Essay Sales and Melissa

Words: 3696
Pages: 15

Description
Written in 2012 by Brenda Ellington Booth and Karen L Cates from Northwestern University, Growing Managers: Moving From Team Member to Team Leader, describes a fictional scenario from the point of view of a newly promoted Sales Manager named Melissa Richardson in a company called ColorTech Greenhouses Inc. Melissa faces an abundance of problems that many new managers are unprepared for. (Ellington Booth & Cates, 2012 Kellogg School of Management) Company Overview-
Located primarily in the southern region of the United States, with its corporate headquarters in Phoenix, ColorTech is a privately held company that grows and supplies annual and perennial flowers to

Very quickly things spiraled out of control for Melissa. She was disrespected in the first meeting by Alex and Sarah, and she did not do anything to address the situation. Melissa coming from Chicago was not accustomed to the culture of the Phoenix office. The greenhouse workers and a lot of the sales team are Hispanic by nature and Spanish was their first language. Melissa has tried to learn Spanish by tape, but could not keep up with the speed that everyone else spoke it at. On multiple occasions the sales reps would speak Spanish in front of her, but Melissa could not follow what they said because they spoke in Spanish. This would upset Melissa and make her feel even more distant from her team.
The Phoenix sales office was not meeting sales expectations, and to makes things even worse there was a fungus in the Columbia Greenhouse cut facility. The only way to remedy this problem was to destroy the stock inside, disinfect the entire facility, and then finally start regrowing all of the cut flowers. This problem caused delays of weeks in orders from new customers, and the potential loss of many clients.
Due to low self efficacy, a lack of support from upper management, not fitting into the culture of the office, and lack of experience as a manager; Melissa failed to successfully transition from team member to team leader. In the end, everything spiraled out of control, with Sarah missing work at least once a week, Gregorio consistently putting up poor