personal appointment at 9:00 A.M. the following Monday to discuss his university’s relationship with
Centennial Marketing.
"We Make Your Business Look Good" is the motto of Centennial Marketing, which has over
25 years' experience as a manufacturer of custom-printed specialty products. These products include
customized pens, bags, coffee mugs, hats, t-shirts, key chains, and so forth. Centennial's printing
equipment is sophisticated, with the capability of foil hot stamp (printing method in which pre-dried ink
or foils are transferred to a surface at high temperatures), flexographic (which is essentially a modern
version of letterpress which can be used for printing on almost any type of substance, including plastic,
metallic films, cellophane, and paper.), screen, and digital twenty-colour printing processes.
NUST is one of Centennial's largest customers. In particular, NUST athletic department buys
a wide variety of customized products to promote its various athletic teams. Recently, NUST
purchased a large order of mini-footballs from Centennial. These mini-footballs were imprinted with
the NUST logo and were being passed out by the cheerleaders to fans at all the home football games.
As president of Centennial, Ami Ove rarely became involved in sales calls, and so was
confused as to why JD Van der Merwe would call her. The NUST account was assigned to Jon Jacobs,
who had only been with Centennial for a few months. Before Jacobs, the account had been handled
for over 10 years by Marty Kamati, but was transferred to Jacobs upon Kamati’s retirement.
In the just-finished phone call, Ami Ove could tell Van Der Merwe was angry. "I just don't trust that
new sales guy you assigned to us," Van der Merwe told Ove. "Marty was great—I wish she hadn't
retired. | felt like we were true partners. But Jon Jacobs is always using his high-pressure sales tactics
to sell us what we don't need. The printing on these mini-footballs was not at all what we expected.
Plus, he told us, ‘if we order right-away, we'd get a great deal,’ but | found out that you guys sold the
same footballs to our rivals University of Namibia for 10 percent less!"
This reaction was all very surprising to Ove, who thus far had been impressed with the new
salesperson. In fact, Jacobs's sales performance in his first quarter with the company was especially
strong. Ove explained to Van der Merwe that it was not really appropriate for the company president
to get involved in negotiations between a salesperson and his client. But Van der Merwe absolutely
demanded that the two of them have a face-to-face meeting. "I'll be there at 9 O'clock on Monday
morning!" Ove agreed to the meeting only to end the conversation—and, after all, NUST was one of
Centennial's biggest customers.
Ove wondered what could have gone wrong. She recalled that Jon Jacobs's previous job was in real
estate sales, which was an industry that did not focus as much on maintaining close relationships with
customers. Ove was speculating if Jacobs had received the necessary training in the way Centennial
go about building relationships with their customers.
Ove leaned back in her chair and looked out towards the sky. She wondered how she should handle
this delicate matter.
Questions:
4. | Was it right for Ove to agree to meet with Van der Merwe? Should she invite Jacobs to the meeting?
Why?
(10 marks)