Case Report - Worldwide Equipment (china) Ltd

Worldwide Equipment Inc. is one of the largest manufacturers of various types of chillers and refrigerators. After 1996, the market in China of Worldwide encountered the great competition from the local manufacturers and the Joint Ventures in China, who had lower price. Nowadays, there are emerging markets in textile industry, which are low value nature and tends to be more interested in lower price. However, Worldwide's products are expensive, which forces them to emphasize on their low operating cost.

Beijing office is in the embarrassing position now, because the sales performance ranks the last position in the three sales offices in China, while they used to ranking the 2nd. Recently, Beijing office just lost some projects in Handan, and these lost further influenced the morale of the sales team.

Frank Wang, the regional sales manager of Beijing office considers the poor sales performance was partly caused by a newly employee, Li Weimin. Wang is also considering whether or not fire Li because his probation would expire in about two weeks. Li is recommended by Edward Yu, Wang's direct boss. According to Yu, Li's uncle is an important role in Jinchuan Fiber, one large potential account of the Guangzhou office. Li did not perform well in the interview. But in order to give Yu's face, Wang hired Li. Additionally, Wang himself got great support from Yu previously, which even made some people doubt about whether Wang deserved what he get. However, there are strong reasons for firing Li Weimin. The Beijing office loses the first Handan project because Li provided the wrong information. And then Li hurt his classmate severely for the information, which mad him (the classmate) determine to doom Worldwide's Equipment. These failures influenced the morale of the sales team in Beijing.

If Wang decided to fire Li, he had better write an email to Yu first, stating the performance of Li and the bad influence Li caused. After Yu's reply, no matter Yu agrees with Wang or not. Wang should hold a meeting with the team. The topic of the meeting is about the sales situation in Beijing, then Wang could quickly pass the news to the team to get their hearts.

If Wang decided not to fire Li, the difficult task is to communicate with his subordinates. He had better not to say about the decision directly, but to point out Li's mistakes seriously, and then add some points on Li's recent improvement. When he communicates with Yu, he should talk about the sacrifice of Beijing office to gain some extra support.