Accountback Inc. - Appointment of a Personal Sales Assistant to Fred Wu, Sales Executive

AccountBack Inc.

Regional sales office, Plano, Texas

Wendy Peterson

Regional Vice President – Sales

18 Jan 2011

Russel Moore

National Vice President – Sales

AccountBack Inc.

Palo Alto

California

Appointment of a personal sales assistant to Fred Wu, sales executive

Dear Mr. Moore,

In accordance with your request, I have prepared a report on the appointment of a personal sales assistant to Fred Wu, the newest sales executive in the Plano office.

In my report, I have given the circumstances leading to the appointment of the assistant to Wu, the options available to me at the time, and an evaluation of these options against certain criteria. Finally, I have given a brief recommendation and action plan.

I hope this report will help you understand the rationale behind my action.

Thanks and regards,

Wendy Peterson

Regional Vice President – Sales

Situation Analysis

During his annual review, Fred Wu had demanded a personal sales assistant. Initially, I had refused to meet his demand, stating that personal sales assistants were only assigned to executives who handled over 30 accounts. Later in the day, he had approached me in my office and said that one of our competitors had offered him a job, and that he was considering it. The only way to convince him to stay seemed to be to assign him an assistant, and hence, I assigned one to him.

Fred Wu was hired last year with the objective of acquiring fast-growing businesses founded by entrepreneurs from Mainland China in the Plano area. Being an immigrant entrepreneur himself, coupled with his stint as a sales executive with a Chinese manufacturing company, I noticed that Wu had important connections in the Chinese business community in the Dallas and Plano areas. Besides, he is an active member on the board of the Plano Chinese Community Centre and Chinese School.

My confidence in Wu was validated when he signed a $400,000 contract – granted, it was eight months after he was hired, and he missed the revised second-quarter target of $50,000 that was specially assigned to him – but he surpassed his first-year target by over $150,000 dollars, including add-on services that were requested by his account. This contract is also the single largest account held by our office, and has put Wu in contention for sales leadership in the office, whereas other executives, including veterans, booked revenues in that ballpark figure while handling over 20 accounts. However, I had noticed that Wu spent a significant amount of time in maintenance of his account, and I personally felt that he was not pursuing new business – although he has mentioned that he expects to sign three major clients in the next quarter. Further, I had received feedback from the account service manager assigned to this client that Wu requested that he be involved in all meetings and correspondence with the client, and was closely supervising their interactions. Besides this, even the client seemed to prefer interacting with Wu, as he speaks fluent Mandarin, and the client did not speak a word of English in the lunch meeting I had with him after the contract was signed.

Problem Statement

Should Fred Wu’s demand for a sales assistant be met?

Options

1. Assign an assistant to Wu to retain him.
2. Do not assign an assistant to Wu, and lose him to a competitor.
3. Terminate Wu due to incompatibility between his work style and organisation culture.

Criteria for evaluation

1. Current revenue
2. Future revenue
3. Reinforcement of company policy

Evaluation of Options

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The options have been evaluated based on impact on the three criteria. The reasoning is as follows –

1. Option 1 – Assign an assistant to Wu to retain him.

Retaining Wu would have no impact on the current revenue flow of this office, as the contract with the new client was signed just a few months ago, and with the stickiness of our software, it is unlikely that Wu will be able to convince them to move to his new employer in the near future. However, he has mentioned that he expects to sign three large contracts in the next quarter, which would have a negative impact on the future revenue of the company. This will have a negative impact on the company’s policy of assigning assistants only to executives with over 30 accounts, as other executives with a single account of a large size may make the same demand.

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