Case Analysis, Campbell and Bailyn’s Boston office: Managing the Reorganization

Individual Case Analysis

Campbell and Bailyn’s Boston Office: Managing The Reorganization

Case Introduction

Campbell and Bailyn(C&B) is a security company whose headquarter is in Boston. With the appearance of mortgage-backed security market turmoil and the new competitive product, the C&B are face with cliff competition and decreasing sales. To maintain its market share and solve the crisis, Winston, the regional sales manager for the Boston office of C&B, created the KAT(key account team) to use their expertise in firm’s product offerings and built a new division-wide performance management system to contribute to the sales of higher-margin products. However, Winston finds that many of workers in his team complain about these two changes and show resistance to them. Now I will analyze this case and find the real reasons behind it, later I will put forward my recommendations and solutions.

Main Reasons

The main cause might come from the Key Account Team. Undoubtedly as the competitors increase and the new products appear, the margins of fixed income brokerage industry narrow drastically, and the newer product required more expertise to market and sell. So it seems creating the key accounts team, assigning a specialty sub-segment of the product to each sales person, offering technical advice to different customers is a necessary way to acquire the profit and remain competitive in the market. But at the same time, Winston also need to recognize that KAT should be an organizational change, not a sales technique. According to research, suppliers who fail at KAT tend to think of it as being initiative within the sales department. KAT is a commitment to work differently with certain priority customers and to fulfill the promise, other supplier divisions have to understand and support KAT. If a key account is promised priority access to urgent products or services, it is operations who can provide that, no sales. However, in the case, Winston asked five salespeople to combine the KAT, this method can’t benefit the workers or the customers. What’s more, to get the Key Account Team started, the team should identify some key accounts, differentiating them from the rest of the customers. But in the case, all the clients were regarded as key accounts. On the one hand, not all customers thought that the change was needed; on the other hand, it lowered the efficiency of the Key Account Team. This is also why B&C sometimes received the customer’s complaints. So building the Key Account Team itself is necessary, but the specific changes needed to be evaluated and fixed.

In my opinion, Winston’s leadership style is also a factor contributing to the grumblings among workers. Winston is an affiliative, democratic and visionary leader. He listens to other’s advice and considers the benefit of his teams and employees when making decisions. Also he knows when the organization needs a new direction and understands how to achieve it. So generally prior to New York meeting, he worked well and managed the process efficiently. He came up with the two new methods and implemented them successfully. And he kept communicating with his workers and his employees were willing to speak out their ideas before him. However, this also bring some questions. His employees might take advantage of his openness to joke and the interruptions during the talk and he couldn’t be respected by all. So this could negatively affect the management efficiency, especially when the company is making some changes or revolution.