Fundamentals of Sales Management

I need a reply/response to these discussion board answers. Just read the discussion board answers, and respond to the information you read by also adding your own point of information about each topic itself to each discussion board answers not about how to correct the person answers by saying he or she needs to add more information or saying you agreed without stating why. Just four to six Lines response each. Please I need good and quality response to these discussion board answers. Please I need good and quality reply, and pls i want you to add more information about the their answers n your contribution to my classmates answers and topic.

MRKT 475 7980 Fundamentals of Sales Management
Learning Activity 1
Adam Taino
1. How should the home-office manager have evaluated the situation?
The home-office manager should have restrained himself and asked to get the information of the situation. Raising his voice and putting himself on the defensive end only escalates the anger of Tyrone, who wants to get information. The home-office manager could have probably calmed Tyrone’s nerves with a softer and less irritated tone when asking about the situation.

2. What would you do as Tyrone’s sales manager?
Being Tyrone’s manager I would have understand the reason’s that he is upset because of potential loss in profits of a customer, being a new or returning customer. The overall goal of the company is to get sales, so of course, customers need to be happy. Tyrone’s anger does show his dedication to the company of earning sales from every customer. I would have calmly asked Tyrone to explain the situation, all the factors, and obtained all of the information regarding the purchase and the customer. After getting all of the information, I would personally look into where the miscommunication between sales and shipping occurred. I would also follow up to Tyrone of any information that I would have received regarding the customer. If Tyrone continues to yell and speak angrily, I would ask him to please calm down or I’d be forced to take corrective action for his demeanor. The situation doesn’t get solved by yelling about the problem.
Claudia Davila
How should the home-office manager have evaluated the situation
The manager should have handle the situation different. He needed better communication and problem solving skills to handle the heated situation. He could have ask Tyrone to calm down, explain the issue and see how both can fix the problem in the shortest amount of time for the benefit of the customer. The manager should have never put Tyrone in the situation to pick between the customer and the company, because he as a salesman has to equally represent the interest of both. Finally, the manager should have contacted Tyrone’s manager to report the issue and make sure this kind of incidents (delay or delivery, and hungry phone calls) do not repeat in the future.

2. What would you do as Tyrone’s sales manager?
As Tyrone’s manager, I would have a conversation to explain that his behavior and communication skills need to improve if he wants to remain in the company. Tyrone needs a warning, to make sure this kind of conflicts and mistreatment to coworkers does not happen again. I also would have asked why he didn’t bring up the issue to my knowledge, to be able to collaboratively handle it quicker and in a better way

Learning Activity 2
Question:
First, watch this short video on sales forecasts: https://youtu.be/2D8k2UQHabc
A common problem faced by those responsible for making sales forecasts is “selling” the predictions to others such as the vice presidents or marketing, production, and human resources, and to the CEO or the CFO. These parties hesitate to use forecasts that can have major implications, especially if they are wrong, on their functional area. What can those responsible for sales forecasting do to better sell their results to management? What forecasting guidelines should be followed to improve the predictions?
Include links to your research.
My classmates answer to the above question:
Adam Taino
Those responsible for sales forecasting should understand all of the variables that may not yield a successful forecast expressed to management. Management wants to see successful results from what was forecasted, anything less is unacceptable. There are several guidelines that can be followed by forecasters to improve their predictions, which will also be better to express the results to management. Understanding that a sales pipeline is the bigger picture of all of the potential sales opportunities at all stages, whereas the sales forecast is a smaller segment of the sales pipeline, or a snapshot, with the various stages that occur within designated time frames (Ruge, 2014). Salespeople are responsible for sales within the company. Forecasts are based on sales that are made, which contribute to the pipeline. Sales managers that must make forecasts should be aware of how the salespeople are performing, providing guidance, which allows for a better understanding of how the sales and trends move and allows for better forecasts (Ruge, 2014). Measuring the sales pipeline in stages provides accurate numbers and a better understanding of the movement in sales. Also, actively following up the sales process in steps provides a better basis for a sales forecast. Using past forecasting results also provides a learning tool that helps forecasting the future, which is learning from any mistakes made already (Ruge, 2014). Finally, companies that use CRM systems that provide sales processes, tend to have numbers entered by salespeople, who are reluctant to use them, which can lead to bad sales forecasting. Automation like this leads to bad pipeline management, which leads to bad forecasting, so sometimes fully relying on automation doesn’t present an accurate read on sales potential (Ruge, 2014). Companies that heavily rely on CRM systems does not mean they have good sales management.

