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Campbell and Bailyn
Campbell and Bailyn
Campbell and Bailyn: The Boston Regional Office and Key Accounts Team
After NY City office, Boston office has been best performer out of all. Boston sales group was
often used as forerunner for new product and new management idea.
Before June 2007 there were 5 generalist and four taxable bond specialists in fixed division
group. But since June 2007 Key Accounts Team was introduced for following reasons
1) Profit margins were narrowing due to entry of new competitors and products in the
market
2) Market share was falling due to lack of detailed product expertise
3) Difficulties in recruiting bond salespersons
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Following table shows major changes in organizational structure due to introduction of KAT
Previous system
Under the previous system, the salesperson's bonus was almost solely based on annual sales
volume and the regional sales manager's own assessment of the salesperson's teamwork and
professionalism.
New System
Under the new system, using a new web-based system on C&B's Intranet, Winston distributed
a confidential questionnaire to gather feedback on each salesperson from traders, product
managers, and researchers in New York. The factors weighed in these peer assessments were
"softer" measures than sales and profit, such as the regional salesperson's responsiveness to
the needs of the traders in New York, level of motivation in learning about new and more
profitable products, and use of research data to accelerate sales. At the end of the process,
the regional manager combined this input with his or her own observations and the
salesperson's total achieved sales volume in order to recommend a final annual compensation
level to the division's managers.
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Problem statement
2. Customer dissatisfaction
a. New structure compels customers to interact with many salespeople rather
than one individual
b. Trading became more tedious and complicated for clients
c. Personal connection between client and generalist is lost
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• Customer Retention
• Cost and Time Savings
Because the areas of concern in the case include confusion among employees about the
bonus gained and their job opportunities due to the advent of the Key Accounts Team and
New Performance Management System, it would be justified to give employee satisfaction
the highest weight of 55 percent. Nonetheless, prior to any changes introduced, awareness
of the business impact is also necessary. As a consequence, customer retention is assigned a
weight of 30%. Eventually, Cost & Time Savings is granted a 15% weight.
Evaluation
Alternatives
Roll back to the
Recruit new Allow each member to
previous Reinforce the new
specialists instead of specialise in more than
Criteria Weights structure before performance
forcing generalists to one kind of product
KAT was system and KAT
become specialists offering
implemented
Employee
55% 0 1 -1 1
Satisfaction
Customer
30% -1 1 0 1
Retention
Cost and Time
15% 0 -1 -1 0
Savings
Weighted Average -0.3 0.7 -0.7 0.85
The table above shows the different weighted alternatives against the Parameters in the
previous section. To decide the choices, it would be beneficial to assign different weights to
the three parameters.
The aim is to execute the plan without compromising with the enterprise. Employee
satisfaction is an important parameter as business is oriented towards people. Recruiting new
specialists will have a positive effect on these parameters rather than pushing the existing
generalists.
Forming a group where a participant works in more than one field will also increase the
morale of workers as this will never restrict the employee’s career choice.
But continuing current structure may down the morale of generalists who will be converted
to specialists.
Training people to specialize in more than one field would improve the experience advice
offered in case of customer retention, and it will also increasing the monotony of dealing with
multiple salespeople. It will also increase customer satisfaction by hiring new professionals.
On the other side, going back to the old system, due to lack of professional instructions, may
trigger consumer discontent. Recruiting new specialists may lead to increased cost for the
organisation. In the current structure, the performance evaluation system is time consuming.
Alternatives are evaluated based on the weights given to each parameter and how the
parameter impact the alternative (1 – positive impact, 0 – no impact and -1 – negative impact)
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as shown in the above table. The alternative with the highest score in the last column is the
most suitable.
Solution
For Ken Winston, the best alternative would be to retain the Key Accounts Team but allow
each member to specialise in more than one kind of product offering.
• Given the loss of customers to competitors due to lack of technical expertise of the
sales force, going back to the old system of generalist salespeople is undesirable. With
this new system, the demand of the customers for specialized knowledge would be
fulfilled.
• Allowing team members to specialize in more than one product offerings would
broaden their career prospects. They would not feel pigeonholed in one particular
role. This would take care of the discontentment they feel towards the new system.
• It would also improve customer satisfaction by eliminating the need for them to
contact multiple salespeople. Since eventually it’s a people’s business, taking care of
each and every demand of the customers is of paramount importance.
Contingency Plan
Backup
• Focus more on sales volume rather than feedback system, though this would reduce
weightage on soft skills of the employees, financial benefits would be enough to
motivate the employees and generate sales.
• The feedback could also be made openly available to the employees so that they know
about their weak areas and work on them accordingly.
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References