Jive Software Case1. Put yourself in Wilson's shoes when he is first hired. You need to formalize Jive's sales functions. What are the key elements of the sales function that you need to put in place? Jive's sales were brisk and by 2004 were on track to reach $2 million a year. It was no wonder that Jive's customer count reached the 1,000 mark by the end of the year. Then, when Jive moved to Portland from New York because it was cheaper to operate there, Wilson was hired as vice president of sales. He has had more than a decade of experience in start-up software companies. In my opinion, to make the sales functions of Jive clear, first the VP of Jive should set the main goal of how many customers to reach, for example in a period of one year, and the plan for annual sales numbers . I will also hire some representatives in each region to operate more effectively. One of the sales team's major challenges was identifying legitimate customers among the huge number. In this case, as a sales manager, we have to personally contact customers to make them feel that Jive cares about them and then choose the most legitimate ones from the large pool. I will also hire some young sales representatives with different language skills. Because they had problems serving customers with poor English. Sales reps may not be qualified as sales managers, so we can train them. The main thing is language skills. In my opinion, customer focus will influence the improvement of sales.2. Evaluate the strategy of using team or individual coverage/share models. What are the pros and cons of each approach? Suggest an alternative coverage/quota model. In this case study we can see that when Dennis Deveny and Sarah D...... mid-article ...... about John McCracken as the new VP of Sales in quarter 109. What steps should McCracken take to mitigate the problems in sales? With reference to the sales learning curve: adapt the learned sales strategy using the sales learning process which takes place in three phases, each of which requires a different sized sales force with different skills: Initiation: Once the products they have been beta tested and have few potential customers. You should hire three to four salespeople to learn how customers will use the product and to support other parts of the company in refining the offering and marketing and sales strategies. Look for salespeople who: communicate well with teams across other functions, tolerate ambiguity, have a deep interest in product technology, know how to bring customers together with your company's various functional teams, know how to develop their own sales models and material collateral.