Roll No.

20PGDM168

Case Study: Jindi Enterprises, Finding a new Sales Manager | Richard Ivey School of Business 903A09-
PDF-ENG

Issue: Jindi company is a manufacturer of heat exchanger units for residential and commercial markets
in China. Recently, the company’s top salesperson Zhou Xun, who is also the marketing director for one
of the company’s regional offices and joined a competitor. So, the case study revolves around finding a
new manager so the upper management must be involved in the process of strategy as it’s considering a
shift to the industrial market and ensure that the recruitment strategy reflects this major change. This is
also a problem as the skillset required to sell industrial heat exchanger units was quite different from
those required to sell residential units.

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Q. What are the following features of the company to be considered for analyzing the case?

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At Jindi Enterprises, the owner Mr. Ma Rui had committed his own time to building connections and

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handling longer term business relationships.

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1. He hired most of the sales professionals from his personal contacts / connections from
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universities with engineering background rather than high school pass outs which costed twice
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as much but the company differentiated itself using this point.

2. Ma also did the training of new sales engineers himself and had professional training firms teach
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selling techniques to the sales engineers. This program was regarded by these engineers as very
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valuable and helpful

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3. Compensation, this is another big factor needed to be kept in mind when analyzing the case, the
sales engineers were paid straight salary plus year end bonus. The sales engineers had rained an
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average of 12% increase per annum in the past few years so the strategy used to hire people
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would take this into consideration that people will be expecting such a salary and foraying into a
new market will maybe put a hold to such practices if it is not profitable.
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Apart from these features of the company and Ma’s practices we must look at the external
environment too like who are they selling to and how?
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4. Selling in the residential market, required the company’s sales professionals to be very outgoing,
the sales process that was followed in Low End Markets (Residential or small Commercial
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buildings) was on Direct Walk In.

Sales engineers had to develop a keen insight into finding the locations for new projects and
after that try to engage in conversation with interior architects and site supervisors. The
negotiating point in this market is the price, delivery time and geographic proximity.

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 5. In the higher end markets, targeted promotions were followed for Sales. In the commercial side
of things this market included buildings and complexes developed by large developers and
investors. As vendors were decided by design firms and architecture firms who take the project
initially. The connections of Ma will come in handy.

Generally, connections, references are a key to get the company’s foot in the door of these
design firms. These design firms also had higher quality standard and would have wanted more
of after sales service and quality assurances.

This all would have required the sales professional to be highly trained, someone who is
trustworthy and can be relied on and loyal.

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Q 2. What technique could be possibly used to find the right candidate?

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Every organization use different techniques for gathering information that reflects an individual’s

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education and experience, skills and abilities, and personal characteristics. My selection criterion would
be based on the technical education and sales experience of the candidate, as these are the foremost

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requirement to explain the technical specifications to the clients.
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1. First step is to review the resume of your candidates strategically:
While it is important to be open-minded about experience and backgrounds, Mr. Ma needs to set of
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strategy of recruitment precisely that the company needs to be clear on the details it won’t compromise
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on.
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Interviewing someone with ten years of sales experience in property dealing when our company is
looking to fill a position as sales manager is probably not going to be successful.
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2. After a review of the resume, we need to evaluate the persons analytical skills:
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Engineering degree develops these skills, but we need to test them for them to have quick learning
curve when dealing with white papers of our HVAC systems. This can be done with a written test for the
candidate, but the company can put less weightage on such a test for senior level candidates and more
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for junior level candidates.

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3. As time is of the essence for this candidate, we need to find someone with experience in a very similar
industry and hire them as soon as possible. So 2 personal interview rounds will be very important for
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such a position and Mr. Ma Rui can appoint juniors to take interviews for new candidates to evaluate
their personal characteristics and their effort toward sales. This can be followed by interviews by Mr. Ma
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In the future we can also use simulation for candidates, given a candidate has crossed the first personal
interview round with Mr. Ma Rui then he can be given a simulated environment and white papers of the

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 HVAC system to prepare over a week, he can come back to the table with a sales pitch and handle the
questions raised by Mr. Ma Rui in an actual process.

This would help him, and the company know if the candidate can handle situations, how he
communicates, and molds situations how does he respond to technical questions about the product.

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https://www.coursehero.com/file/88683007/20PGDM168-HRMpdf/
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