Mark's Take: Immediate Action Required 
Hold the phone! This guy has been showing up late to your meetings for six months and you haven't said anything to him yet? That's a problem.
First, don't let problems fester. Now, you're angry, the rest of the staff sees this as special treatment, and you, my friend, in addition to facing market challenges are facing morale issues of your own doing.
Learn from this error and don't let performance issues like this go unheeded.
Next, you should do some self-reflection. What signals are you sending out as a manager to let this person think that they can get away with this? To increase performance, you need structure. There is no question that a disciplined structure in sales approaches, marketing, and management meetings improves performance. This is inarguable. This behavior is unacceptable.
You then need an offline conversation with this person about the offense. The problem with many stores is managers let these problems steep until there is a blow up in front of others. It can be tough to come back from that.
In this offline conversation, the possible responses run the gamut from "the meetings are a waste of time" to "my wife just got a job, it's now my responsibility to get the kids to day care. I'm never going to be able to make an 8:30 meeting."
If it's the former (and trust me, most sales staff meetings are terrible) you should endeavor to make them more valuable (time constraints, save a deal, generalizable solutions to common sales floor dilemmas, staff participation). If it's the latter, I'd put it to the entire sales team: "Hey gang. You've noticed Steve has been late to the last couple of meetings. Because of that he has extra bike pushing duty for the next week. We just can't have that. But what we can have is a reasonable approach to all of your personal lives. He's had a change at home and can't make the meeting. Would you like to vote on whether we should change the meeting time so we can accommodate him?"
This shows that you're not a pushover and are disciplining your top guy. It also shows you're not a complete jerk oblivious to real world situations and problems. You can't do this with every issue, but with this one I would.
Performance Does Have Privileges
Jimmy Johnson, the Super Bowl winning coach of the Dallas Cowboys, once fired third string defensive player John Roper for falling asleep in a staff meeting. Reporters asked later if Jimmy would have cut Troy Aikman for such an offense. Here's what he said:
"I always said there's a different standard for all the players. Every year I told the guys:
'Listen, I'm going to be very consistent. I'm going to treat every one of you differently. A
nd how I treat you depends on:
Do you abide by the rules and regulations?
Do you do what we ask you to do?
And, are you a good player?'
For instance, I said maybe I might cut John Roper for sleeping in a meeting, you know, because he was not a good player, he was late to a lot of meetings and he did things that we didn't want him to. I
f Troy Aikman would have done it -- and he wouldn't have done it -- but if Troy Aikman would've fell asleep in a meeting, I would've disciplined him. I wouldn't have cut him. But I would have disciplined him."
Should you fire your top person? Of course not. But no one is immune from discipline. Period.
Now, go sell something.
