1. Why did Eastwood and his general managers take PI's competency assessment prior to administering it to the company's other salespeople?
2. How did the assessment help uncover the skills gap handicapping Golf Ventures West's salespeople?
3. What does the case indicate about the training "readiness" of the company's salespeople?
Meadowbrook Golf, headquartered in Championsgate, Florida, is a leader in golf course management, maintenance, and supplies in the United States. Today the organization is composed of four companies that meet the demands of the market: Meadowbrook Golf provides the management, International Golf
Maintenance provides the maintenance, and Golf Ventures East and West are the golf supply arms of the business.
Ron Jackson is the CEO of Meadowbrook. The turf business is a highly specialized, tight-knit industry.
The company's strong reputation was built on its expertise in providing superior products and services to golf courses and municipalities. Jackson knew the only way he could take the company to the next level was to not only find the right people with the specific experience they needed but to find a way to keep them happy and motivated so they would stay. Jackson learned about a behavioral assessment tool called Predictive Index, produced by the Wellesley,
Massachusetts-based management consulting company PI Worldwide, and brought it into Meadowbrook as a way to help the managers understand what motivated their employees to come to work every day. By obtaining this insight, Jackson says Meadowbrook was able to keep its talent by "managing them for their individual success." Meadowbrook also realized that their top performers possessed very similar behavioral characteristics. Using this information, Meadowbrook was able to incorporate this information into its hiring process.
Golf Ventures West (GVW), the supply division of Meadowbrook in the western United States, offers equipment that ranges from a string trimmer to a $70,000 rotary motor, along with fertilizer, seed, and specialty products. Mike Eastwood, the president of GVW, had the best talent in the industry, long-time clients, and very low turnover. While it all seemed idealistic, Eastwood had a problem. He needed his team to sell more. The challenge was how to identify what they needed in sales training to help them grow their sales.
When sharing his concerns with Jackson, Eastwood learned that the publishers of the Predictive
Index also offered a selling training tool that identified the strengths of salespeople and areas for their development as well as offered customer-focused sales (CFS) training. To explore the tool further, he and his senior management team took the assessment themselves. The results accurately identified Eastwood's selling style. His general managers, most with over 30 years in the industry, scored in the mid to high range.