For this assignment, you need to complete the Sales Call Planning Worksheet temp
For this assignment, you need to complete the Sales Call Planning Worksheet template attached herewith using the FedEx Office Case information. You have to assume the role of FedEx Office Sales Representation and you are preparing for an initial sales call with Strategic Training Consultants (STC.). Remember, is an important prospect and represents over $60 in annual revenues.
The worksheet contains four sections. You will complete the worksheet using SPIN questions:
Section 1: Situation Questions: Please write three (3) different situation questions to better understand the STC business situation.
Section 2: Problem Questions: Please write three (3) different problem questions, in order to uncover some of the problems facing STC.
Section 3: Implication Questions: Please write three (3) different implication questions, to help crystalize how FedEx Office solutions would benefit STC.
Section 4: One (1) main FedEx Office solution that would help address one of the Strategic Training Consultants’ Problems
Describe the FedEx Office solution in good detail.
Identify the key features of your proposed solution to STC.
Identify who benefits from the solution and (the company, the employees, the trainers, the trainees, the customer or hiring company) and how they benefit from this solution.
FEDEX OFFICE CASE STUDY
SELLER: FedEx Office
You are an account representative with FedEx Office. Your job is to secure relationships with client organizations. Your company melds the parcel moving capabilities of FedEx with printing and data capabilities. Your customers are businesses that need to distribute information (e.g., training information, product information, manuals) to their clients or internal users. Unlike mainline shipping companies like UPS or FedEx, your employer (FedEx Office) does not move or ship parcels or freight. Instead, your company is in the document processing business and helps clients disseminate data to users. In most cases, the data and information disseminated are non-routine (i.e. specific to a certain product, project, or program). An example would be copying, packaging, and shipping training materials and operating manuals to 64 hospitals and other facilities owned by Trinity Health group.
In addition to printing training manuals, FedEx Office has capabilities to print other material including certificates, banners, flyers, etc. Your employer can even manage direct mail services which are especially attractive for SMEs and startups.
FedEx Office can print, store, disseminate, package, upload, and otherwise prepare documented materials. Its facilities are located in all U.S. cities with populations in excess of 20,000. The firm ships to any location that can be reached by road. Data can be transferred between any of the nearly 2,000 FedEx Office locations. All locations feature printing, binding, and other data packaging capabilities. All locations are served by FedEx pickup and delivery. All FedEx Office locations offer a range of delivery options (next day, same day, two business days) through all major shipping carriers (FedEx, UPS, DHL, USPS.)
FedEx Office can arrange shipping across the world. In some countries, agents of FedEx Office (other firms) engage in delivery of materials. FedEx Office facilities are located only in the United States (all 50 states) and across Canada. However, global expansion is a growth opportunity for the company.
BUYER: STC Strategic Training Consultants (STC)
Strategic Training Consultants contacted you via a telephone call. Strategic Training Consultants is a global training services company that provides an array of packaged training programs to businesses across the United States and in 50 other countries. The company headquarters are in San Diego, CA. It has sub-offices in Dallas, Texas and Atlanta, GA
Strategic Training Consultants has been in business since 2005. Payton Downing and Jordan Johnson started the company as co- founders. Downing focused on developing “Voice of the Customer” program that has enabled Strategic Training Consultants to provide tailored solutions and services to a wide variety of industries including finance, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, logistics, retail and energy. Downing is a professional IT resources trainer and holds several national standards certifications in the IT area. Downing earned an MBA from Rice University.
In 2006, Downing convinced four fellow IT trainers to form a co-operative. The trainers began training IT managers in the technology area. The trainers are contract workers, i.e., not employees of STC. Over the years, Downing and her partners built relationships with trainers from other disciplines (e.g., LMS, Oracle, SAP, QuickBooks, Salesforce and other areas where business often job out training.
Word of mouth and positive experience allowed Downing and the partners to establish an extended network of 400 contractor trainers across the U.S. and Canada. Strategic Training Consultants offers training solutions for more than 25 specific applications.
BUYER SITUATION: Strategic Training Consultants
You have a video conference call with Payton Downing. It lasts for about 40 minutes. During the visit, Downing shares information with you and responds to several questions you ask. The following are notes and observations you log during the visit.
