Trinity Finance’s Sales Organization and Sales Approach (C): Leadership Styles

Trinity Finance’s Sales Organization and Sales Approach (C): Leadership Styles

After having identified the ways and means to sensitize the rank and file at Trinity Finance Ltd. (Trinity) sales organization about the impending ‘change’ required across all the levels, the Leadership Team (LT) meeting was convened on May 25^th 2016 to discuss and debate on the kind of leadership that is required to take the ‘RACE’ (Radical Approach to Customer Engagement) mandate forward.

CPO: Thank you all for joining this meeting which is one of the most critical initiatives of our realignment drive.

CEO: Yes, Swapnil. Couldn’t agree more on this. We need to redefine the kind of leadership required at all the levels.

CSO: Yes, Samir.

..............................

Assignment Questions

I. How do you think the proposed Zonal mentors program would aid Trinity’s sales organization to achieve its goal of being an effective market-oriented organization?

II. The CPO, Swapnil Mukherjee referred to ‘Challenges-Competencies Model’ required to train the sales personnel. How would you design Challenges-Competencies matrix and what would be its importance to Trinity’s sales organization? What would be a suitable model for sales competence development?

III................

Exhibits

Exhibit I: Designation at Various Levels of Trinity

Exhibit II: Trinity Finance Limited’s Sales Force Hierarchy

Exhibit III: Framework for Leadership Inventory Check

Exhibit IV: Results of the Leadership Inventory Check

Trinity Finance’s Sales Organization and Sales Approach (C): Leadership Styles

Synopsis

This caselet discusses the challenges across the organizational layers of Trinity Finance Ltd. (Trinity) and helps identify an appropriate leadership style, which aims at changing the company’s approach to make it market-oriented and to fit the demands of the competitive marketplace. This caselet also delves as to how the company should implement a more focused sales approach to achieve its goal of being an effective market-oriented organization. An ‘Outcome-based Leadership Model’ was suggested by Leadership Team at Trinity, to focus on the grey areas to rejuvenate the company’s performance and to imbue personal competencies and social competencies of the sales executives. Will opting for an ‘Outcome-based Leadership Model’ help in preparing a sales-driven organization, like Trinity, to transform from being an ‘Order-fulfilling’ to both an ‘Order-creating’ and an ‘Order-fulfilling’ organization?

Prerequisite Conceptual Understanding/Before the Classroom Discussion

The students/participants should be asked to read the following articles/book chapters:

• • Robert N. McMurry, “The Mystique of Super-Salesmanship”, Harvard Business Review, March-April 1961
• • Benson P. Shapiro, “The High Impact Salesforce”, Harvard Business School, May 22^nd 1998
• • Steve W. Martin, “Why Sales Organizations Fail”, Harvard Business Review, January 30^th 2014
• • “Super charge your Sales Force”, Harvard Business Review – OnPoint Collection, 2006

Case Positioning and Setting

This caselet is aimed at MBA students as a part of the Sales Management curriculum.

Assignment Questions

• I. How do you think the proposed Zonal mentors program would aid Trinity’s sales organization to achieve its goal of being an effective market-oriented organization?
• II. The CPO, Swapnil Mukherjee referred to ‘Challenges-Competencies Model’ required to train the sales personnel. How would you design Challenges-Competencies matrix and what would be its importance
• to Trinity’s sales organization? What would be a suitable model for sales competence development?
• III. ...............

Preamble to the Case Analysis

This caselet enables an interesting discussion on Trinity’s Leadership styles and details how a competent leadership framework–‘Outcome-based vs Behavior-based’, can be constructed over existing models. Accordingly this caselet was orchestrated in the classroom and the caselet analysis was carried out as presented in Exhibit (TN)-I.....................