Question

Charles Lin has just been hired by Frederick Company to replace a sales representative who is retiring after 40 years with the company. The older representative is training Charles on procedures and customers in his territory for three weeks before he retires, and Charles knows this is a huge opportunity to learn about the prospect base. When Charles asks which CRM system the company uses, the older representative says, "Everyone else here uses some computer program called Salesforce, but I won't touch it. I know my customers like the back of my hand! Never needed to write anything down."Charles is concerned. He used Salesforce in college and knows how vital it is to have customer information, sales records, preferences, and conversations recorded. He talks to the sales manager, who tells him the representative's sales were decent, and all his invoices came in, so they left him alone and never forced him to use the CRM system.What are the real-life repercussions of the representative's lack of record-keeping for Charles as he begins his new job?A) Charles' sales will track way behind those of the retiring representative and he will be docked pay and denied promotion because of this.B) Charles is starting from almost scratch developing a prospect and customer base and may lose some current customers because he does not know about them.C) Charles cannot succeed in this new job without customer information and will end up frustrated and doubting his skills.D) Charles does not need any information from the retiring representative anyway as he is supposed to be developing his own prospects and not renewing business with the old representatives' customers anyway.E) Charles was hired deliberately by management because he is young and his career won't be affected by this setback, so they will not give him the support he needs.

Answer 1

The answer is: B) Charles is starting from almost scratch developing a prospect and customer base and may lose some current customers because he does not know about them.

Step-by-step explanation:

Obviously Charles doesn't know the customers the old sales representative had and three weeks may not be enough time for Charles to get to know them and gather enough information about them either.

So basically, Charles is starting from scratch and needs to develop his own customer database. Doing so will consume time and effort, and possibly Charles will lose some sales because of this. Eventually he will need to catch up and probably match and even exceed the previous salesman's sales records.