Years ago, one of my clients relayed the following employee horror story relating to one of his top sales people. My client, who was a tech company business owner, received a call late one night (actually early one morning!) from the local police. The policeman he was speaking to let him know that they had responded to an alarm at my client’s place of business. When they arrived, they found a few folks having a “party”. They were in the process of arresting the person responsible and asked my client to come down and identify the person.
My client got out of bed, drove down to his office, and identified HIS TOP SALESPERSON as the ring-leader of this late-night party.
Following are the details of what happened that night…
It ends up that earlier that evening, my client’s TOP SALESPERSON (we’ll call him Bill….although, of course, that’s not his real name) stole a company van, drove downtown, and picked up two prostitutes and a couple cases of beer. He then drove back to the office, opened it up and they got the party started. Unfortunately for Bill, he got too drunk to even realize that he had set off the alarm. When the police arrived to investigate the reason for the alarm, they found Bill and his new friends in the midst of their party!
Well, needless to say, the police broke up this impromptu party and were in the process of arresting Bill. They had him hand-cuffed and were trying to determine who he was and how he had gained access to my client’s office. Bill wasn’t able to explain to the police who he was or how he got in. He was confident though that he should not be arrested. Bill begged the police to call his boss (my client), stating that his boss would be able to identify him and explain how and why Bill should have access to the office. That’s what led to the late-night / early-morning phone call.
Once my client arrived, he was able to explain to the police that Bill was and employee of his, again (and unfortunately for my client) his TOP SALESPERSON. He was eventually able to piece together the reason behind Bill’s abnormal and unacceptable behavior………it turns out that Bill was Bi-Polar and had gone off his meds! My client showed mercy and did not press charges against Bill. However, as you can imagine, this incident did lead to Bill’s termination of employment.
There are several morals to this story, but the most relevant one is that YOU CAN’T RELY ON JUST ONE REALLY GOOD EMPLOYEE BECAUSE YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU MIGHT LOSE THEM.
At my upcoming Boot Camp (www.robinsbigseminar.com) April 14-17 in Nashville, leading Top-Grading consultant Chris Freiburger will cover how to identify, hire, coach and promote “A” players in your business and how to redeploy (or eliminate) B and C players.
Tell me about a horror employee story in your business…
The top 3 horror employee stories posted below by next Friday, February 5th win a copy of Chris Freiburger’s book “Avoid Costly Mis-Hires! Hire 90% High Performers with Topgrading Best Practices”.
