MGM464: Recruitment and Selection Case Study #4: NTL Lemnis

Tomas Quattrochi - 1001533110

1. Analyze the qualities and skill sets required of the B2C sales force at NTL Lemnis and suggest
the qualities necessary for successful salespeople.

▪ Khanna and top management believed that it was crucial for salespeople to have the right
skills in the dynamic and competitive sales environment and that effective leadership was a key
characteristic to facilitate progress and growth. Additionally, NTL Lemnis believed that the most
significant qualities salespeople needed to have to be successful within the organization were
integrity, passion, forward thinking and a “never-say-die” attitude which were described as
qualities embedded in people rather than developed. NTL Lemnis’s goal was to hire salespeople
with the risk skill set and who had the same beliefs as the organization. It would be suggested for
the salespeople to have attributes that would otherwise be influenced with an effective
management control system such as attitude, behaviour, motivation and performance in
attaining desired organizational objectives (Matsuo, 2009). Salespeople should have innovative
passion, creative ability and adaptative behaviour as it can enhance performance by
generating ideas that are new to the market which can create new selling methods that can
solve customer’s problems while enhancing customer satisfaction and have psychological
effects on salespeople by increasing manager loyalty and work involvement as a result of
increased freedom (Matsuo, 2009). Additionally, to perform their job successfully and enhance
customer satisfaction, salespeople should possess certain KSAO’s such as the ability to
communicate to customers quickly, effectively and completely, selling and providing services to
customers over long periods of time, value customers on their efforts as much as it does on
employees, make sure customers perform their roles effectively in a manner that assures that
they receive maximum benefit from their purchases, cope with and respond to changing
organizational needs, customer preferences and market turbulence, etc. (Jones, Brown,
Zoltnters, & Weitz, 2005).

2. What should NTL Lemnis’s recruitment and selection strategies be when hiring for its sales
force? How can you strengthen these?

▪ For recruitment, NTL Lemnis should recruit externally using a career website and by posting job
advertisements across platforms such as indeed, monster, LinkedIn, etc. to raise awareness
about the position, the company culture, benefits and the requirements needed for the position.
Additionally, NTL Lemnis should consider partnering with universities and colleges in the area to
attract and introduce recent graduates to the B2C sales role. Lastly, NTL should consider offering
bonus incentives to employees who refer other candidates to the position which would allow
employees to support the organization by actively acting as recruiters. For the selection
strategies, NTL Lemnis should start the selection process with an initial screening which involves
reviewing candidate applications, resumes and hosting screening interviews. Because NTL
Lemnis is looking for candidates who think like they do taking into account qualities like their
integrity, passion, forward thinking, and perseverance among other attributes, it is important to
get to know the candidate extensively and understand how they function. Candidates that pass
the initial screening would move on to employment testing that involves administering an
aptitude test to measure the candidate’s knowledge of sales, explore their competencies,
personal motivators and behavioral style. A good example of a sales assessment tests for
candidates could be the Tri-Metrix which goes over various sale scenarios and measures the
individual’s knowledge of job skills along with skills that are inherent in the sales position to
prepare and teach candidates how to effectively communicate and interact with end
consumers. Candidates that pass the employment testing move on to the interview phase
where they will take a situational-based and experience-based interview that will assess their
qualifications such as work experience and education by asking questions that assess the
degree to which the applicant possess relevant sales knowledge. In this phase, candidates will
showcase their knowledge and experience of sales by answering questions like “If a customer
has a complaint about a Pharox product, how would you handle the situation to
accommodate him/her and resolve the complaint?” Or “How would you sell this product to a
customer who doesn’t know anything about the product?”. Applicants that pass the interview
phase will have their references reviewed and upon accurate evaluation will receive an offer of
employment to work for the B2C sales role.

▪ The reason why outsourcing is not mentioned as an effective plan is because it would not
comply with the organization’s current state and philosophy. External agencies would fail to hire
individuals that meet NTL’s pre-requisites for success in the sales force role. In this case, the
organization should recruit candidates themselves to make sure that they are each recruited
and selected appropriate emphasizing crucial characteristics such as integrity, personality,
readiness to adapt, passion, etc. This is done to strengthen the recruitment and selection process
as the cost of a bad hire can be extensive weighing as much as five times the bad hire’s salary
and even higher depending on the person’s position in the company, as stated “The current
ethical and legal environment puts an additional burden on sales companies to select the
“right” individuals. And with turnover costs continuing to skyrocket, sales companies can hardly
afford to hire salespeople who make ethical and legal errors and then terminate them. Selecting
and developing sales personnel has always been an important topic” (Jones, Brown, Zoltnters, &
Weitz, 2005).

