Bus 520 Assignment 2

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Assignment 2: Joe Salatino, President of Great Northern American Case Study Strayer University Leadership and Organizational Behavior BUS 520 1. Discuss why Joe’s employees need to understand the importance of how people form perceptions and make attributions. Knowing how people form perceptions is critical to anyone in a sales role, especially those in a telemarketing environment like Great Northern American (GNA). Salesmen at GNA don’t get the benefit (positive or negative) of a visual first impression with a client. Their first impression comes in the form of a voice and a message. A customer can’t see the telemarketer’s facial expressions, the way they are dressed, their skin color, etc. Joe’s employees must be able to relate to customers at their level. For instance, the article made mention that “many top-selling salespeople subscribe to their customer’s hometown newspaper so that they can chat with the customer about local issues” (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011, p. 155). This is referred to as impression management. Imagine a “city slicker” telemarketer working out of a cubical at GNA, calling on a client in a small farming community in Iowa, for example. First, the salesman should know something about the current corn and soy bean prices, what pork bellies are used for, and that Iowa’s motto is the Hawkeye state. And once he starts speaking, if he has a pronounced New York accent, for example, he may want to tone it down a bit, so as not to create any undue prejudice that someone might have against a person from the big city. Many people think of telemarketing as a stranger who calls you at dinner time, offering some great gadget or fabulous opportunity, and you say, “I’m not interested,” and that’s the end of the conversation. With a client base like GNA has, they would deal primarily with organizations and businesses that buy in volume and
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