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CASE STUDY 2-2 Disrupted Links in the Performance Management Process at "Omega, Inc." Omega, Inc., is a small manufacturing company whose sales Omega faces a challenging situation because it does not have success or failure rests in the hands of sales representatives control over the people working for the independent dealer- employed by franchised dealers operating independently. ships. It is the performance of these individuals that dictates discussions were not documented. This lack of the continued, and although sales quotas were being met first few months, franchise owners received complaints 56 customers about the low quality of customer service to were receiving. Subsequently, sales began to dedin Furthermore, many orders were often incorrect, Torty Part I. Strategic and General Considerations Omega's sales success. To make things more complicated, until recently there was no clear understanding of the role of the sales representatives and there were no formal sales processes in place Sales representatives varied greatly in terms of their Jovel of skill and knowledge: most put out little effort beyond taking orders, and they did not feel motivated to make addi- customers to return items to Omega. tional sales. Finally, franchises varied greatly regarding their While the new performance management process wat management strategies and follow-up with Omega. an improvement over no performance management (at lean Recently, understanding the need to improve the per- formance of sales representatives, Omega agreed to partially initially), the franchise owners were still far from having a system that included a smooth transition between each of the franchise owners in turn agreed to work together to imple components of the performance management process. Basen mant a performance management system. As a first step in on Omega's situation, please answer the following questions, creating the performance management system, the franchise 1. Consider each of the links of the performance manage owners conducted a job analysis of the role of the sale repre- ment process as shown in Figure 2.1 sentatives, wrote a job description, and distributed it to all sales representatives. The franchise owners also adopted a a. prerequisites performance planning franchise-wide mission statement based primarily on the need b. performance planning performance execution to provide high-quality customer service. This mission state- C. performance execution - performance assessment ment was posted in all franchise offices, and each franchise d. performance assessment - performance review owner spoke with his employees about the contribution made e. performance review performance renewal and by individual sales on achieving their mission. As a second recontracting step, the managers set performance goals (i.e., sales quotas) f. performance renewal and recontracting for each employee. Then, all sales representatives attended prerequisites extensive training sessions. The employees received feedback based on their performance in the training course and then Discuss whether each of the links is present, and in what were reminded once again of their sales quotas, form in the performance management system described Back on the job, managers gave feedback to their 2. Given your answers to question 1, what can be done to employees regarding their standing in relation to their sales fix each of the disrupted links in the process? Source : This case study is loosely based on J. Swinney and B. Couch, Sales quotas . Since the employees had no way of monitoring their performance Improvement Getting Results Through a Franchise Sales owni progress toward their quotas, the performance feedback Organization. International Society for Performance Improvement Case consisted of little more than a reiteration of monthly sales Studies (2008). Available online at http://www.ispi.org/services/goties! goals. There was no performance appraisal form in place, so 2003/GotPesults_Swinney pdf. Retrieval date: March 6, 2007, CASE STUDY 2-3