I have a breakdown in committed action with one of my suppliers. Their organization is very decentralized in their sales management and working relationship with our teams. They give their market leaders a tremendous amount of autonomy to run their states. With that said, we still want to drive certain national initiatives and programs across our entire network.

The breakdown occurred because I thought we were aligned on the timing for all markets to run the program simultaneously to capture the greatest results, synergies and momentum. I just found out yesterday that the supplier lead is now giving his team the flexibility to adjust the initiative launch date with my sales teams.

In reflecting back on our planning conversations, I didn’t ask for his commitment  to hold his states accountable to the national timeline we collectively created.  We agreed to run it, we agreed on a launch month, but I didn’t ask him to  enforce the national nature of the initiative.

Moving forward I need to be even more deliberate in my communication. I need to ask  for commitments back from this supplier on all facets of an initiative, not just general launch dates.

The initiative will still be successful, however, the results will be staggered.

Marc Sachs
Republic National Distributing Company
“The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain proprietary, business-confidential and/or privileged material. If you are not the intended recipient of this message you are hereby notified that any use, review, retransmission, dissemination, distribution, reproduction or any action taken in reliance upon this message is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer.”