Walking into the office this morning mentally prepared for a day of promotional planning. I sit down at my desk and immediately get the suggestion of a headache as the pile of returned supplier promotional timings catch my eye. Decide that this calls for an emergency breakfast run to the café before these can be sensibly tackled. Feeling suitably fortified after a bacon roll I begin to wade through the pile. The early suggestion of a headache rapidly escalates into throb behind the eyes as it becomes immediately evident there is an absence of one of our key suppliers plans. This could make the plan a little difficult to complete.
I phone up the supplier concerned and am met with a long silence after I suggest that plans must have got lost in the network somewhere on their way to us. This is never a good sign. I can almost hear the account manager wondering whether it’s possible to pull together the plan in 30 minutes or to ‘fess up that they’ve been forgotten and then wondering which of his team he can legitimately kick. Honesty wins out – he goes off to kick someone then begin work urgently and I go off to quietly head-butt the wall in desperation. Not overly helpful for the development of my fledgling migraine.
I decide that rather then wait for the absent plans to turn up before starting I’ll take an educated guess as to when his preferable timings are so the process of slotting the rest of the program can commence. Not ideal but that’s promotional slotting for you. Time, or slotting for that matter, waits for no man.
By the end of the day my fingers are worn to the bone from making calls to people about what can and can’t be moved to avoid clashes. It’s a small consolation to know that they too are suffering similarly. It’ll still take a few more days of phoning, cajoling and just moving stuff before everyone’s happy, but hell, it’s not a bad start and we’ll get a least a couple of months off before we have to put everyone through this again. In the meantime I might just reissue those key promotional due dates again to ensure that the next time is relatively headache free…
Comments