To Sell In Combo Or Not Essay — страница 2

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KRQO had a six-person sales staff that reported to a local sales manager, Oscar Smithers. As well liked and respected as Olivia Mitovsky was by The Z’s staff, Oscar Smithers was disliked by the KRQO staff, with one exception–a young, attractive, vivacious, aggressive, female salesperson who was perceived by the other five to be Oscar’s favorite. The perception of favoritism (in account assignments and new leads) had gotten to such a point that virtually everyone on both staffs assumed that Oscar was having an affair with the salesperson. The other five salespeople on KRQO also complained bitterly about the paperwork that Oscar made them do: daily call reports, detailed weekly planners, weekly projections and complete prospect lists updated weekly. The Z salespeople only had

to do daily call reports that merely consisted of check marks on their account lists. These checks were entered onto account-list forms by the sales assistants and a report was given to the salespeople and the sales managers to help them keep track of who they were calling on and who they were missing, if anyone. Ed or Olivia rarely mentioned these reports to the salespeople, and never in a negative or critical way. On the other hand, Oscar used his reports to beat up on people: “Why didn’t you call on this person?” “Why couldn’t you close this prospect?” He’d look at the weekly planners and then demand that salespeople take him out on calls, which he’d invariably take over the presentation and push hard, very hard, to close. There were no strokes (except for

praise for his favorite). The salespeople had the feeling that no matter what they did, it was wrong. Four out of the six KRQO salespeople were actively looking for other jobs (and spending more time doing so than making sales calls). Three salespeople had even gone to Ed and Tyler to complain about the way they were being treated, which took a certain amount of courage, because Oscar had recently fired a popular salesperson and threatened to fire more people if they didn’t learn “to do things his way.” Oscar continually told his sales staff they were behind budget. He posted numbers weekly that showed how much business each salesperson wrote that week and compared that amount to their budgets that he had set and to the station’s budget. Everyone was behind his or her

budget and the station was falling further and further behind its budget every week. Even though Oscar yelled at the salespeople at twice-a-week meetings (which often lasted an hour-and-a-half) about missing budgets, at the same time he would complain bitterly about how unfair the budgets were. The KRQO salespeople were griping about the unrealistic budgets, too, because they got paid a bonus based on making their monthly budgets. They weren’t making any bonus money, and The Z people were getting substantial bonus checks every month (a one-percent retroactive commission bonus based on each salesperson’s previous months’s billing). Furthermore, the KRQO salespeople complained that the commission system was unfair. They were paid eight percent on agency business and a sixteen

percent commission on new, direct business (had to be both); The Z salespeople were paid six percent on agency business and sixteen percent on new, direct business. However, The Z billed three times what KRQO billed and The Z’s rates were two-and-a-half times greater than KRQO’s, so the KRQO people were making less than The Z people, and often had to work harder because of the station’s difficult-to- sell demos. About the budgets and commission differential, Oscar and the salespeople were right. They were unfair, and Ed Jefferson knew it. This fact was a major part of his dilemma. The reason the budgets were unfair was because until the previous year, The Z and KRQO had been sold in combination. Until two years ago, KRQO had small ratings and couldn’t support a separate

sales effort. The eight-person sales staff would sell a schedule on The Z and then throw in KRQO for an additional ten percent. Thus, if a salesperson got a $4,000 order for The Z, he or she would say, “Give me another $400 and I’ll match the schedule on KRQO.” Billing on the two stations was divided accordingly, ninety percent for The Z and ten percent for KRQO. However, when KRQO got a new program director who changed the music and the promotion for the station, the station’s numbers began to grow–from a 1.8 to a 2.6 to a 4.5 Ed Jefferson and the previous general manager began to realize that they could get more for KRQO than an additional ten percent on top of The Z’s rates. They knew that they were underselling KRQO substantially. The reason the commissions were