3. How can NTL Lemnis measure the required size of its field force? What would be a suitable
number of sales employees considering NTL’s context?

▪ To measure the required size of its field force, NTL Lemnis could use an incremental productivity
approach by appointing the minimum number of salespeople, evaluating how they perform by
monitoring income levels and adding more as long as the additional sales revenue is greater
than the additional selling costs. Thus, using this method the cost a sales person is compared to
the additional gain in revenue. Moreover, NTL could get the assistance of SME’s who are experts
and most knowledgeable about how the job is performed. Using this approach, SME’s can give
an educated estimate of the right number of salespeople required for the role while also
educating the company on how the position should be structured. Lastly, the company could
consider using an arbitrary approach whereby the number of salespeople is randomly or
arbitrarily chosen based on the sales manager’s views, assumptions and prior experience. In the
context of NTL, the organization should use an expert-opinion approach using SMEs to derive the
appropriate number of salespeople since the first approach assumes that revenues will always
be consistent which is rarely the case while the other approach sacrifices accuracy for a biased
estimate that may be completely off from par. Using an expert-opinion approach, an SME may
consider the suitable number of sales employees between 80 – 100 for NTL’s B2C segment. The
reason to overload on salespeople based on the company’s previous decision of 60 is because
in an environment that is becoming increasingly complex, increasing the size of the sales force
may have some positive effect on alleviating workload demands on salespeople given the
information intensity, technology demands, and increasing customer expectations which are
likely to affect salesperson productivity (Jones, Brown, Zoltnters, & Weitz, 2005).

4. What should be NTL Lemnis’s sales force structure for exploring the consumer market?
Generalists or Specialists? Explain your answer by weighing advantages and disadvantages of
each one.
▪ NTL’s sales force structure for exploring the consumer market depends on the organizations’
current business cycle, the size and the type of company. NTL should pursue a generalist
strategy at its initial stages of development when it is experiencing the most decline and where
there isn’t much knowledge required by employees. NTL should use a specialist strategy during
its later stages when it is experiencing growth and where skills like customer service and sales
support is extensively required due to repeated sales activities which drive revenues as
employees at this stage typically become experts at their field, are knowledge about multiple
products and very experience when it comes to selling to customers. NTL being a technology-
based company should use a specialist strategy to better assist customers, provide quality
information and have a much deeper domain of knowledge. Since NTL is considering entering
the B2C market where it directly communicates and interacts with customers, it makes sense to
focus on providing superior customer service and maximizing customer satisfaction by providing
product knowledge and service that goes above and beyond customer’s needs as stated “To
effectively serve customers’ needs with increasingly sophisticated products, services, and
applications, salespeople must become capable orchestrators of organizational resources. They
must be able to appeal to and coordinate the efforts of technical experts and executives in
their organizations to assist in efforts to sell and provide service to customers over long periods of
time” (Jones, Brown, Zoltnters, & Weitz, 2005). The advantages of a specialist approach is that it
can provide customers with extensive, quality information about a product or service but unlike
a generalist approach it only focuses on one aspect rather than an overview of everything
limiting the knowledge on any other type of service or product.

References

Jones, Eli, et al. THE CHANGING ENVIRONMENT OF SELLING AND SALES MANAGEMENT. 2005,
pdfs.semanticscholar.org/36fe/fe839730a6f5633d531608ca449ec15fb145.pdf.

Matsuo, Makoto. “The Influence of Sales Management Control on Innovativeness of Sales

Departments.” Sales Management Association, ResearchGate, Sept. 2009,
salesmanagement.org/resource/the-influence-of-sales-management-control-on-innovativeness-of-
sales-departments/.

Jaideep, S. (2015, April 15). Methods of Determining Sales Force Size (With Illustration). Retrieved
November 25, 2018, from http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/sales/methods-of-determining-sales-
force-size-with-illustration/48681