Preparing to fire Sales Director

Jayhawk · July 2004

We hired a sales director 6 months ago. He was given a verbal offer and told that he had 6 months to make a certain sales quota and this included credit towards the quota for any of the accounts the sales people below him might bring in. He was told he would have a review at the 6 month mark.

During his 6 months he has acquired no new business, has had 2 disciplinary actions (one for a HIPAA violation on a proposal and one for not showing up to work one day and not calling), has abused his company credit card twice (buying alcohol when the company travel policy clearly states this is prohibited) and has not given adequate training to his sales staff.

This director is in his early 50's, is very outspoken, relocated from across the country to take the position (which we paid all of his relocation costs and the first 3 months of his rent) and does not get along well with the president of our company. Any suggestions as to possible problems our company faces when we terminate him next week?

FHR · July 2004

Has all this been documented? If so, none.

Jayhawk · July 2004

The two disc. actions regarding the HIPAA violation and the no-show have been documented at the time they happened and are in his personnel file. We have asked our controller, who has had several conversations with the director regarding his extravagent expenses on his credit card, to write up what the conversations entailed to put in his file as well. I am just concerned that he is in a protected class or a wrongful termination claim. I just want to make sure we have all of our ducks in a row before he goes ballistic when he is fired.

Don D · July 2004

I suggest that this employee will not be at all surprised when he is terminated, in fact he probably expects it. Sales directors are like that. At my last job, three and a half years, I'm sure we went through 15 to 20 sales managers and sales directors and sales VPs. Most were fired for much the same reasons you describe and I don't recall any of them being surprised by being terminated. They move on. He was probably fired for the same reasons before you hired him. The person who made the verbal offer conditioned on performance should document it thoroughly now, if its not already in the file.

When we decided to fire a sales director on the West Coast who was 58 with significant usage of our insurance policy, our attorney advised this and we followed the advice: Call him in now, read him the riot act, covering the conditional offer and lack of production and every other detail in his file. Then give him 45 days to reach a specific business development plan, which he won't do. Tell him now that if he does not, his employment will be terminated. This last chance meeting, well documented, would go a long way toward diffusing any charge. We did precisely that, termed him and never heard again from him. Did the same with a Sales manager in Atlanta and a ton of them at corporate. Quite a few were summarily fired on the spot at corporate for a variety of reasons, some bogus, and none of them ever contested anything. They just move on.

Whirlwind · July 2004

Is being over 50 his only protected class? If so, given that you have documentation of the disciplinary and credit card issues, I don't think you have a problem. It would have been better if you had something that documented the initial agreement about the sales quota so you could prove he didn't meet it, but you can't fix that now. As it stands, I believe your two disciplinary write-ups plus credit card abuse trumps his early-50's status. That doesn't mean he won't attempt to take action, and that it won't be tedious and expensive to defend it; it just means I don't think he'll ultimately prevail.

dchr9203 · July 2004

Being over 50 or "protected" under any other class does not exempt an employee from meeting expectations for performance, standards of conduct, attendance, etc!!!! Its been documentated that he's violated two pretty serious "rules", has a "track record" of unethical behavior (abuse of company finances) and has demonstrated by his own behavior and choices he's not willing to remain employed, just doesn't want to be the one to make the decision. If you're worried about litigation, cover your tale by telling him in no uncertain terms what is expected, give a time frame to meet expections, and add that it is to be continued and ongoing, then hold him accountable. I personally would not waste the time because if he's demonstrating these behaviors this early in his employment relationship, you can bet it'll only get worse as time goes on. I would terminate and count on never hearing from him again. Good luck!

Kiwi · July 2004

I agree with dchr. The fact that you only hired him 6 months ago works in your favor if he would want to claim age discrimination. He was in the protected group when you hired him 6 months ago and moved him at company expense. It would be hard to convince people that the extra 6 months of age turned your company off on him, rather than 6 months of poor performance and rules violations.

Crout · July 2004

The reality is that you can dot all the i's and crosss all the t's and he could still sue your company. All he needs is the filing fee and a made-up story. So the best you can possibly do is put your company in the best position to win such a suit, and that means document, document, document, as advised above. It sounds like you have a solid file on this guy, and as Don said, he'll probably just move on anyway.

TN HR · July 2004

Execute him. ADEA will not hold much water since you hired him, and fired him, at a ripe age anyway. Document what you can, pull the pin on the grenade and lob it. Hunker down and wait for the flak to settle.

I agree with what Don said. Most of these sales weenies will sell themselves to another unsuspecting schmuck and move on.

It goes without saying that the next time you hire anyone at significant cost to the company (relo, temp housing, etc) you should have a formal offer in writing with some sort of performance expectation set forth.

Good luck.

Gene

Preparing to fire Sales Director

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