Mk401 Case Study Profood Supply Co.

Cody Kolb

Sales Management

MK405

Chapter 2 Assignment

Case 2.1 Write up

Problem or Opportunity:

In case 2.1, Profood Supply Company is trying to push into a new market segment, the hotel/motel restaurant market. One of the company’s sales representatives, Jon Menzes wants to make sure he achieves his sales goals and gets a chance at a promotion in the future. To do this he is trying to add business to this new market, but is having difficulties securing the restaurant business of Sleep Tight Inns because of their current supplier Swanson’s Food Supply. Jon has not been able to convince Sleep Tight Inns to switch suppliers from Swanson’s to Baker Brothers, a wholesaler Profood works with or convince Swanson’s to do business with Profood again.

Alternatives: 

• Jon can wait the 60 days to see if Profood gets approved by SleepTight’s corporate headquarters, but might not achieve his sales goals for this year.
• Jon can continue with his current plan to visit all the Sleep Tight Inns operators with the Baker Brothers salespeople and hope to speed up the approval process.
• Jon can visit the headquarters this time with the Bakers Brothers salespeople to convince them to allow a “foot in the door” by using their new line of products as a gesture of good faith that could down the road allow for future business between the two.

Questions: 

1. .How likely is it that Jon Menzes will be successful in the short term with this strategy?

There isn’t a significant possibility that with most of the possible scenarios listed above that Jon will be successful in the short term. That isn’t to say that it cant happen, but for the most part, neither Sleeptight or Swanson’s has the intention of including Profood in their plans, at least this year. Jon’s best chance would be to visit Sleeptight with Baker Brothers’ sales reps in an attempt to work their way in. If meeting the fiscal goal truly takes top priority than this is your best method, seeing as how the pressure to get the deal done would be too great by allowing 2 months to go by with no guarantee a deal will be struck, and Swanson’s has held firm on their stance to not buy through Profood, at least up until the end of the year.