Dynasty Ltd is a radio paging service that has operated since the mid-1970s when radio pagers took Hong Kong by storm. Hong Kong still has the world's highest concentration of population carrying radio pagers, currently estimated at around 2 million. When the Hong Kong government decided to introduce a new telecommunications technology called CT2 (cordless telephone generation two), Dynasty jumped on the bandwagon of contenders in pursuit of a licence. After some negotiation it was awarded one of the four licences to operate a CT2 network in Hong Kong. The company is about to launch this service. Dynasty's sales manager was charged with the task of setting up a salesforce for the market. While CT2 is a sophisticated technology, the sales manager felt that a deep understanding of the technology was not a prerequisite for her salespeople. Instead, how to deal with customers, who tend to be very time conscious and results orientated, was considered more important. It was felt that CT2 is a personal product. The new recruits should have experience in selling products to end-users and must have broad social contacts. When reviewing his recruitment plan with her sales director it became apparent that the sales director had different ideas. The sales director was a strong advocate that new recruits must be familiar with the product and its technology since that is what they were selling. An inside knowledge of these new products would also impress would-be customers and give the salespeople an edge over the competition. The sales director favoured recruiting from within the telecommunications industry, since such people are familiar with the developments of the technology. Apart from that, they were likely to talk the same language as people working in engineering, technical support and service.
Discussion questions
1. Justify what general factors you consider should be taken into account when recruiting salespeople for the positions described in the exercise. In particular, suggest how the performance of such salespeople could be evaluated.
2. State whether you agree with the sales manager or the sales director or neither.
3. Suggest and justify the kind of commission structure that you would put into place.