable with the pace of change. The emotional barriers to making a sale were bigger than the knowledge barriers. One senior manager described the challenge this way: “Our salespeople could assess the customer’s needs and offer appropriate solutions. But the disruption in the digital market was so overwhelming that they did not feel clear about what they were supposed to do. They were stuck in place until we could get them over this hurdle. To help them cope, we asked them to reflect on what their role was and was not. We found that it was helpful for them to write down their thoughts in a journal. We needed them to recognize that they did not have to be an expert in all things.”