Airwide International

Airwide International, while a highly competitive company in the industry of air conditioning, and refrigeration, was unable to maintain the presence they had cultivated for over 30 years. It was imperative that the company close the sales they had initiated, and maintain the customers they had been partners with for years. It is clear from the dialogue that there was improper change management and steady communication errors from upper management. The industry was changing faster than Airwide was able to keep up. With proper change management, Airwide could have seen the changing customer needs; however, due to Airwide's narrow-minded view of the industry as a whole, the company did not adapt to changing customer needs. Additionally, the sales force received limited communication from upper management, which led to overworked sales representatives and declines in sales and customer retention. The company took on a limited scope of the industry by trying to make up for their sales decline with more sales oriented staff, limiting the importance of changing customer needs.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Airwide's focus was far to narrow, rather than viewing the industry as a whole, the company made a push for immediate sales increases rather than customer needs.
• Improper management lead to the companies decline
• Sales driven motivation deterred higher management from focusing on customer current customer relations
• Flexible management and sales representatives need to adapt to the changing industry and customer needs
• The company needs to focus on beating the competition, but in order to achieve this they must meet customer needs better than the competition
• Breakdown in communication between upper management and lower sales representatives led to the inability to achieve changing customer needs
• By not relaying customer needs to sales representatives, the company fell behind in trying to maintain the customer needs
• Maintaining existing customers by meeting their changing needs can, at times, be more important than gathering new customers

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Buyer's Viewpoint
In the case of Airwide International, the buyer is interested in the best services, especially when these services can cost upwards of 5 million dollars. When Airwide fell behind in sales, gathering new customers became a priority (as seen be the increased incentives for the best sales representative), leaving existing customers behind. Their attention focused on finding a service that would meet their needs, leading to these companies leaving Airwide International. Airwide seemed to become more depersonalized, which can eventually lead to pushing customers away.

Seller's Viewpoint
From the sellers point of view, their instruction was to find the most customers interested in their services and close these deals as soon and as often as possible. Customer needs were not communicated, and the sales forces became detached from the customer. Continued incentives only pushed the situation further by making the sales force less personalized and more focused on short-term sales instead of maintaining long-term industry goals by focusing on changes in customer needs.