Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, will meet Irene Rosenfeld, chief executive and chairman of Kraft, to discuss UK jobs tonight, on what is likely to be the eve of Cadbury falling into American ownership.

The American food giant is expected to confirm later today that enough Cadbury shareholders have accepted its £11.4 billion bid for it to de-list the company and start the process of absorbing it into Kraft.

A successful takeover will end the independent heritage of Cadbury, which goes back to 1824.

Cadbury workers, fearing job cuts, are set to lobby the Government this afternoon. Fears have been heightened by the actions of Kraft when it bought Terry’s Chocolate and closed its factory in York.

Ms Rosenfeld and Lord Mandelson will meet in Westminster at around 6.30 tonight. The integration of Cadbury into Kraft, and how many UK jobs will be lost in the process, will be on the agenda.

Although Kraft has not announced how many jobs will go when it gains control of Cadbury, $1.3 billion (£800 million) has been earmarked for restructuring costs, including redundancy payouts.

Lord Mandelson is also likely to ask for assurances that Cadbury chocolate will continue to be made in Britain after the takeover. The company had already started to move some of its production to Poland, and unions are worried that the process will continue under Kraft.

Lord Mandelson will make a statement about the results of the meeting later tonight.

Source : The Times

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Many experts consider the most common mistake made by salespeople to be in their choice of poor prospects. Basically, we fail to distinguish between a ‘suspect’ and a prospect through a proper qualification process.

This leads to all sorts of problems, not least to false expectations and wildly misleading sales forecasts.

Poor prospects

Examples of a poor prospect include:

• the value of the sale is too small or unprofitable – ie, even if we win it, the business does not cover the cost of the sale or is uneconomic to service;
• the sale is too big – it’s a very tempting target but simply too large for our organisation to cope with during the sale process, let alone if we win it;
• the buyer is too polite to say no – the ‘prospect’ may be easier to talk to than other more suitable targets but is never really going to place the business with us.

The latter problem is often a welcome distraction – ‘At least somebody’s talking to me!’ – but, if we get entangled in chasing poor prospects, we tend to use them as an excuse to avoid the  more difficult jobs we should be getting on with

Hence, we all need a sound methodology for qualifying our leads.

Source : CIM

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