The assessment for this module is to produce the elements of a sales plan. The case study assesses your understanding and ability to construct a sales presentation plan and correctly analyse sales management problems and provide recommendations.
You are the Sales and Marketing Director of Scientific Plastics Ltd a midlands based manufacturer of plastic moulded products, with three divisions, one producing educational products supporting teaching of biology, physics and environmental sciences in schools. The second, producing retail display units for the cosmetic industry. The third division is contract moulding for a wide variety of customers ranging from Coke Cola, Diego, M&S, Kingfisher (clothes hangers for the last two companies). The company was established in 1946 and has a turnover of £25Million, with net profits before tax of £2.75Million.
You have put together a number of your products into a retail product offering targeting school children aged between 12 and 15 with an interest in natural sciences. The product is called "Young Scientist" and consists of a field microscope (X50, X150) and mounting slides together with cell biological stains, hand held magnifying glass (X10), safety microtome (machine for cutting biological samples into cellular thin sections), sample jars, thermometer, manometer (relative humidity measurement devise), Anemometer (measures wind speed), DVD disc containing full catalogue of insects, diatoms, many plant types and structures. Finally, a website allowing data to be up loaded and trends to be seen representing all contributors work.
The cost of the "Young Scientist" pack is £14.00, sourced from China, Malaysia, and India. UK assembly and packaging brings this to a final cost of £15. Your target sales price to TESCO's is £25 (if you can get it), with a recommended retail price of £49.99, which you have based on two focus groups (14 in each group) and a survey of a random sample of the target markets (950 individuals in each of the sample target markets). The results of your research indicate that 65% of the target market (children 12 to 15years) would wish to purchase the product and 75% of parents of the target market would buy the product as a present for their children. Of the sample who would be happy to purchase the product (children and parents) only 8% thought it to be "very expensive", whilst 12 % thought it to be "expensive" and the remaining 80% considered the product to be "good value".
The target market is 12 to 15 year olds, characterised by an interest in environmental and natural sciences. Taking science GCSE's.
Ultimately these slides will form part of your sales team's resource in selling this product into the retail market space for which you are now trialling via your sales meeting with Tesco's.
These slides should cover the establishment of the sales pitch (the opening moves), the benefits to the various customers, unique advantages, identification of likely objections and their management and the most appropriate closing tactics.
You are also faced with two management dilemmas that you really do need solve in order to have a coherent sales plan that you can implement with the sales team in order to ensure the success of this new product and the expanding product/market portfolio going forward.
Firstly, the Chairman of the company has said that in her view your current remuneration strategy based solely on salary fails incentivise effort. In her view she would like you to consider changing the remuneration package to increase the effort the sales team exerts in capturing new sales by moving to a commission only payment structure with them receiving 12% of invoice value in commission and no salary.
Your answer to this issue should be in the form of two power point slides, together with up to 100 words of notes attached to each slide.
The answer should
1) Evaluate each of the remuneration strategies.
2) Recommend a remuneration strategy that you think appropriate given the nature of the range of sales tasks faced by the sales team.
You are also faced with the dilemma of which prospecting strategy to recommend the sales team use in selling the new "Young Scientist" product into the retail market, one in which your sales team have no experience. Currently the sales team is organised on a territory basis, with sales executives selling the whole of the company's product range in their territory area. The question that now arises is "is this prospecting structure getting too stretched? Might it be better to split the team into product/market specialist areas, such as sciences - schools and retail; contract and retail display?
Your answer to this issue should be in the form of two power point slides, together with up 100 words of notes attached to each slide.
The answer should
1) Evaluate the prospecting strategies.
2) Recommend the prospecting strategy you think most appropriate to the sales team and its range of markets and products.