The Drawing Dilemma: When Sales and Design Collide
In the past few days, an interesting incident occurred at our company.
The mechanical designer is constantly arguing with the sales team. What’s the reason? When the sales team communicates with customers, the customers often say, “Let’s see a design drawing first.” So the sales team goes to our mechanical designer—Mr. Zhou (I usually call him “Zhou Sir”—no further explanation, haha)—to have a drawing made. However, there are more than ten salespeople in the company. Even if only one customer per salesperson asks for a drawing in a day, that means ten drawings, leaving Zhou Sir overwhelmed. Moreover, the sales team, regardless of the customer’s likelihood to close the deal, will directly ask Zhou Sir to prepare a drawing as long as the customer requests it. Over time, this leads to frequent arguments over minor issues.
Zhou Sir has requested that the boss hire more staff, but the boss refuses (in fact, to save on labor costs). As a result, Zhou Sir is constantly swamped.
In short, to keep costs down and performance up, the sales team just runs to Zhou Sir for a drawing every time a customer asks, no matter how slim the chance of closing the deal might be. This kind of situation is hard to avoid and can be found, to some extent, in any mechanical company, because it involves the interests of both parties.
What do you all think? In this situation, what should Zhou Sir do?
