Milford A

Problem Statement

Mr. Harrison "Harry" Oates, Milford's young new Sales DM, faced a situation in which his newly assigned Capital District is not living up to its potential due to its underperforming and mismanaged sales force.

Key Issues

* The Capital District is vibrant with great buying power, but the Milford's salespeople are not properly organized or deployed to reap its full potential. Per Mr. Jack Falzarano's memo, Capital District has high potential, but its sales' growth and profitability are well under par. (50% less in growth and 0.6% less profitable compared to the region)

* The Sales team for the Capital District also has performance issues due to the lack of sales leadership and good management. Most salespeople seem to be working inefficiently without a clear cut sales' strategy and selling a product mix that is not balanced nor optimized for higher profits.

* Mr. Oates needs to do a turnaround of Capital District quickly. Milford's senior managers expect this from him.

Recommendations

Mr. Oates needs to meet and engage its sales team at the soonest and evaluate each salesperson individually and compare their territory and key account plans to the overall Milford's strategy.

Mr. Oates needs to clearly understand what is his sales team as a whole and each sales person individually lacking and note if additional training is needed to be able to cross-sale more effectively and optimize the product mix to a more balanced and profitable offering to the all the key and strategic accounts.

Mr. Oates also needs to also set new direction with clear cut sales' objectives and targets monitoring progress continuously. Perhaps additional Sales meetings could be good to implement, as long as these do not disrupt or interfere with ongoing sales' efforts of the salespeople.

Mr. Oates needs to study the Capital District territory thoroughly and compare it to the specific needs per information gathered from the sales team individual meetings, sales plans and key account plans to start thinking about a better distribution and deployment of the sales team making sure long client relationships are not disrupted.

Rationale / Justification

With proper training and coaching, Mr. Oates could better motivate his sales team. This potentially could result in an improvement of overall sales force performance and thus affecting sales positively aligning the Capital district more to Milford's overall company and regional sales' strategy.

Additionally, Mr. Oates could also support his team with specific product training to be able to capitalize on cross-sale for a better product mix and a more balanced and profitable suite of offerings to clients.

Mr.