Campbell & Bailyn

A recent economic downfall has caused the regional sales manager for the Boston office of Campbell and Bailyn, Ken Winston, and his sales team to find ways to help customers minimize losses on their bond portfolios. In mid 2007, Winston announced new sales assignments that have not been popular with his staff and customers. The Boston office of C & B was the largest office outside of New York. The annual sales of the Boston office were twice that of the next largest office and they were often asked to be the guinea pig for new products and management ideas.

Winston created a group within the taxable bond group in Boston called the “key account team” (KAT). The KAT consisted of five of top sales generalists. The KAT was asked to pool their customers and were each assigned a specialty sub segment of the firm’s product offerings. Senior management has introduced a new performance management system in an effort to force the sales teams to focus on high margin products. However, many members of the sales team had expressed frustration with the new arrangement.

Campbell and Bailyn is one of the five largest investment banks in the world. The Boston office has three fixed income sales groups: money market securities, tax free securities and taxable securities. Before KAT was created, the five generalists within the taxable group each managed their own group of accounts and sold the full menu of fixed income products offered at C&B.

There was an unspoken pecking order within the Boston office. The generalists earned the highest commissions. Generalists had large expense accounts and spent many evenings clients. A top performing generalist could make up to a million dollars in salary and commission combined, while specialist made half that much. The specialists managed smaller accounts. Winston was once the top grossing salesperson in the office, before being promoted to regional sales manager. He considers his main role to support