Conference Confusion

Your name is P Smith and you are the Marketing Manager of a company named Reeder. Your boss is Janet Clifton. Reeder is a retailing company specializing in sales of foods and pharmaceutical products that has branches through the country. Its head office, where you work, is in San Jose and its CEO is George Wilkes.

Reeder hired you because you are an ambitious, positive thinker who’ll make things happen. Read each question and consider the suggested courses of action. Then write an email or letter in which you implement the action you feel to be most appropriate.

Spend no more than 90 minutes on this exercise, and record your answers in a word-processing document with each response labeled as follows: “Response to Question 1,” “Response to Question 2,” etc.

Question 1 – Conference Confusion

From: George

Subject: Innovations in Drugs Conference 21st October

I’ve just had a phone conversation with Frank Fielding of Kemiko, who are the major drug manufacturing company organizing the above conference. He tells me that there is going to be a presentation by the manufacturers of Supranine, a revolutionary new drug for hay fever sufferers that has just been approved for sale over the counter by retailers in this country. I’ve read several reviews of this new drug, and it looks set to take a very large share of the overall market.

I feel that the market in hay fever remedies is one that we have never properly got to grips with in this company, and since the size of this sector of the market expands every year, we must do something about this. We also regularly see drug sales plummet in the spring and summer months when cold remedies are not selling – increased sales of hay fever products would help to reduce this.

I’ve arranged a meeting with Karen for the week after the conference to discuss this, but she is on holiday the week before and therefore cannot attend the conference itself. I want you to make sure that you bring back a copy of all handouts relating to this product and any other information that you think we’ll need when coming to our decision as to whether or not to market this product.

What do you do?

A – Attend the conference

B – Send someone else

C – Don’t attend but order material to be sent

Question 2 – Company Car

From: Patel

Subject: Delivery of new company car

I’ve completed final negotiations with the dealer supplying your new company car. They’ll have it ready for pickup between 3 and 5 pm on Thursday, October 21st, so I would be grateful if you could arrange for it to be collected at that time. They have agreed to include the sunroof, remote alarm and the CD player at the price we originally agreed. I’ve also arranged for your old car to be collected from the car park at Head Office on the afternoon of the same day.

Please let me know immediately of any faults that you notice. When we’re paying this amount of money for a car it should be perfect!

What do you do?

A – Collect the car yourself

B – Arrange to collect the car another day

C – Arrange for someone else to collect the car