Nimble gives Mann severe kicking while he's down Nimble's w-w sales VP Eric Mann resigned abruptly a few days ago and the firm has released an unflattering statement about his departure. "Eric Mann made the personal decision to leave Nimble acknowledging that he underestimated the level of personal and professional commitment required to build and lead a high-performance …
"the level of personal and professional commitment"
1) Failed to respond to an email at 3am from the CEO
2) Could not cope with 22hr work days
3) Refused to work on xmas day
"build and lead a high-performance sales"
1) Did not whip his sales team hard enough
2) Sales team failed to treat customers with sufficient contempt and pressure
(Note, light hearted humour, but with friends in sales, this is not too distant from reality)..
Who knows what happened here but this statement looks unnecessarily severe given he walked.
I've always liked Nimble both for their technology and their purported 'no jerks' culture. It's hard to see how a statement like this fits. I hope Mr Mann bites his tongue on a rebuttal - though not sure I could - lest this degenerate further to the detriment of both parties.
Best to keep schtum and issue a bland 'hey, it didn't work out, whatyagonnado?' press release rather than this IMO...
i am staggered but not surprised by the statement released by Nimble. There is nothing to gain by doing this. If anything this demonstrated an aggressive arrogant culture that is bubbling up through it's Sales teams across the regions.
Eric has had a well respected career and doesn't deserve this kind of public shaming. Shame on you Nimble
Nimble Storage would like to apologize and take the opportunity to clarify and reiterate the facts. Eric Mann is a seasoned sales executive with a proven track record of leading successful sales organizations in the storage industry. Eric made a personal decision to leave Nimble. While his departure is unfortunate, it is in no way reflective of his sales expertise or ability to work well with the sales and executive teams at the Company. We wish Eric well and thank him for his service.
Dan Leary
VP, Marketing
Nimble Storage
Yeah, this is rather salting the wound - just come out and say "an error at PR after writing that piece which was never seen and approved by the mgmt" (wink, wink) and then we will pretend it never happened...
...but this way you are just saying "oh but he's great otherwise, really, he just didn't work for *US* that hard" because you are not saying a word about that awful press release, y'know.
What a thoroughly one sided and unpleasant article. Mr Mellor has outdone himself this time.
Nobody knows what the hell was discussed during those board meetings. Perhaps Mr Mann would like to defend himself before the the vendor reps here jump on the bandwagon. Maybe he didnt feel up to the job. Maybe this is complete truth.
Either way, there is an awful lot of assumption and conjecture in the posts on this thread. Maybe Mr EMC, Mr NetApp, Miss HP and Ms Tegile an Dr Dell would like to reveal themselves.
WTH are you talking about? The statement came directly from Nimble so they were definitely given the opportunity to get their own message out. It seems the fact that they chose to do so in such a juvenile and contemptful manner escapes you.
Maybe Maybe Mr EMC, Mr NetApp, Miss HP, Ms Tegile and Dr Dell will out themselves when Mr Nimble does the same, hypocrite.
(And for the record I have no connection with them or any other Nimble competitor.)
So if he made the decision for the reasons stated in the quotes and those reasons are the truth, whats the issue. If he underestimated the role then why should Nimble be criticised for reporting facts. Lets see what Eric says in his own defense before everyone condemns Nimble. He's Mann enough to defend himself, you know.
"Maybe he didnt feel up to the job. Maybe this is complete truth."
Possibly, but I don't see anyone commenting on the truth or otherwise of the claim. What is disgraceful IMHO is that Nimble made the decision make these comments public.
If I saw a potential employee badmouthing a former employer in public I would not hire them. By the same token, if I see an employer needlessly denigrating a former employee I would not buy from them and definitely would not work for them.
The big difference is that in this case the public airing of dirty laundry is coming from senior leadership within Nimble which makes it orders of magnitude worse than a 'regular' employee displaying sour grapes.
having worked with Eric back in the StorageApps days, and also having followed his career, i highly doubt he lost commitment, ability to commit, leadership, savvy, or anything else. he's a fierce sales machine, and keeping up with him is the challenge for most. my guess is he hasn't fallen from grace that far since I knew him.
thankfully i am content in my current employment, but if i weren't, i wouldn't consider working for a small minded outfit like Nimble.
Disgraceful behaviour from a professional company. Having worked with EMC / HDS / IBM storage for a while, Nimble was beginning to see more publicity surrounding them and vendors partnering with them.
Having seen this I don't think I'd think about using them in future. The "We messed up sorry" from Dan Leary is the icing on the cake.
