Cooper Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Bob Marsh

 He was initially rated as a highly sincere, aggressive, enthusiastic fast learner and his references were outstanding.

 He had been working in the retail pharmacy before joining CPI

 For assessing CPI's move of letting Bob Marsh go, we need to identify the reasons for this action and determine if those reasons can be justified.

 John Meredith had rated Bob Marsh's performance as "Below Standard"

 Marsh wasn't responsive to management directives

 He had a tendency to pre-judge customers and promotional programs

 Bill Couch (highly experienced supervisor who was held in high regard) rated Marsh as a well above average detailer and had also assigned him an additional responsibility of overseeing a distributor

 Jim Rathbun who was a young energetic manager expressed his concern in Marsh's inability in introducing new products to physicians, his poor penetration with dentists among other issues. He put Marsh on a 90 day probation where he was given specific goals to achieve failing which his service would be terminated

 By 1990, his then manager Ted Franklin asked him to improve upon all the qualities that he was once hired for

The reason why Bob Marsh could deliver consistent results and build such rapport despite being an organizational misfit has to be studied to know if the mistake was on the part of CPI of Bob. Marsh was operating in his home territory and very clearly he had built a very personal rapport with his customers. He was already a pharmacist and must have leveraged on his existing contacts so much so that irate customers called for him to the company. He was following a self imposed system of "Sales matter, so let me get it howsoever" rule, which cannot be accepted by a company like CPI whose sales force is held in high repute. The highly reputed sales force essentially implies a strong process of recruitment, training and incentives. Bob Marsh might have been leveraging on personal contacts to meet his targets regularly. Therefore, managers who valued outcome more found him more agreeable than those who valued behavior more. In fact he seems to have enough clout to get doctors and pharmacists to write to CPI and complain about his dismissal, even trying to arm-twist the company.