Ethical Question: What would you do? As one of the newer district sales managers for a fast-growing technology company, you’ve asked your salespeople to give you three sales forecasts in their territories for the coming year: (a) optimistic, (b) pessimistic, and (c) most likely. After totaling their three different sales forecasts, you realize that the optimistic forecast will increase sales by nearly 20% in your district, the pessimistic forecast by 10%, and the most likely by about 15%. Your national sales manager has asked each district sales manager to give her their most likely sales forecast for the coming year, so she can assign sales quotas. Your thoughts are that it’s probably best to give her the most pessimistic sales forecast because this should help ensure that she assigns your district a quota that you should easily achieve. If you can exceed your assigned district sales quota by a substantial amount, you’ll probably get a large bonus, and you may even be named district sales manager of the year for your company. You know that your company’s production schedules are based on the annual sales forecasts, but you plan to be very aggressive early in the year in ordering products to make sure you get more than your share for your salespeople before possible inventory shortages come later. You don’t see any personal down side to this strategy
Ethical Question: What would you do?
As one of the newer district sales managers for a fast-growing technology company, you’ve asked your salespeople to give you three sales forecasts in their territories for the coming year: (a) optimistic, (b) pessimistic, and (c) most likely. After totaling their three different sales forecasts, you realize that the optimistic forecast will increase sales by nearly 20% in your district, the pessimistic forecast by 10%, and the most likely by about 15%. Your national sales manager has asked each district sales manager to give her their most likely sales forecast for the coming year, so she can assign sales quotas. Your thoughts are that it’s probably best to give her the most pessimistic sales forecast because this should help ensure that she assigns your district a quota that you should easily achieve. If you can exceed your assigned district sales quota by a substantial amount, you’ll probably get a large bonus, and you may even be named district sales manager of the year for your company. You know that your company’s production schedules are based on the annual sales forecasts, but you plan to be very aggressive early in the year in ordering products to make sure you get more than your share for your salespeople before possible inventory shortages come later. You don’t see any personal down side to this strategy.
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