There is only one explanation for their over-reaction and subsequent retraction.
The wheels are coming off of the bus.
Nimble embracing Fiber Channel connectivity? Imagine if Chipotle never actually turned a profit, but was still as popular as it is right now anyway. Now imagine if one day they said they were getting onto the drive-thru burger and fries business so they could become profitable.
That would NOT be a good omen.
The people running the show don't care. They have become rich. Nimble achieved all of its goals by going public.
You may not like sales people. But when they jump from the decks into the water and swim for shore, you should pay attention.
thought i'd share some observations from the inside of netapp in my limited interaction with eric mann and lots of interaction with his direct team.
1. his organization had become fat, dumb and happy. this was probably one of the reasons why he was made the head of the unified americas geography.
2. he relies on his team... maybe more than he should. as with any sales leader in a large organization, delegation is key. this also means something there is a gap between reality and strategy. perhaps that was one of the challenges with nimble. they are in a very aggressive space and need someone who is more hands on.
3. past experience doesn't mean future performance. netapp reps in americas know this well. they succeeded not because they were good (some were). they succeeded because of what was then superior products (compared to emc and others) and an solution approach to selling -- no thanks to his staff. either nimble might not have the same technical advantages as netapp did in its hey days or it might be constantly being drowned out by competitive noise or both.
4. he's a new yorker. he operates like one. from what i hear nimble is a much more balanced place. culture matters.
5. i wouldn't defend him as he'll be fine. there are far better candidates that are hungry to win. maybe eric is past his prime.
i am not at netapp any more nor do i work at nimble. this is simply my observations. btw kudos to dan to go on the record on a forum post. that's out of the box for sure.
This post has been deleted by its author
Disclaimer: I know people at Nimble, although I don't know Eric. I also have some shares in Nimble, for what it's worth.
Even though I don't know Eric, I would have to believe he is as others have posted - a highly qualified sales executive. There's no way he would have been considered for the VP spot at Nimble otherwise.
I still believe in Nimble, I still believe in the product, and I still believe in the people there. That's why I continue to hold Nimble stock, as I do believe they have a good long road of growth ahead of them.
That being said, now I'm going to be blunt. I feel this is Nimble's first misstep on several fronts, and their executive team needs to figure out how to handle these kinds of things in the future, because I do believe they handled this poorly. Every public company has missteps, so I'm not blaming them for that. What matters is how you recover from them to make sure it doesn't happen again in the future, and on that point I think the Nimble exective team has several items they need to take away from this:
1. Whatever the reason for a new VP's departure so quickly after being hired, the responsibility for hiring an executive VP rests with the CEO. Whatever criteria was used to make a hiring decision were wrong or incomplete. While I applaud them for making the decision to part ways sooner than later if things weren't working out, they need to spend some serious time thinking about what went wrong, and how not to repeat it a second time.
2. If that statement Nimble made is accurate, based on the people I know at Nimble I don't think it was meant to be malicious, however, it did show a lack of good judgement. Whoever gave that statement definitely needs to learn some tact, especially now that Nimble is a public company under a lot more scrutiny from Wall Street, analysts, and the press.
3. I agree with other posters here that the apology they posted was weak. Not so much because of its wording, but because any such apology should have come from the CEO, not the VP of Marketing. Unless Nimble has an org chart that differs from most public companies, a VP of Sales is hired by, and reports to, the CEO, not the VP of Marketing. I think that issuing another statement to clarify a situation regarding a VP of Sales, or issue an apology on behalf of the company, needs to come from the CEO, not somebody in Marketing.
As a shareholder, I'm betting they learn from this, correct the mistakes, and get on with the business of growing the company.
I respectfully disagree. This is a public forum and not an apology channel. Why should the CEO care to appease issues anonymous board flamers have with some guy they never will know outside of the media. Whether Eric felt his reputation took a hit is another story -- outside of the scope of this discussion.
Re: "This is a public forum and not an apology channel."
Then why did their VP of Marketing (Dan Leary) bother posting an apology here, then?
I'm not arguing that a company should or shouldn't post an apology to appease "anonymous board flamers."
I'm arguing that if a company has chosen to respond, and post an apology on a public forum, it should come from the CEO, not the VP of Marketing. Either that, or don't post one at all.
"I respectfully disagree."
Who are you? The CEO? You have been attempting (and failing) to defend the indefensible with your multiple anonymous comments.
However the CEO decides to appease, that is exactly what the CEO should do, since it is a publicly owned company with shareholders, and one of those shareholders has asked for exactly that response.
Are you a shareholder? Or do you work in their Sales team? Shill.
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