Issues
1) To make the business to grow at 20% annually by maintaining market share in existing markets. 2) Developing new market opportunities (new marketing areas) via aggressive marketing of existing products without losing market share in the existing markets.
3) To ensure achieving the business targets by providing proper bonus or incentive schemes to the employees in order to motivate them to work hard.
4) Recruiting the technical people as sales people, it is difficult to make a technical person into a salesperson.
5) It was difficult for them to retain the competitive hires because competitive hires stayed no longer than 18 months (usually stayed from 12 to 18 months).
Analysis
Compensations for different sales personnel –
1. Regional Manager – Role is to maximize revenue from an assigned geographic region.
Compensation consisted of $40,000 - $50,000 plus $10,000 - $20,000 commission based on regional sales volume growth.
2. Sales Representative – The typical recruit was 25 – 30 years old and more of a technical person than a sales person. Role is to sell Waters products to all customer markets in their assigned geographic territories and also to conduct technical seminars on HPLC topics.
Compensation – Base salary, sales incentive, an expense account, use of company car. Base
Salary range - $24,000 to $42,000. Incentive had 2 components –
a. Annual plan for adding $300,000 to the territory’s base business
b. Quarterly plan linked to seasonally adjusted quarterly goals
Understanding customers:
Teddie Peanut Products – Speed of obtaining results, cost of equipment and installation are important for the client. Teddie would need a new technically qualified hire to operate the equipment. So, Ray would have to spend lot of energy and time in training the client side to use the Waters equipment after the purchase.