The booking process is as follows:
Clients contact Strategic Training Consultants via the internet or telephone about conducting a training seminar for their staff.
Strategic Training Consultants devises a training plan and generates a bid.
If the bid is accepted by the client, Strategic Training Consultants notifies a trainer or training team (contract workers) and schedules the training session.
Strategic Training Consultants staff confirms the printed materials specifications and any online requirements. (Strategic Training Consultants has learned over time that companies want to provide employees with both electronic and hard copies of all training materials.) Occasionally, the client generates the materials.
The training site is established, and trainees are registered, contacted and sent preparation instructions.
Training takes place on the designated site.
Client/trainees complete a performance evaluation of the STC trainer.
Strategic Training Consultants has 40 full-time employees. 20 (20) full-time staff work at the San Diego office. Twelve (12) full-time staff work at the Dallas office and eight (8) full-time staff work at the Atlanta office. At each office, training materials are prepared from documents proprietary to Strategic Training Consultants. Preparation usually involves customization (e.g., inserting the client’s logo, date, and producing any mandatory materials such as document numbers or certificates).
Strategic Training Consultants produces the materials in the quantities specified by clients, prepares and labels flash drives or other ancillaries, and packages and labels the shipment according to the delivery instructions.
The Strategic Training Consultants full-time staff includes a mix of male/female employees and range in age from 22 to 55. The full-time staff primarily works forty hours per week. All of the full-time staff are capable of running duplication equipment, handling document management tasks, and carrying out other office tasks. One employee at each location, the site manager, handles scheduling and billing of the training seminars. Downing and the original partners select and arrange compensation for the contractors who carry out the training.
Strategic Training Consultants materials ship to training locations via all the major package carriers USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, and others as needed. The training location or hotel holds the materials, and the contract trainer (i.e. not a full-time STC employee) picks them up.
Status of Strategic Training Consultants
Strategic Training Consultants’ revenues have fluctuated over the past few years. Historically, Strategic Training Consultants carried out more than 5,500 seminars per year. Each location dispatched an average of 35 seminars per week over a 50-week training year (fiscal year). Base price for any seminar (net of materials) is $4500. Base price covers a three-day seminar (including trainer travel time). Base price covers training for eight trainees net of materials with an additional $500 for each additional trainee. In 2021, the average seminar serviced 15 trainees.
Strategic Training Consultants has an excellent reputation as a provider of training for human resources, Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, QuickBooks and PeopleSoft. Downing knows that the core of 225 STC contract trainers, who conduct slightly over sixty percent of the classes offered each year, are the key to Strategic Training Consultants’ success. The core trainers average 45 three-day training session per year, 15 or which are billed to Strategic Training Consultants.
Contract trainers are nationally recognized experts in their fields. Most trainers once worked for large corporations (e.g., Oracle, AT&T and Microsoft) and some trainers hold advanced degrees. All trainers hold specific certifications that make the courses acceptable to certification bodies.
In 2021, Strategic Training Consultants ran 5,500 sessions with an average billing of $12,000 per session for a gross revenue of $66 million. The declining revenue in has prompted Strategic Training Consultants to change pricing.
Downing explained that Strategic Training Consultants had cancellations between 2018 and 2021 and conceded that several long-time clients had cancelled training because of delays. One client felt that their trainer was unprepared. “The guy used a white board for the first two days of training. We paid for professional training. I had several trainees complain that they could not follow the material and had to take copious notes by hand.”
Downing elaborated that in that situation the trainer arrived at his hotel on Monday expecting that the training materials would be there. Because of delays in processing at one of the offices, the training materials could not be shipped until late the previous Friday. The training materials arrived Wednesday afternoon—two days into the training. Downing further explained that three of the staff in the office involved were ill due to a flu outbreak —causing a backup in processing. So, the materials were shipped out ASAP to the hotel rather than the training site—the headquarters of a restaurant chain of 50 outlets.
