MINICASE: DIGITAL AGE GAMES

Digital Age Games is a video game publisher that took gaming to a new level in the early 1990s with its well-
known Sack AttackExtreme Football game. Unfortunately, it has not had a popular game title since that time
and is attempting to make a comeback with its new game Drop-KickExtreme Wrestling. However, Digital Age
has found that there is extreme competition for space on retailer shelves, as the top three game publishers
(Digital Age is not one of them) have a 90 percent share of the market and a corresponding share of shelf space.
Therefore, Digital Ages sales group is an area of key concern.

To address this concern, Digital Ages management has hired Shirley Hill, job analysis con- sultant, to conduct a
job analysis of the companys sales positions and give overall advice on how to improve the recruitment process
for those positions.

Shirley began her analysis by doing research on the gaming industry as a whole, reviewing the sales structure
and job descriptions of Digital Ages major competitors and determining goals and objectives of Digital Ages
management. Management told her that it wants to

focus on customer prospecting and product demonstration by increasing in-person sales- person attention (and
therefore, salesperson travel). It also wants employees with gaming knowledge who will better understand product
detail and be able to communicate it to customers.

She spoke at length with the sales managers to determine what the salespeople actually do, as well as which are
high performers and which are low performers. On her office visits with management, she perceived the tension
her presence brought to the sales representa- tives, who were concerned that their jobs may be at stake, so she
spared them and herself by not talking with them directly.

Because the job descriptions had not been updated since 1997, her next order of business was to create a new
description for the sales representative position. Her draft job descrip- tion is as follows:

Sales Representative

The Digital Age Games North American sales organization drives the placement, retail mar- keting, and retail
advertising support for consumer goods in its established retail and dis- tribution channels.

The sales representative must:

Manage U.S. video game distributors and other regional accounts for both video game and PC game
products.
Achieve quarterly sell-in objectives and revenue targets.
Maintain established accounts through regular customer contact in pursuit of follow-on sales.
Provide crisp and consistent feedback/communication to managers and others as required. Selection criteria:
23 years of experience in sales of entertainment products.
Bachelors degree.
Team player who can deal with ambiguity.
Customer serviceoriented.
Strong presentation and communication skills.
Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail. Finally, Shirley made recommendations as to sources
for new sales recruits. Because knowl- edge of gaming and the product is central to the position, she
recommended that the company primarily look to applicants who are existing employees in the company.
Similarly, Shirley reasoned, by advertising positions on the Internet, both on Digital Ages website and other
third-party job sites, Digital Age would attract tech-savvy applicants. Shirley insisted that these two sources
would provide more than enough quality applicants. Shirley was quite satisfied with her analysis and
recommendations, but management has some concerns and has scheduled a feedback meeting with her.