Claudia Davila
The people responsible for sales forecasting must keep all forecasts as accurate and realistic as possible in order to gain trust and credibility. According to Boitnott (2015) they can make forecasts more accurate by using multiple scenarios, one optimistic and one cautious, to include flexibility and realistic expectations. Additionally, they should present their assumptions which includes market growth, changes in the number of competitors and technological advancements that will impact the business. By listing their assumptions, top management can understand better where the forecasted numbers are coming from. And finally, the author suggests to compare projections to the results of comparable companies. By comparing with the competition, they can demonstrate how attainable these projected goals are.
Furthermore, Geoffrey James suggests three strategies to foment accuracy: Separate forecasts from quotas, reward accuracy, and limit the forecasting process to seasoned professionals (Business.com, 2017) Our textbook also explains that “a few companies pay bonuses when sales people hit their sales forecast target” (Sales Management, n.d.) Rewarding accurate forecasts seems like a good incentive but I wonder if this can motivate sales people to present forecasts with lower expectations so they can easily reach their targets

HRMN 367 7980 Organizational Culture Question
1) Watch this video on the OCAI survey instrument:
http://www.ocai-online.com/downloads/videos/4-Culture-Types-in-Competing-Values-Framework
2) Go to this page and take the FREE survey: http://www.ocai-online.com/products/ocai-one
Based on these:
a) How did your organization rate on the OCAI instrument you did?
b) Do you agree with the results? Why or why not?

Learning Activity 1
Maritza Pierre
a) My organization rate on the OCAI instrument as follow:
Clan Culture: 1.67
Adhocracy: 16.67
Market: 65.00
Hierarchy: 16.67
b) I totally agree with the results of the assessment in regards to my organization. Although it is a government type, is very well customer focus in a sense that leadership focuses on providing the best service possible to the guests who come to us for assistance. The organization is also aggressively competing against other types of similar organizations.
My organization values market share, goal achievement, and profitability. As for leadership, it is very pushy towards reaching excellence, competitive, and producing. Leadership encourages results and profitability.

Sandra Wright
Here’s how my organization rated on the OCAI instrument:
Clan Culture – 31.57
Adhocracy Culture – 18.04
Market Culture – 23.48
Hierarchy Culture – 26.92
Yes, i agree with the rating because m organization is an organization where we are people oriented and friendly, the leaders in my organization are facilitators, mentors, and the advocate team building.  They also is very committed to the employees and have a open door policy, in which his make communicating with their employees a plus.  Also, they provide training so employees can developed the skills set needed to do their job and provides cross training.

Learning Activity 2

Question: let me know if the power point is helpful/useful!

Maritza Pierre
The powerpoint document was very helpful in the sense that it clearly demonstrated the tie between underlying assumptions, self-awareness, and human resources management. The text laid a solid example of what underlying assumptions are as well as how we tend to go through the present time in an auto-pilot mode, by citing the example of a driver stopping at the red light. I, myself, was wondering why we are studying underlying assumptions in an organizational culture class, however, the presentation beautifully answered the question: How can one manage even a small group, if one cannot manage one’s self?
Sandra Wright
The PowerPoint was very helpful and informative, because it focus on the self-awareness and resources that every employee need to perform their duties.  I think this PowerPoint is very effective for usage in my office, because we have working on several projects in our office and i think i can use this for a presentation.

Learning Activity 3
explain culture as a “social pattern”
How is (or how isn’t) that a useful definition?

Alfredo Stokes
Social Patterns is defined as a systems of control mechanisms to dominate entities of the organization to achieve a defined goal.
Culture is defined by one definition as the customary beliefs, social forms, and materials traits of a racial, religious, or social group. The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization
Explain culture as a “social pattern” would be defined as a set of related traits and characteristics that describe a group of people. Traits that fall into social patterns are behavior, and beliefs.
How is (or how isn’t that a useful definition? I would say it is a useful definition because it is a method that can be used to define a group of people or and organizations.

Brittany Nelson

According to Tharp, Culture does not have a universal meaning across the world and there is little agreement within it. It is so broadly used that is simply a “Social Pattern”. This Social Pattern does not have much meaning behind it.
Overall, I think that Tharp is accurate. Culture is different in almost every aspect in each different country and even different parts of each country. So when you speak about culture if you are not being exclusive towards a specific culture it can be misleading.

MRKT 412 7980 Marketing Research

Phillip Skaggs
1. What does the Breckland PInes Golf club need to do to attract members under 35?
2. In order to answer this question I am going to use the Exploratory research design.   This design allows me flexibility to run experiments to see if my hypothesis is right.  I can then adjust my experiments based on interviews with potential customers.  Once I get more concrete evidence that my plan is working, I can then use a Conclusive design to focus on what worked.
3. Purpose
– The purpose of the research is to find ways and mean to attract a younger membership to the golf club on order to maintain it’s viability into the future.
Population
– The population will be centered on Women and men between 25 and 35.  The preference will be on married couples in order to offer package deals.
Procedure
– I wiil first conduct external research and review several surveys of surrounding courses and national trends from the PGA and other organizations.   I will then conduct interviews with people in the target grroup to assess their responses to the survey questions about their level of interest.
Publication
– The publication will be brought to the president of the Breckland Pines course and distributed to the members.

