Wendy Peterson

Amanda Gillespie

MBA 612 Tuesday Evening

December 4, 2017

Lorne Thomas

Wendy Peterson

Problem Statement:

Should exception be made to keep Fred (Xing) Wu on the team? Wendy Peterson needs to decide to give into his demands or terminate his employment potentially loosing the Chinese market and the firms largest account.

Hypothesis 1:

While Wu has brought on a large client, he makes special accommodations for them ignoring company structure and protocols regarding accounts.

Wu does not follow company protocol. Once an account has been signed the account is handed over to a service team to handle the accounts day to day needs. Wu not only stayed involved in the accounts  day to day activity, he sold add on services ahead of schedule without management approval. Wu seems to be focused on maintaining his one account and selling add on services versus signing new accounts. Building trust and keeping an open line of communication with an account is one thing but when a single account hinders ability to sign additional accounts there is too much invested. AccountBack has systems in place to keep the company’s competitive advantage between superior software and strong relationships incomparable to off the shelf software.

Hypothesis 2:

Wu does not follow office norms regarding time sent in office, cold call numbers, lunch procedure, or meeting attendance.

One thing AccountBack used that Wu was well versed in before starting with the company was a day to day online sales management tool yet he failed to enter logs regularly and often only would after Wendy brought it up. After months and months Wu was coming up short only offering lunch receipts and promises he was getting close to landing large accounts. Cold calls were a way to generate leads, everyone was responsible for making their own, to date Wu has not made a single call in the office while everyone else does this task daily. Wendy also noted that Wu created his own business cards that he passed to those in the Chinese market. Wu often expressed little value in office conferences or meetings by arriving late or not at all, often claiming to have been in a meeting that he could not get away from or that was much more important that the scheduled company meeting.  

 Hypothesis 3:

Wu was given a special sales goal model, allowed extra time to learn what AccountBack offered, and consideration given in anticipation for possible reluctant executives from the target market.

With typical sales goals expected to be reached within the first three months of employment, Wu was given a break since he lacked knowledge of the product and given more time. Wu did not make any sales until month eight of being with the company. The account Wu was able to land was large enough to surpass his twelve month sales goal, he did not follow the standard for AccountBack. Sales executives often juggle 30 accounts, Wu landed one account with promise to sign three more accounts in the upcoming quarter yet he demands an assistant to handle his administrative tasks. Wendy has been understanding in the fact that Wu is charting into a market yet untapped by AccountBack, allowing more time, and a freedom others do not take Wu has pushed into an uncharted territory.

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