أنشئ حسابًا أو سجّل الدخول للانضمام إلى مجتمعك المهني.
I will take recourse to his/her past performance if he/she has been a performer in the past and delivering targets then no reasons to worry I will sit back with him/her and try to understand reasons for his/her failure and work together for a solution.
As ,a sales guy, I k'now what it's feel like , If that person did not reach his/her target then his immediate boss should sit with him and go to root cause . May be market demand was weak due to economic , political or some other factors. May be targets were unrealistic .There are many reasons . So its better to motivate your sales person rather going hard on him . Sales is about patience ,So be patient with your team .
Only if there is Death issue
It depends on the reason they came up with. After investigating, If it is valid then accept it, otherwise they should pay the penalty.
If I have a professional team, any reason they come up with is acceptable if they also come with a compensation plan that is based on their professional analysis of the situation. Even best sales people may face such situations. They may experience ups and downs, but they work on decreasing downs and increasing ups.
But if I notice they didn't learn from it and didn't prepare plan to compensate the shortage, NO reason is acceptable.
Real decline in demand due to the prevailing economic reasons
For achieving a target there can be only one reason but for not achieving the target there are umpteen number of reasons which you can expect from the sales teams. Anything above the human control can be accepted as excuse.
Genuine issues only
health issues only.
If their isnt any change in market dynamics (seasonality, ocassions etc) or in company's strategy and others are achieving their target then there isnt any excuse because sales lost on a day is lost you cant recover it.