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Case Background
Cathy Ridley, the VP of marketing at Quick & Reilly was looking for lead
tracking and fulfillment system to track 100 offices, 500 brokers and 1
million customers. This is when she came across Greg Carman and started
considering Siebel Systems.
Quick and Reilly used a DOS based lead tracking and fulfillment system
which was turning out to be time consuming and ineffective –
- The employees tried to cope up with the slow and inefficient system
and at times avoided making entry into the system by scribbling leads
on a paper.
- Customer acquisition rates were going down
- IT department later announced the crash of the system by the year
2000 due to Y2K bug
Hence Ridley was looking for an in-house solution or probably off the shelf
solution that can solve their lead tracking and fulfillment problem.
How should Carman respond to the invitation to tell the Quick and
Reilly executives what he thought of Oracle? What feature of this
particular interaction influence your opinion? Would your opinion of
the right response change if the circumstances were different?
His response was appropriate as
- He has not introduced the client to his product; hence comparing it
already with a competitor known to customer might look like
boasting about Siebel systems.
- He suggested Cathy to have a look at Oracle’s product. This indicates
to the customer that he is not just trying to sell his product instead
helping customer to find the right solution for their problem.
- He moved them over to the demo section, and started demonstrating
the capabilities of the Siebel systems.
However he could have tried to
- Understand what is the problem Cathy is facing with their existing
product and what other problems they want their new solution to
solve
- Introduce Cathy with the Siebel Product literature available with him
– including customer references, Gartner research data.
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Yes, I think he should ask them about their budget and the number of users of
the system. This information is pre-requisite for him before he talks to
influential executives in Quick and Reilly firm and tries to close the deal.
Suppressing the curiosity might result in prospect not bringing up that point
at all in the whole conversation, and then it would be a lost deal for Carman.
Carman can use this information while talking to Q&R executives
- To propose the right timeframe to implement the solution
- To propose the cost & benefits of the solution to the customer
- And more …
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appointment will give him the time to brief the executive about the
prospect and also give time to the executive to prepare for the
meeting)
His objective in this call was to identify where Cathy and his company was a
right prospect for them or not.
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