Stuck at Desire: An ADKAR Assessment of Fourteen Salespeople Before a One-Price Pilot at the Group's Hyundai Store, With a Tactic for Every Gap
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
MGT/526: Managing in a Changing Environment
Week 3 Learning Team Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The dealership group, employees and figures are a composite written for a model paper.
Week 2 found that the dealership group's move to one-price selling will meet resistance rooted in lost income, lost professional identity and doubts created by a past abandoned attempt. Leadership decided to pilot the change at one store before extending it. It chose the Hyundai store, which has 14 salespeople, a sales manager and a finance manager, because its customers skew younger and more comfortable buying online, its general manager supports the change and its size makes the pilot manageable. A pilot at a store where the change is most likely to succeed is not a way of cheating the test; it is a way of learning how to make it succeed elsewhere. This paper applies the ADKAR model to the pilot store.
Why ADKAR for This Stage
The Week 2 analysis paired Kotter's steps, for coordinating all five stores, with ADKAR, for understanding each person. At the pilot stage, the individual view matters most: the pilot succeeds only if 14 particular people change how they work. Hiatt (2006) describes ADKAR as a sequence of five outcomes each person must reach: first seeing why the change is needed, then wanting it, then learning how, then being able to do it in practice and finally having something that keeps the new behavior in place. Because the elements build on one another, the first element where a person scores low, the barrier point, is where effort should go first.
The Assessment
The store's general manager and the group's human resources manager met individually with each salesperson and both managers. Each rated themselves from 1 to 5 on each element, using questions adapted from the model, and the interviewer noted evidence. Scores of 3 or below were treated as gaps.
Awareness
Awareness was high, averaging 4.2. Most salespeople could explain why the group was changing: customers arrive with online price quotes, many dislike negotiating and competitors in the region already post prices. Two newer salespeople were less sure why the change was necessary given the store's strong sales.
Desire
Desire was the clear barrier point, averaging 2.4, with sharp differences. The four highest earners, each making more than $100,000 last year, scored 1 or 2; they expected to lose income and questioned whether the group would follow through. Most of the remaining salespeople scored 3, reflecting the ambivalence identified in Week 2: they liked the idea of a steady salary but doubted leadership's commitment. The sales manager scored 2, unsure what the job would become.
Knowledge
Knowledge averaged 2.8, which was expected since the new process has not yet been taught. Salespeople did not know how the online deal tools would work, how trade-in values would be set or how the bonus would be calculated.
Ability and reinforcement
These could not yet be assessed, since the new process had not begun, but both will need attention once it does.
Tactics for Each Gap
Desire: the pay question
Desire will not rise until the pay question is answered. The new plan pays a base salary of $48,000 and a bonus of up to $30,000 based on unit volume and customer satisfaction scores. For most salespeople, whose recent earnings were between $45,000 and $70,000, this plan offers similar or better pay with less volatility. For the top earners, it is a loss.
The group will offer two protections. First, a transition guarantee: for the first six months, each salesperson will earn the greater of the new plan's pay or 85% of their average monthly pay over the prior year. For a salesperson who earned $118,000, that guarantees about $50,000 over six months. Second, a senior product specialist role, with a base of $62,000 and the same bonus, for up to four salespeople with strong customer satisfaction records, who will also train new hires and handle complex deals.
Desire: credibility
The general manager and the group's president will meet with the pilot team to acknowledge the earlier abandoned attempt, explain what is different this time, including a written commitment to a full six-month pilot, and invite salespeople to help design the process. Cawsey et al. (2020) note that involving people in designing a change builds commitment and surfaces problems early.
Desire: identity
Leaders will take the advice of Bridges (2009) and name what salespeople are losing, the negotiation that many saw as their craft, rather than pretending nothing is lost. The new role will be framed around skills that remain valuable: product expertise, building trust and handling complex trade-ins, where negotiation on the trade-in value remains possible within posted guidelines.
Knowledge
Once desire improves, a two-week training program will teach the new process: the online deal tools, pricing policies, trade-in appraisal rules and the bonus calculation. Two salespeople from the design group will co-lead sessions.
Ability
Coaching on the sales floor during the first month, with daily short reviews of each deal, will help salespeople apply the new process with real customers.
Reinforcement
Weekly recognition of customer satisfaction results, monthly reporting of pilot results to the team and a bonus paid monthly will reinforce the new behavior.
Managers
The sales manager's new role will focus on coaching, managing online leads and monitoring customer satisfaction; the manager will help design the role. The finance manager will present finance products through the online tool with a transparent menu, with pay tied partly to customer satisfaction.
What the Pilot Will Cost
The protections have a cost, and leadership should approve it knowingly. If the four top earners move into senior product specialist roles and earn about $87,000 a year under the new plan at their current volumes, the gap between that and their guarantee of about $100,000 is roughly $13,000 a year each, or about $26,000 for all four over six months. Other salespeople are expected to earn at least as much under the new plan, so the guarantee should cost little for them. Training, floor coaching and the online tools' setup add about $19,000. The total of roughly $45,000 is small compared with the cost of losing even one top salesperson, whose departure would take customers and referrals with them.
Measuring Progress
The ADKAR assessment will be repeated at 30, 90 and 180 days. The pilot will also track units sold, gross profit per vehicle, customer satisfaction scores, time spent in the dealership and salesperson turnover, compared with the previous year and with the other stores.
Conclusion
Applying ADKAR to the pilot store showed that awareness is high but desire is the barrier point, especially for top earners and the sales manager. Addressing desire through a pay transition guarantee, a senior role, visible leadership commitment and honest acknowledgment of what is lost comes first; training, coaching and reinforcement follow. The pilot's results will show whether the change works and how to adapt it for the other stores.
References
Bridges, W. (2009). Managing transitions: Making the most of change (3rd ed.). Da Capo Press.
Cawsey, T. F., Deszca, G., & Ingols, C. (2020). Organizational change: An action-oriented toolkit (4th ed.). SAGE.
Hiatt, J. M. (2006). ADKAR: A model for change in business, government and our community. Prosci Learning Center Publications.
How this MGT 526 Week 3 example is structured
The MGT/526 shelf page describes Week 3 as applying one model to a specific situation, often with a learning team. The paper chooses one model, explains why it fits this stage of the change, then applies it element by element with evidence from the people involved. Tactics are matched to where each group is stuck, because the model's value is in finding the first element that fails and fixing that before moving on. Students search this week as MGT 526 Week 3, MGT526 Wk 3 or MGT/526 Wk 3; all three are the same assignment.
MGT/526 Week 3 questions, answered
What does MGT/526 Week 3 usually ask for?
The MGT/526 shelf describes Week 3 as applying one change model to a specific situation, often as a learning team. Many sections ask students to take a change model and apply it step by step to their chosen organization's change.
What is a barrier point in ADKAR?
The first ADKAR element that scores low for a person or group. Because the elements build in order, progress stalls at the barrier point; working on later elements, such as training, will not help until the earlier gap, such as desire, is addressed.
Why pilot a change at one site first?
A pilot lets an organization test the change, learn what needs adjusting and produce evidence and early wins before asking the whole organization to change. It also limits the damage if something goes wrong.
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