What is front line personnel?

Sales or service personnel, or other employees who deal directly with customers
and act as a communication medium between them and the firm.

branded distribution channel?

Dear All,

Please read the case on JSW Steel as well as the attached articles and come prepared to discuss the
following (for the 18th session) :

Assignment Questions

1. What are the issues and challenges when a company moves away from a traditional distribution
model through dealers to an organized retailing format (franchising)?

CUTOMERS
 In the earlier stage, Lack of customisation in the products since to make sure the
availability of all the products in the retail outlets, more and more standardised products
were kept in the stores. This could, in turn, disappoint the customer with a high demand
of customised products.
 Bringing customers to the shop.
 generate awareness of the concept among the target audience
 high-end product with many low-cost substitutes available in the market was very difficult
to push through the Shoppes

DEALERS

 Dealers can think that the company is trying to take away the power of dealers by
interfering into their day-to-day selling activities and by demanding highly skilled tasks
from them.

 Ensure dealer’s loyalty and steady, regular and uninterrupted supply of material/ products
to the franchisee dealers. Issue: Designing a sophisticated ordering process for the
Shoppes to ensure a steady supply of material, branding the supply chain, negotiating a
cost- and revenue- sharing model with the dealers and designing the floor layouts and
standardized elements for the Shoppe.

 Extremely expensive for the company to venture into retailing on its own. Cost sharing
model suggested by the company and the franchisee dealers together might not be
accepted by many dealers.

 Training cost of the dealers

 Difficulty in evaluating the performance of the shop dealers.

SALESFORCE
  Sales person - change of roles and responsibilities of the internal sales and marketing
workforce (Personnel in the sales department— who dealt directly with the dealers—
would resist the move. The sales executives’ role was confined to collecting orders from
the dealers, passing them to the production department and following up on payments.
Under the proposed model, they would be asked to spend time at the dealer’s outlets to
co- ordinate sales and promotion activities and generate product enquiries through field
visits.)

2. What are the roles, duties and responsibilities of a salesperson? How critical is the
salesperson in this model?

The sales executives’ role is confined to collecting orders from the dealers, passing them to the
production department and following up on payments.

Under the proposed model,

 they would be asked to spend time at the dealer’s outlets to co- ordinate sales and promotion
activities and generate product enquiries through field visits.
 Moreover, they are the frontline personnel at the Shoppes who deal directly with customers
and act as a communication medium between them and the firm.

 Creating awareness among the customers and targeting prospects is dependent on the
salesperson which is very crucial in this model, especially at the early stage of the model
implementation.

3. Considering that recruitment of sales force was an area of discord between the
franchisee and JSW, what guidelines and recruitment processes would reduce the
extent of the discontent?
 4. a)What training would you suggest for the sales personnel to perform effectively?

b) What can be the evaluation criteria for sales force in this model?

Under the proposed model, they would be asked to spend time at the dealer’s outlets to co-
ordinate sales and promotion activities and generate product enquiries through field visits.

Training on product knowledge

 An employee (Shoppe sales executive trained by JSW) communicated with the crowd
in the local dialect about JSW Steel, its products and advantages. Through this process
the employee educated the crowd concerning the proper usage of steel and shared
with them various installation tips 


 Training on technical products knowlege

The personnel have to be trained on recognition of specifications, installation
procedure, repair, and maintenance and how to give effective demonstrations to
the prospects.

 Training on submitting reports and maintaining records to instil sense

of professionalism and uniformity

 Developing a skill to answer customer queries

 Orientation programs before major promotions are launched

 On the job field trainingTraining to the salespeople on the way to work in

the markets and achieve sales, collect payments and ensure the right kind
of merchandising.

EVALUATION CRITERIA FOR SALES FORCE

5. What is a Balanced Score Card? Can it be used as a criterion to measure
performance to evaluate the dealers, considering that the same would be used to decide
incentives etc?

First, the scorecard brings together, in a single management report, many ofthe
seemingly disparate elements of a company's competitive agenda: becoming customer
oriented, shortening response time, improving quality, emphasizing teamwork, re-
ducing new product launch times, and managing for the long term.

Second, the scorecard guards against suboptimization. By forcing senior managers to

consider all the important operational measures together, the bal- anced scorecard lets
them see whether improvement in o n e area may have been achieved at the expense
of an- other.

Customers' concerns tend to fall into four categories: time, quality, performance and
service, and cost.

goals measures

Responsive supply

Customer partnerships

Quality

Time

Installation support

Usage knowledge support

Customer partnerships
For your information, this case is regularly used at IIM Calcutta and Udaipur. It is translated
into five foreign languages – all because of the Balanced Scorecard concept. We will try
preparing the Balanced Scorecard in class if you come prepared with the concepts.

Regards
vvg