SELL 3rd Edition by Thomas Ingram,Raymond LaForge ,Ramon A. Avila ,Charles Schwepker,Michael Williams

Exercise 1

THE RELUCTANT SALESFORCE
Background
Gary Calling, sales manager for a large engineering firm, cannot get his sales­people into the field. He summarized his problems as follows:
1. Lack of outgoing calls or e-mails to prospects and customers.
2. Lack of planning on a daily basis.
3. No use of a follow-up program to generate additional customer contacts.
4. Lack of overall planning strategy for a particular customer or group of customers.
5. Reactive salesforce instead of proactive.
Current Situation
Gary thinks his problem is that his start is technical in nature and wants to be thought of as experts, not salespeople. He goes on to say that his staff does great when the customers call them but do not plan for outside sales opportunities. His reps say that they are too busy with everything else to make outside sales calls.
Gary had the following conversation with his top salesperson, Ted (who happens to be his brother).
Gary: Ted, have you had any luck making new contacts?
Ted: Not really.
Gary: What is the problem?
Ted: What do you mean, man-what is the problem? I spend all day on the phone talking to our existing customers. They need me. I cannot be out of the office all day. My customers would never be able to find me.
Gary: I'm not talking about being out of the office all day. I need you to spend one day per week following up on existing customers to build goodwill and another half-day per week looking for new business.
Ted: That sounds good, but I do not see how I can get that done. I am already overloaded.
What would you do if you were Gary?