In this month's case study, we consider the conflict between the talented but high-maintenance sales rep and the manager who has had enough
Sean was savouring the day when he could really tell Keith what he thought of him. For four years now Sean had been managing Keith, from junior salesman to his current position as key account manager at Zama Pharmaceuticals.
In that time, Keith had gone from a polite, quietly spoken team player, to what Sean regarded as an egotistical bully. If only he could sack Keith, his problems would be over.
The difficulty for Sean was that the board admired Keith's ability to schmooze clients and win contracts. He put in the extra hours, socialised with the executives and even spent his Saturdays playing golf with the managing director of one of his key accounts.
On paper, Keith was little short of a marvel. His sales record may have levelled off in the last year or so, but it still far exceeded any of his rivals within the firm. He was well liked by clients, largely because of his social skills and out-of-office friendships with them.
Few of the other sales staff could match Keith when it came to late-night carousing with customers and few tried. His rapid rise within the firm was a model for others to follow. From a senior management point of view, there should have been no problems.
However, Sean felt he knew the other side. He believed the rapid career rise had gone to Keith's head. He was young, brash, and becoming something of a braggart around the office. Staff in Sean's operations department had already complained that he treated their work with little more than contempt. His paperwork was usually filed at the last minute and was rarely in order, yet when deals were not processed in time he was the first to call and scream down the phone.
Keith told customers that he was fighting their cause in the administration battlefield back in Zama headquarters, while carrying these "losers" in operations. In some ways this approach endeared him even further to the clients.
Sean had heard Keith disparage the operations staff in a conversation in the canteen some weeks ago, but it had been evident for months that he thought of them as nothing more than paper pushers.
"Without me, you'd be counting paper clips," he retorted when Sean confronted him and told him to watch what he was saying in public.
Keith had also started to bypass Sean and, although he was attending the weekly sales meetings, he did so with clear disdain for those around him. He was now reporting by e-mail directly to the firm's chief executive, Liam.
This week it had come to a head. Falfix, a major account, had complained about late deliveries and approvals. Its managing director, Simon, said this had been going on for several months and he was considering taking its business elsewhere. Simon came down from Dublin to express his frustration to Sean and Keith. Halfway through the meeting, as Sean assured him that Zama's operations team was giving Falfix its highest priority, Keith pointedly interrupted: "About time you took that crowd in hand," he said to Sean. And, smiling at Simon, added: "I'm just glad Falfix is so patient with us". Sean was furious at his junior for telling him off in front of a client.
As Keith left with Simon for one of their regular liquid lunches, Sean decided the time had come to take this matter to human resources.
His problem was that he knew the HR director, Mary, was weak and ineffectual. She was there to organise staff outings, the Christmas party and the like. The really important HR work, such as hiring and firing, was done by Liam, the chief executive, with Mary simply providing the documentation to make it all official.
So that meant persuading Liam directly that there was a problem with Keith. It was not going to be easy. Liam was driven by sales figures and had little patience for the conciliatory world of HR.
His background was in sales, and he had received positive feedback from the clients about Keith. Why would he mess with something that seemed to be working?
Keith had shown that he was more than capable of meeting and beating the firm's sales targets. He had expressed his frustration to Liam about the formulaic approach being adopted in the operations department and the need for greater flexibility. Keith had lost respect for Sean after seeing how mediocre his sales techniques were. To him, Sean lacked any spark of inspiration.
Keith certainly knew how to enjoy himself with clients, but he never missed a morning call and, after all, most of this entertaining was done in his own time.
For Liam, the differences between the two came down to character.
Keith was highly-strung but delivered; Sean was dependable and thorough. Liam knew the differences between the two would come to a head some day, but he hoped to put that off for as long as possible. He could not go to the board and explain that he had let his top salesman go, but neither could he watch the firm's operations department fall asunder, which is what he feared would happen if he lost Sean. There was nobody else in the firm with experience in both fields and the aptitude to manage the mix of sales staff and operations.
Sean suspected that if it came down to a straight choice between him and Keith, his steady if unspectacular sales record would not look good in comparison.
He was an organiser, that's why he had been given the deskbound management job, looking after the sales staff on the road and the sales operations and administration department in the office. In many ways he was a conciliator, a buffer between sales and operations.
But Keith was out of control. He was starting to ignore Sean during meetings, mocking the operations staff and constantly reminding all within earshot that without him their jobs would be on the line.
Sean knew that Keith delivered the bottom-line figures. Yet it was getting to the stage where he hated going into work if he knew that Keith was going to be in the office. He could not go on like this.
What should Sean - and Zama - do to resolve this employee impasse? The experts give their advice