Robyn Morrison
1. Would partnering with a discount sales website such as Zulily “cheapen” the boutique brand image? (Switched up my question from the last time. I hope that is okay.)
2. In order to answer this question, I believe it would be best to use survey research. It would allow for customers to give their unbiased and anonymous feedback. It is important to protect brand image even while trying to offload extra inventory.
3.
a) Purpose
– The purpose of the research is gather opinions from the core consumer about the image of the brand. Boutique brands are typically considered higher end, hand-made, and therefore exclusive. Would selling on a discount or broader market website conflict with the brand image.
b) Population
– The population asked to take the survey would be the loyal consumers (limited people as in qualitative research) of various brands within my Facebook boutique marketing group to get an overall opinion about boutique brand image that is not limited to that specific brand. The target consumer is the mom buyer.
c) Procedure
– The procedure will be a survey that will consist of brand image questions via Survey Monkey. A limited group of loyal consumers will give feedback anonymously.
d) Publication
– The results will be evaluated by the brand designer to help reach a decision, and results will be shared with the consumers so they can have an understanding of why decisions are made. I strongly believe in having an open door policy with consumers.

BMGT 485 7380 Leadership for the 21st Century Question

Learning Activity #1
Over the past 25 years the term knowledge management has evolved to represent the changing nature of the workplace in a true paradigm shift. In coining the phrase “knowledge society” Peter Drucker convincingly argued that land, labor, and capital as the classical factors of production had been largely replaced by knowledge.

“Knowledge has become the resource, rather than a resource, and is what makes our society post-capitalist.” (Drucker, 1993)

Explain the quote and make sure to define the nature of knowledge management and the types and kinds of leadership challenges that knowledge management engenders. Use in text citations to support your response.

Learning Activity #2
Since week one you have been reading about the changes between leaders in the 20th Century and the 21st Century.   Create a list of five expectations that society has for business leaders from each of these two centuries.  Reflect on your reading for the course and explain how society’s expectations affect the business leader of tomorrow. Use in text citations from readings to support your response.

Learning Activity #1

David Richardt
The quote is too subjective, and simple to explain. The author is claiming that the new “it” is knowledge, and with the underlined emphasis on “the” it suggests there is no relevant resource to an organization as important. I disagree that knowledge is “the” only relevant resource, however to be ultra-successful it is important to know what it is and know how to (wait for it) manage it!
If you consider resources available to an organization then in the list of high value items there will certainly be knowledge, in fact knowledge should be treated like capital (Kok, 2003). You’d no sooner through money away, or allow the enterprise to function at a loss so why throw away knowledge.
Leaders of the 21st century will find ways to prevent the loss of knowledge through personnel transitions and task shifts by controlling explicit knowledge (a physical manifestation of) and capturing the intangible tacit knowledge (Frost, 2017). Challenges leaders face today are the protection and codification of tacit knowledge (Frost, 2017) the author provides the example of experienced employees holding tacit knowledge as a result of their years of work.
One example I can think of that is near to all of our hearts is the capturing and protecting of knowledge earned by organizations only to lose the employee to transition or another job inside the organization.

How do we protect against losing their experience when they’re not there?

Jake Bergman
Knowledge has fundamentally changed the configuration of society.  Not only does knowledge create “new social dynamics, it creates new economic dynamics, and new politics” (New Learning).  Throughout past history, “capital, raw materials and labor had been more valuable” (Smith, 2001), than crafting and utilizing knowledge, however, knowledge is now replacing land, labor, and capital and becoming the one source of production.  The nature of knowledge management is to get the “right knowledge to the right person at the right time” (Frost, 2017).  It is also knowing how to organize, store and share important information from both the tacit and explicit frameworks.
Some challenges that leadership might face could be: motivating employees – knowledge leads to learning, sharing, and storing information and leaders will need to develop a culture that will accept this.  Knowing how to quickly and effectively transfer and dispense knowledge is a big challenge as well.  Structures are constantly changing so the leader needs to learn how to be quick, and responsive.  Leadership will need to figure out how to measure knowledge because this is something that is not easily quantified.  Another challenge that leadership might face is being able to keep accurate data.  “Valuable data generated by a group within an organization may need to be validated before being harvested and distributed” (AnswerHub, 2013).
Karina Novitckaia
According to the quote, knowledge changes the structure of society in the fundamental basis; thus, it creates new social and economic dynamics. Knowledge is defined as the specific method of social development.
Knowledge management (KM) is the process of getting the right knowledge to the right person at the right time (“Knowledge Management,” n.d.). Knowledge management may also consist of new knowledge creation, or it may focus on knowledge sharing, storage, and refinement (“Knowledge Management,” n.d.). The creation and spread of knowledge have become increasingly important factors of competitiveness. More and more, knowledge is being thought of as a valuable resource that is included in products, especially high-technology products, and involved in the tacit knowledge of highly mobile employees. One of knowledge management challenges that leaders face today is security. Providing the right level of security for knowledge management is essential factor. Sensitive information should be protected from the majority of users, while allowing easy access to those who have the proper credentials (“10 Knowledge Management Challenges Managers Face Today,” 2013). In addition, evaluating how knowledge should be allocated and transferring it effectively and quickly is a huge challenge. Constantly changing structures mean learning how to be intelligent, flexible, and responsive, all things a knowledge management tool must be able to execute (“10 Knowledge Management Challenges Managers Face Today,” 2013). In addition, getting people motivated is one of today’s knowledge management challenges. Overcoming organizational culture challenges and developing a culture that embraces learning, sharing, changing, improving can’t be done with technology (“10 Knowledge Management Challenges Managers Face Today,” 2013).