STC lost that the restaurant chain which was doing two annual seminars for the past 10 years as their client. Not only that but Strategic Training Consultants also lost the trainer involved, who was one of the core team members and went to another training company. “That fellow took about $500,000 annual revenue with him,” Downing conceded.
Downing observed that, although Strategic Training Consultants can schedule sessions, it was getting more difficult to prepare materials. Most of the clients – restaurant chains, banks, insurance companies, and certain types of manufacturing companies, were small to mid-size. Therefore, they want Strategic Training Consultants to prepare the training materials rather than having to print, bind, and package the materials themselves. Moreover, newer clients are technology startups who have different training needs altogether such as DEI, Ethics, and Business Conduct. Most of such clients have recently switched to remote work arrangements.
Sometimes the larger companies (clients), for financial reasons choose to prepare the materials themselves and then processing disasters occurred. PowerPoint slides were missing or out of order. Training binders were incomplete or not available. Production of training materials occurred at the last minute which led to misspelled words and format errors. In all cases, trainees assumed it was Strategic Training Consultants’ fault and the contract trainers became very frustrated handling the complaints and receiving poor evaluations for something that they had no control over.
Downing noted that the trainers were responsible for getting the materials onto the training site. That protocol had been in place since the inception of Strategic Training Consultants in 2005. Downing conceded that several of the core trainers were frustrated with having to secure the materials and haul them to the site. One fellow noted that a competing firm shipped direct to the site and texted or called its trainers regarding arrival time and location of materials. Downing conceded that ‘something needs to be done soon or we will be out of business within 6-7 years.”
When asked why Strategic Training Consultants did not ship direct to the training site, Downing sighed and explained that most of the restaurant chains, banks, and manufacturing companies that the trainers deal with have large, extensive facilities. In one case involving a shipment delivery to a manufacturing office, the receptionist lost the shipment with boxes of equipment manuals and mail that had come into the office. The trainer arrived at the corporate conference room, the designated training site. It took 15 telephone calls to the carrier, the human resource department, and the central manufacturing office to locate the training materials. “That is why I hold the trainers accountable for shipping materials.”
When asked if the materials are customized to the client, Downing proudly stated, “You bet. That is a strength of our programs.” Downing then noted that in two cases, the wrong organization name ended up on the materials. Oracle materials prepared for the IT staff at Toyota Motor North America office in Plano, TX were mislabeled with materials to be shipped to the IT staff at the Kubota Tractor Corporation in Grapevine, Texas. Fortunately, the parties saw the irony in that situation.
Downing admitted that “our office staff is well-trained and compensated but still staff productivity is declining.” Sometimes the office staff has family obligations that interrupt attendance at work. However, Downing noted that replacing and training reliable, literate, staff for such positions is expensive. Strategic Training Consultants pays the average staff member $55,000 per year with $20,000 per year in benefits costs. Therefore, staff costs are more than $3 million per year. Downing estimates that replacing a staff member will run closer to $65,000 with $25,000 in benefits and other costs of employment. Last year, Downing paid out $150,000 in overtime bonuses to staff attributable to rush jobs and business flux.
Goals for Strategic Training Consultants
You ask Payton Downing why Strategic Training Consultants seeks to continue in this business considering labor and support problems. Downing notes two main reasons, profitability, and industry growth potentials. He indicated that there is increased demand for outsourced training for technology needs with anticipated growth of 10% per year for the next five years. That’s in the U.S. alone, so globally it’s even higher potential. Moreover, Strategic Training Consultants EBITA has been averaging 8% despite the decline in topline revenues in 2021. “I really need to ramp up our operations and growth,” Downing observes.
So what other problems exist, aside from delivery and preparation issues? Downing indicates that Training Stat Corporation, a company started by a former Strategic Training Consultants contractor, had begun to eke away at Strategic Training Consultants’ client base. Shay Edwards, founder of Training Design Corporation, had lured away several of Strategic Training Consultants’ core trainers with more lucrative compensation and better support. “Oh,” you utter. You ask Downing if Strategic Training Consultants can sue Training Design Corporation for pirating materials. Downing glares at you. “The trainer is the key asset here. Any expert can develop materials. If I sue, core trainers will leave us like there’s a plague.”