Joe Reeka is a senior sales representative for Power Flour, LLC, a supplier of flour to private-label brands in supermarkets as well as to bakeries across Europe. Power Flour has developed a new white flour with a nontraditional bleaching agent, which will allow for the baking of bread products with lower carbohydrates but without a change in taste. Joe feels this new flour product would be ideal to sell to Rising Action Bakery and has sent information on the new flour to its purchasing department.

Rising Action Bakery is a small but growing chain of bakeries in Germany, specializing in “home-baked” premium bread products. Its products are baked at a central bakery and shipped to its retail stores. The management team is quite ethnically diverse including talent recruited from multiple global regions. CEO is Ana Paula Gutierrez, and she has a small senior management team consisting of a production and operations manager, Dawn Chiles; a sales and marketing manager, Nimesh Patel; a purchasing manager, Joan Wells; a finance and accounting manager, Matt Simon; and a store coordination manager, Dan Levy. Each manager leads an assistant manager/coordinator and an executive assistant. Rising Action also has a store manager and staff for each of its 24 retail stores.

Ana Paula and her five managers are meeting to discuss the results of the sales and marketing department’s recent market research study on the future of low-carbohydrate diets. The results indicated that the trend may not continue, but that low-carb bread products would be in high demand for at least the next two to three years. Sales numbers have been down since the rise in popularity of low-carbohydrate diets, and Nimesh is concerned with maintaining, or hopefully increasing, Rising Action’s market share by adding low-carb products to the marketing mix. Dawn’s main concern is to produce the low-carb bread efficiently and without having to purchase new equipment. Dawn’s assistant manager handles determination of quantities for ordering and would be involved with developing the new bread product and determining the type and amount of flour to be used. Matt is concerned that this will be a large investment in a possibly short-lived product and that the forecasted budgets did not anticipate such an outlay for inventory expense.

Joan is worried about purchasing the right amount of flour for the production needs but also keeping within the budgets determined by finance. Further, Joan is bound by Rising Action’s policy of getting three bids on supply purchases. Dan is excited at the prospect of new low-carb products for the retail stores but must make the store managers aware of the changes. The stores would be instrumental in collecting feedback from their customers to determine the success of the new products. Ana Paula trusts the decision making of her management team, but ultimately she is responsible for the new products and especially has a hand in developing recipes that are up to Rising Action’s taste standards.

Joan’s purchasing assistant, Janice, received the written sales information from Joe Reeka of Power Flour about the new low-carb flour and has called him back for further information.

Questions

1. What participants in the organizational buying process can you identify at Rising Action?

2. Whom should Joe contact and get to know at Rising Action Bakery in order to develop the relationship with the company and achieve a sale and why? What types of information would appeal to each participant in the buying process?

3. Why would a relationship selling approach be more effective than a transactional selling approach for Joe and Power Flour?

4. What stages of the buying process can you identify in this case? Explain.