PPB April 2015

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you’ve got a good supplier. Stick with
them. As far as what you should have
done? There’s not much you could have
done. Sometimes the laws of physics
prevail and we must accept the fact that
we failed. Apologize to your client via a
handwritten note delivered by the
United States Postal Service. It would
be nice if you received the same from
your supplier.
Finally, suppliers have to do better
jobs of communicating with distribu-
tors, and distributors have to do better
jobs of communicating with their
clients on annual event projects and
projects that have fixed-needs dates.
There’s got to be a better way for sup-
pliers to easily, affordably and efficiently
send out reminders to distributors, and
for distributors to send reminders to
their clients.
And for those who simply won’t make
a decision until the last minute? Well,
sometimes everyone will be disappointed.
Rod Brown, CAS
Chief Financial Officer
MadeToOrder, Inc.
UPIC: mto
Losing a sale is one thing, but what
if it cost you your largest account?
What if the order was prepaid and you
lost the money, the sale and the client?
What if there were contingent damages
sought from you by the client because
the missed delivery cost them their
clients? It could be so much worse than
a lost sale, so my suggestion below
needs to be considered as to the appro-
priate level of concern.
If the order and the date were tied
to an important event and absolutely
had to be there on or before a specific
date, I would consider writing into the
purchase order language such as this:
By accepting this purchase order:
“(Vendor’s Legal Name)” represents
and warrants that the order will ship
completely as detailed here via the
specified carrier on or before “(Exact
Date).” Furthermore, if order ships late
for any reason, “(Vendor)” accepts full
financial liability for any expedited
service to be sure complete order
arrives on-hand for the client’s event
“(Exact Date And Time)” and agrees to
a 50-percent reduction in the originally
contracted purchase price. If order does
not ship on time and cannot be deliv-
ered via expedited service, then
“(Vendor)” agrees to waive the costs in
entirety. There is then zero cost for the
order, shipping and set-up costs or
other charges.
By signature here, these terms are
agreed to by “(Vendor Rep Name And
Title)” and that the signatory is duly
authorized to make this representation
and warranty. Any legal costs or fees for
enforcement of above representation
and warranty are to be borne by
“(Vendor).”
The language above may not be per-
fect legal language, but I believe it to be
solid enough to hold up to scrutiny and
enforcement. It may be worth running
the language through a quick legal scrub
as you may be able to use it again. The
real rub here is most vendor partners are
unlikely to accept the language, and you
may have to negotiate a somewhat less
strident but still meaty deal.
In the end, pick great vendor part-
ners, stick with them, give them all the
facts and urgency, and pay them well.
Gary M. Murphy, CAS
President
IMAGE WEST
UPIC: IMAG0007
I would have instructed the supplier
to ship, at their expense, blank merchan-
dise to suffice your deadline. Once they
had ample time to correctly produce
your custom logoed merchandise, have
them ship it to your client at a very
reduced price for you to secure and save
face with your account.
Tom Goos, CAS
President
Image Source, Inc.
UPIC: IMAGESCE
My first action when I get this call
from a supplier is to try to find a solu-
tion that can be done quickly and still
meet the client’s event date. That might
mean switching products or even sup-
pliers to solve the problem. All of the
energy should be focused on solving the
problem for the client first and then
going back and finding out what went
wrong. I assume you did the appropriate
follow-up and had all the order details
into the supplier on time so it was able
to meet your delivery time. I have found
that it many cases we (distributors)
don’t provide critical details to make the
order complete and this causes timelines
to push past the in-hands date. Once
the solution is handled, I would go back
and talk with the supplier to find out
where the order went wrong and work
with their leadership team to make sure
they are aware and that the process
breakdown has been rectified. I would
also work with the supplier to provide
the client with some type of compensa-
tion for missing their event date; it
might be this order or a new project at
50 percent off. You need to win back
the client and resolve the problem with
the supplier partner.
18 • PPB • APRIL 2015 INNOVATE
QA Suppler Asks:
We’d like to increase our in-house inventory levels for some of our most pop-
ular products. This is one of the riskier things a business can do, so how do we
know if we’re ready?
What’s your answer? Email answers along with your name, title and com-
pany name to by April 30 for possible inclusion in an
upcoming issue of PPB magazine.
DO YOU HAVE THE ANSWER?