There is a rather unpleasant practice that I often see happening in my sector and which I believe, unfortunately, is usual practice in almost all industrial sectors. I refer to what happens, in some cases, between the issuing of a quote and the realization of an order.
At MICROingranaggi we usually receive – as I think you can imagine – requests for quotes, which we follow up with detailed quotes. In some cases, however, this quote is then forgotten and those who had requested it don’t even bother to send feedback in response.
Meanwhile, I think it is important to stress that
the processing of these kinds of offers is never immediate; it takes time and resources to carry out all the relevant analysis, and, more often than not, the involvement of third parties (raw material suppliers, for example).
Often, however, the person or company we are dealing with ignores how much time and effort go into the preparation of a quote and, therefore, does not give it the respect it deserves.
But this isn’t the only problem (this is just one issue). The real criticality lies in the fact that some of these companies,
months later, go back to the quote to place an order based on the offer they had received, but without being willing to accept the delivery times updated by the supplier according to the organizational and operational situation at that time,
because the job has suddenly become urgent (exacerbated by the months of silence).
This is unfortunately an attitude that, in my opinion, arises from a fundamental disorganization that some companies have and which, on the one hand, takes the form of a lack of planning of internal activities, and, on the other, the fact of not respecting the work of others.
This practice unfortunately triggers a cascade mechanism such that the seller, in an attempt to meet the demands of that customer, ends up working less well than they would have done otherwise and undoubtedly do so with a less calm approach.
I can understand that sometimes we are in emergency conditions and that there is no other way to proceed but to ask the supplier to work urgently but this can’t happen too often.
I also fear that, once again, part of the cause is due to a cultural approach. As I wrote long ago, in fact, in Italy we are used to negotiating on everything: prices, times, conditions of sale and so on. Always. Regardless of whether there is a real need or not.
The right way – and of course I speak as a supplier – could and should be to stay, as far as possible, on top of our commitments, starting with not making concessions on the times indicated, to avoid ending up shooting ourselves in the foot, and upsetting our already hard-toiling internal organization to satisfy a disorganized customer.
