We’re a small Canadian B2B SaaS company (< 20 people), incorporated in one province, with this employee based in another. They attended trade shows representing the competitor (while claiming they were there on our behalf or calling in sick). They serviced inbound leads for the competitor during our workday, likely used our ZoomInfo subscription for their benefit, and were in a position to divert leads without our knowledge. The list goes on.
We were genuinely on good terms - we liked them, trusted them, and thought we had a solid relationship. The only concerns were performance-related, which we had chalked up to market conditions.
As we were preparing to let them go, they caught wind and rage-quit, with claims of harassment and constructive dismissal.
Fellow founders: What would you do? Move on? Investigate further? Settle? Escalate? Have you dealt with a trusted employee quietly working for a competitor?
brudgers•8mo ago
Maybe focus on the competitor because they have insurance.
Going forward, maybe consider sales a job for the founders because outsourcing sales requires incentivizing solely by money and your former salesperson’s behavior is the kind of behavior common when money is the sole motivation.
Hopefully, you still have your shirt even if the sleeves are shorter.
betrayawayed555•8mo ago
It's possible the other company was unaware. Though, we wonder how. The company has an active social media presence and our sales person did as well where they indicated they worked for us.
Agree regarding sales + outsourcing.
brudgers•8mo ago
That might be too clever by half.
It is a big assumption that the other company was less aware than you. Because it makes you feel less taken advantage of, it is particularly attractive.
There’s a reason you have an attorney. It is exactly for situations like this.
It might not be worth substantial legal action. But it also is not worth trying to do what happened to you to another business. Even a competitor.
If you play that game, it is easy to say you deserved what happened.
notahacker•8mo ago
If founders took that approach, they'd never hire anyone to do anything. If anything, salespeople are probably less likely to surreptitiously work for competitors than most jobs, because there's generally as much financial upside to doing a job well as doing two jobs badly, they're much more likely to get found out, and companies fire much faster for underperformance (and are much more likely to involve lawyers if they discover someone is moonlighting for their competitor).
Founders should do sales if they're good at sales and like doing it