Congratulations! You have been offered a new position as sales director with Wacked-Up Widgets Inc. Though the challenge seems daunting based on the facts listed below, you have decided to take on the challenge because 1) They have offered you a very lucrative salary and 2) You see this as a perfect opportunity to put into practice the lessons from the class you just completed on leadership and organizational behavior.
Wacked-Up Widgets has given you carte blanche to make changes and improve the team. Your boss (the CEO) has said she wants results - and he wants them now, not tomorrow.
Key Facts to Know:
- The person you are replacing was terminated for having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a subordinate.
- The subordinate remains on staff and will be reporting to you.
- Budget limitations do not allow you to expand headcount.
- Weekly team meetings have been held every Friday afternoon. These were jokingly referred to as B.Y.O.B. because employees either came having already been drinking, or drank during the meeting.
- During meetings there was tremendous name calling, back-stabbing, and dysfunction.
- 60% of your team has not met their sales target in each of the previous 3 years.
- Most of your team is 80/20 - meaning 80% of their compensation is salary (quite lucrative) and 20% is commission.
- Your position has experienced very high turnover, with 6 different people holding the job during the past 5 years.
- Though the sales organization has not hit their targets for years, the rest of the organization has. So, little respect exists for the sales team - in fact, comments/jokes are made at company meetings about how bad things are with sales.
- The compensation for commissions is only given to one sales team member per sale, even though it usually requires multiple sales people to get involved. This leads to tension during the sales process.
- Through the years, even though they all started out as employees in the main office, sales members have requested to move to other cities - and this has been allowed. Now, only ½ the team is on site and the rest work from home. Serious tension exists with this model - tension between home office sales team members and those working remotely, as well as internal company tension over the productivity of those living elsewhere and working from home.
- There is one level of sales associate - so no tiered structure to recognize achievement or career growth.
Please write up a brief response and/or action plan on how you would deal with each of the issues outlined above.