Talk to your attorney.
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.
Tactically we wonder if leaving them at the competitor at this stage is more useful. Let them work their 'magic' for them full time now.
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.
Tactically we wonder if leaving them at the competitor at this stage is more useful.
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.
> 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
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