Introduction
J.B.s Restaurant Supply servers full-service equipment to the foodservice industry like restaurants. They have a wide range of equipment and utensils needed for the food industry. The company was started by serving independent restaurants around the corridor in Central Florida. The company has recently implemented a new Client Relationship Management (CRM) software. The main purpose of the implementation is to automate the sales process and to eliminate unnecessary sales calls. The CRM has shown some influencing data based on sales analysis by comparing current performance to past sales. The analysis report has focused on product/product line, territories and customer type. Based on the analytical data, J.B.'s has brought a few changes in order to improve the company's performance.
Discussion
1. Will these changes help make J.B.'s more profitable?
The new CRM has given data based on the customer's behavior so based on the analysis of the report, J.B.'s has made changes to emphasis on profitability. The analytical data from CRM has shown that business in large areas are more profitable so J.B.'s has announced its expansion to Mobile, Alabama, and Atlanta, Georgia. The hiring of experienced salespeople for more than two years and less than 20 years will boost sales. J.B.'s will focus more on chain restaurants in comparison to independent owners giving more time to profitable customers.
The changes show that targeting larger areas, focusing on bigger chain restaurants, and assigning experienced salespeople will bring more sales in the system with more profitable. So the implementation of CRM and report from the system is showing the exact profit margin sectors, a sector, where the firm can improve their deficit, an increase in a sales territory, will certainly help to make J.B.'s more profitable.
2. Do you agree that all of the changes are in J.B's long-term best interests?
The reassigning of the sales force and expansion in larger metropolitan areas seem to be J.B.'s long-term interests and only targeting larger chain restaurants is short-term interests. Empowering the sales force with experienced and skilled candidates helps better communication with the customers, fewer sales time, higher sales initiatives which helps the firm to have sustainable resources for the long-term. Targeting larger market segments gives opportunities to expand the product/services and increases the sales percentage overall. These points help in increasing the performance goals of the organization, puts the firm in a competitive position, profitability, return on investment, and productivity.
3. What potential problems could result from making these changes just as proposed?
Neglecting the smaller segment of the market like independent restaurant owners which in accumulation could have been the more potential customers. The overall chain restaurants are lesser in number in comparison to the independent restaurant owners. Focusing on a larger chain will only give short-term sale boost but in long-run, the number matters. Less focusing and not maintaining proper relation with these segment of customers can be harmful in the future in regard to return on investment.
Expanding in the large metropolitan areas brings more competition in the market since a large number of competitors already exists in such markets which will make difficulties in penetrating such market. The question on fairness of the company will arise among sales force due to assigning of high sales potential area to the experienced salespeople, this may lead to high turnover in the junior salespeople.
4. Are there additional changes you would suggest?
J.B.'s is only concentrated on the high-profit volume generated by the experienced salespeople as of the new CRM but it is missing the point that junior salespeople are also contributing to the process. Junior salespeople expenses are much lesser than the experienced one, I think they have forgotten to do sales audit regarding the cost of deployment and the return from the sale.
J.B.'s should be focused on evaluating sales volume, selling costs, and profitability to differentiate the company's strength and weakness in regard to the market. The cost expenses during the marketing should yield two to three times return on an average for the firm to sustain. Focusing on smaller market segments also and working more on customer relationship will build up the growth average and will provide equal opportunity to all types of salespeople in the organization to earn equally.
Conclusion
We can conclude that CRM is an essential part of the organization. It helps in automation of the sales force, plans and manage sales, provides activity reports, stays up-to-date about the current sales, rationalizes the sales move, help to know the customers, and more specifically helps to cut down the expenses. Although the CRM provides the sales data and sales pattern, it's in the hand of the sales manager to analyze those data properly. As we see that J.B.'s has been neglecting the smaller market segment, and hiring an experienced sales force and assigning them profitable areas only. This shows that the manager has failed to address the need for capturing the base market where there are larger customer segments in total than the larger chains. The consumption of the products/ services would have been higher with little more effort and will provide long-term profitable market. Also, they forget about the point that those independent owners would have started their own chain in the future. The company also have failed to use fair policy within the sales force which may lead to high turnover.
References
Unknown. (Unknown). 3 Effective, Long-Term Customer Service Strategies. Retrieved May 25, 2019, from
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2013/02/long-term-customer-service-strategies.html
Unknown. (Unknown). Long term objectives. Retrieved May 25, 2019, from
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/long-term-objectives.html
Plakslj Zarema. (2018, November 2). 10 Reasons Why Sales People Need CRM. Retrieved May 25, 2019, from
https://www.superoffice.com/blog/why-sales-people-need-crm/
