Janice was a great salesperson, even the leading salesperson in Texas. She had been with her relatively small accounting consulting firm for 10 years. The firm was family oriented with their corporate offices in Chicago. They pretty much left Janice totally alone to do whatever she wanted, given she was a top producer. She ran her business like she owned it and everybody was happy.
But over a period of a few months, the corporate office wasn’t giving Janice the consulting support she needed and she got frustrated. She has consistently been earning in the $150,000-$200,000 range every year for the past few years. However, the response time on the part of assigning consultants to her projects got longer and longer and she even lost one deal because corporate didn’t move fast enough.
Janice’s company had been a client of ours and in contacting her to see if they had any job opportunities for any of our candidates, she voiced her frustration regarding the need for consulting support. But, she said that this kind of thing has happened before and she knew how to work around it.
It just so happened that a competitor accounting and finance consulting firm to Janice’s employer had an opening for a salesperson, through us. They are a much larger consulting firm and they take really good care of the deals they sell and pay better than just about any consulting firm of their kind in the country. It is not uncommon for some of their salespeople to earn as much as $400,000 to $500,000 a year.
We mentioned to Janice that this client was actively looking for someone in Dallas and considering the frustration she was going through it might be wise for her to speak with them. We realized that she was not actively looking for a job but the first year earnings with this organization would be somewhere around $300,000, if she performed at the same level. It seemed like a no-brainer.
Janice decided to at least speak to our client. We explained to our client how Janice was not actively looking for a job but showed interest given the consultant support and increase in earnings. They interviewed Janice and absolutely fell in love with her.
Janice had a noncompete contract with her employer. To a certain extent she would have to “start over” with new clients. However, our client was willing to “bridge” her earnings for the first year. It would be relatively easy for her to earn $300,000 the first year and even more the second year.
Our client offered Janice the job, however she decided to stay where she was in order to avoid having to “start over”. By all standards, Janice should have taken this job. There’s really no comparison to the caliber of companies, the amount of support, and obviously the kind of money that she could have earned. We certainly respected her decision.
One of the mysteries of my profession is that we deal with people. And you never know what they’re going to do. Janice may not ever earn the kind of money she could have from our client, however we are certain she’s going to be relatively happy wherever she’s employed.
