Caselet 1: Frisco Solutions
Marty Stubbs, the vice president of sales for Frisco Solutions, was exasperated. Stubbs had spent nearly a half million dollars on new software, including the cost of flying all of Frisco’s salespeople to a nice resort for two days of training. Yet after six months, it hadn’t increased sales. In fact, in some regions, sales even declined. And if the numbers were to be believed, in those regions, the salespeople were making fewer sales calls, which could explain their poor performance. According to Tim Wagner, Frisco’s IT director, those regions with higher sales actually used the software more. But in the regions with flat or slow growth, salespeople weren’t using the software much. Worse yet, their sales managers were hardly using it at all. Wagner told Stubbs that one manager had not logged on to the system in over a month. “What kind of training did you do for the managers?” he asked. “It looks like some managers are using the system incorrectly, and others aren’t using it at all!” With that, Stubbs felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. She had not done any training for sales managers other than the same training done for reps. Now, with no money left in the budget, she didn’t know what to do. Nonetheless, it was clear that the sales managers weren’t using the system properly, if at all, and, therefore, neither were the reps. “We could create an online training program for the sales managers out of the IT budget,” Wagner suggested. “But it will take more than training, now.” Stubbs wondered—should she create penalties for not using the new program or rewards for using it? And how could she make sure managers got trained?