Delivery is getting delayed, what do I do?

During my frequent interactions with the Frontline & Senior sales managers, many of them ask what to do when they are not able to deliver goods in time. There are complaints like 'Manufacturing / Production' doesn't give priority to their 'urgent' & 'prestigious' orders !

Virtually, every organsation in the world, has faced (& unfortunately will face) problems of late deliveries. Handling angry customers due to delayed deliveries is one of the most important, but a painful task of the concerned sales person.

As an affected Sales Person & an 'Ambassador' representing interests of customer in the organisation's premises & viceversa, what do do you in this unfortunate & sometimes unavoidable situation?

Let's see, what you can do;

# Don't overpromise. When your organisation can’t deliver, it’s many times because; to honor sales person' commitments it requires a sequence of ideal conditions to execute the order. Be careful, what you commit, since your 'slightly' shorter delivery commitment may need disproportionate efforts at the back end !

# Be the first : to know & inform the customer: You should be the first person who should know what's going to go wrong. Develop contacts within your organisation, so that you get early warning signals. If you feel delivery is going to get affected, give the news to your customer well in advance.

# Track critical items in the delivery. The strength of the manufacturing process is decided by the weakest link. Keep track of the critical items.

# You are the one who should take a lead & responsibility. Own up the delay, don't give an excuse by saying "Our manufacturing has problems, I had told this order is very important but still they did'nt deliver in time". As a company’s representative you are responsible for the delay. Customer is not interested in talking to a postman, who merely forwards messages to & fro.

# What do you do after the delivery ? Even if customer is angry, after the delivery make efforts to maintain the relationship. After all when everything being the same between the competitors, next time its the relationship that will make a difference.

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With experience of two decades, read "How we help our clients" to improve business.