Learning Activity #2

David Richardt

20th Century Leaders                          21st Century Leaders
Grow the business                               Grow the business right
Make money                                       Make money for the family
Protect the investors                          Protect the investors
Treat Employees like resource           Treat Employees like family
Preserve the leadership tree              Preserve the organization
It is interesting how many of the readings are of generational differences. It is just psychological to assume the correlation to chronology when talking about leaders. This is theoretical following this pattern, humans get older, a new generation of leader comes to bear. A dangerous assumption, one this class should be breaking the barriers for. The truth is, you’ll never know where a leader is going to pop up, or what conditions make them the leader that is called for at just the right time.
That said, the 21st Century leader will have to bridge generation gaps, as there are still Boomers, Xers, Yers and Millennials still in the workforce, the latter three of those, still around for a few more decades to welcome a new generation. Leaders (from any generation) will have to bridge generational gaps to both understand how members of the respective generations think and respond to factors inside the organization (Guthrie, 2009). They will also have to display universal leadership skills that all generations respect, the reference here (CENTER FOR CREATIVE LEADERSHIP, 2016) provides several examples of universally accepted leadership traits that cross generational expectations.
The starting point is the teamwork and sense of loyalty a leader can create for their body of employees. If the employees perform for the leader, they’ll in turn perform for the organization.
Karina Novitckaia
During the 20th century, there was a tendency that business leaders made their best in producing products and services as quickly as possible in order to get profit. However, by the early 1980s, countries other than the U.S. were concentrated on producing quality products and were ready to compete with others in the world market. During the 20th century, customers defined the quality of products from different points of view. Some thought of quality as product superiority or product excellence, while others viewed quality as minimizing manufacturing or service defects. Consequently, the current globally competitive marketplace has resulted in continuously increasing customer expectations for quality of products and services (Kumar, 2006).
The role of the 21st century leader consists in ability to work effectively and to introduce innovations, to be for employees a sample for imitation. The leader accumulates information from all possible sources and seeks out new business opportunities before the others. Successful business leader of the 21st century is decisive, flexible, and sagacious in order to keep ideas flowing inside an organization. Also, the leader seeks to achieve by all means goals and is ready to fight with competitors, with own shortcomings and organizational defects of the company. In addition, leadership skills of the 21st century involve leaders to demonstrate their character, communicate effectively, coach and direct other employees, aim for results and always lead by example (Pophal, n.d.). The demand of leader of this kind is caused by several factors. One of them is a high rate of the technical progress that opens new potential in front of any business spheres. Two others are connected with people: it is more and more motley age, ethnic, tender structure of labor to the USA and its deficiency which is expected as a result of retirement of baby boomers retire (Tice, 2007).

Jake Bergman
20th century leaders were more about reaching the “finite goal: delivering goods and services, to make money” (Denning, 2010).  Where as, 21st century leaders are more concerned with the “infinite goal of delighting customers” (Denning, 2010), yes, the company makes money, but only as a result of bringing happiness to the customer, not because that was the end result desired.
Society expects the following from 20th and 21st century leaders:
20th Century                                                                21st Century
Directive – In charge at all times                                Continually learn and share what they have learned with others.
Autocratic (Top-down) management                          Know what is “right for triple bottom line; people,
planet, profit” (Seaver, 2017). Expected to know the answers                                   Make the world better for everyone involved.
Rules were strict and enforced                                  Develop communities where ideas and success are shared openly.
Occasional manager/leaders was superior in            Show the “why” of decisions (Seaver, 2017).
intelligence, experience, skill, understanding,
or longevity, power came from position.  I am
the boss, so you have to do what I tell you.
(Herman, 2017)

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