There is probably no control: there is stock in the warehouse, but nothing to sell. Imagine a cable supplier. A customer asks for a particular type of cable to be dispatched. The salesperson checks the available stock and turns them away. The cable is physically in the warehouse, but it is being held for another proposal. That customer is still choosing a supplier. No one has decided how long the company will wait for their decision.
It is easy to see this as a stock shortage: one more customer has come along, and there is nothing to offer them. A request to buy more stock goes to the owner.
I would open the reservation record first. What happened on the customer's side that made this stock unavailable to the rest of the sales team? Perhaps the company really did promise to dispatch it. Or perhaps the salesperson reserved the stock to make negotiations less stressful. That difference matters when deciding whether to buy more stock.
First, check whether the right stock is in the warehouse
The comparison must be for one cable type, the quantity needed and the dispatch date. The total stock in the warehouse proves nothing: a different cable may not suit the customer, and the batch they need may be unavailable because of quality checks. The head of sales will need confirmation from the person responsible for the warehouse. Otherwise, the review will start by blaming a salesperson over stock the company could not have supplied in the first place.
Next, place the enquiry from the customer who was turned away alongside the reservation history for that stock. Establish what the situation was when the customer was turned away. The batch is available today, but yesterday it may have been needed for a confirmed dispatch. Or the reverse: there was no longer a reason for yesterday's reservation, but the stock had still not been made available.
In our example, the cable needed is fit for dispatch. The first salesperson held it back immediately after sending the proposal. The correspondence shows that the customer is still comparing options; they have not asked for the batch to be held for them. A colleague sees only that the stock is unavailable and turns away the next customer.
One salesperson has kept the option of promising availability. The other has already lost the chance to offer the stock. The company has chosen between deals, even though the head of sales has not even considered that choice.
Keeping stock reserved suits the salesperson. The consequences show up in other people's deals
The first salesperson has an understandable motive. If the customer agrees but the cable has been sold by then, negotiations will have to start again. As long as the stock is reserved for their deal, that problem does not arise. Extending the reservation is easier than explaining why they gave the stock to a colleague.
Everything in their deal record may suggest work is progressing: the proposal has been sent, the conversation continues, the next contact is scheduled. Refusals to other customers are in other records. If the head of sales opens each deal separately, they see active work here and a stock shortage there. The connection between them disappears.
That is why I would review each extension alongside new information from the customer. If the customer has clarified the quantity, confirmed when they will decide or asked for the stock to be held until an agreed date, the head of sales has something to base a decision on. If the salesperson has only scheduled their next call, the customer has not confirmed anything new. A task in the calendar does not, by itself, explain why the whole department should keep waiting.
With this problem, a new delivery will give salespeople a little more available stock. But if they can reserve it for every proposal they send and extend reservations without a new reason, the new stock will end up reserved too. Before increasing stock levels, you need to understand how much of the shortage is caused by this particular rule.
An unpaid order can also be a reason to hold stock
Releasing all stock that has not yet been paid for is too simple an answer. The company may have agreed to payment after dispatch. The customer may have confirmed the order and the date they would receive it, and the salesperson may have promised availability until that date. The money has not yet arrived, but the customer's decision and the company's promise are already there.
Provisional reservations are also allowed. For example, the customer needs to complete the approval process, and the company deliberately gives them time. The quantity, waiting period and condition under which the stock can be offered to others again must be clear. A provisional reservation comes at a cost: for that period, the company gives up some other opportunities. It needs to decide in advance when that cost is acceptable.
Review old reservations with no end date particularly carefully. The absence of a date in the records does not prove that nothing was promised to the customer. The salesperson first reconstructs the agreement from the correspondence and checks it with the customer. You cannot quietly release the stock and then discover that the customer was counting on it being dispatched.
If current reservations are confirmed, promises are being kept and there really is nothing to offer the next customer, the concern about stock levels is justified. The head of sales must report these refusals to the owner separately. Managing reservations will not create stock that has already been legitimately promised to others.
A reservation's end date must lead to a decision
You can start with one product group that has both reservations and customers being turned away because of a shortage. The owner, together with the head of sales and the person responsible for the warehouse, sets acceptable conditions: when stock can be held before an order, for how long, which extensions the head of sales can decide on independently and which exceptions they must take back to the owner. Terms for customers remain the company's decision.
Next, each reservation should have a brief answer: which request are we holding the stock for, how much, what evidence justifies the wait, until when, and who decides on an extension. A link to the correspondence is more useful than the salesperson's confident claim that the customer has almost agreed.
Before the deadline, the salesperson gets back to the customer. The head of sales checks the outcome:
- The order is confirmed on the agreed terms — the stock remains reserved for the promised dispatch, and the reason is visible in the records.
- The customer asks for more time and states what still needs to be decided — the head of sales considers an extension within their authority, taking other requests for the stock into account.
- The customer declines — the salesperson passes on the cancellation request under the agreed procedure, and the head of sales checks that the stock has become available.
- There is no reply — the condition for ending the reservation, agreed with the customer in advance, takes effect. If no such condition was agreed, first establish what was promised, then make a decision.
The date can change. But the history must retain the previous deadline, the reason for the extension and who authorised it. If the salesperson simply creates a new reservation in place of the old one, the head of sales loses track of how long the wait has been: the stock can look newly reserved any number of times.
When another enquiry comes in, the salesperson must not immediately turn the customer away just because they see zero available stock. If stock that can be dispatched is held under a provisional reservation, they raise the issue with the head of sales before replying to the customer. The head of sales checks the terms of both deals. This is not permission to take away stock promised to the first customer; it is the point at which the choice between waiting and a new sale must be made explicit.
There needs to be one agreed procedure with the warehouse for changing stock availability. Until the reservation has been removed from the records and availability confirmed, the second customer must not be promised the stock. Otherwise, fixing one loss will create another: two salespeople will promise the same batch.
Return to the same reservations and refusals after a week
For a trial, save the initial list of reservations for the chosen product group: creation date, deadline, reason and quantity. For new enquiries, record what prevented the sale: there is no stock in the warehouse, it is promised for a confirmed order, or it is being held until the customer decides. The general reason for refusal, "out of stock", will once again mix up different constraints.
At the next weekly review, the head of sales must show what happened to reservations whose deadlines have passed. For each, there is a confirmed order, a justified extension or stock that has been made available. An overdue reservation with no decision is a specific oversight by the head of sales. It cannot be treated as dealt with just because the salesperson has been sent a reminder.
Separately, return to enquiries that ran into a reservation. Did the head of sales consider the conflict before the customer was turned away? If the stock was released, was it offered to the waiting customer, and what did they say? Available stock alone does not bring back a lost order.
Check the other side too: did the first customer lose the stock before the promised deadline? If the trial results in fewer refusals but broken promises appear, the rule needs changing. The company has simply moved the loss from one deal to another.
The week may pass without even one clash between two requests. In that case, you can check whether deadlines were met, but you cannot claim that the procedure has already helped sales. And if a new batch arrived during that time, fewer refusals do not yet prove that managing reservations helped. Look at which specific enquiries you were able to take forward because stock was released.
The owner needs to see the reason for the shortage
Instead of a general request to buy more, the head of sales brings an analysis: here, there really was not enough stock for suitable orders; here, it was promised to other customers; and here, it remained reserved after the reason had ceased to apply. The owner can now decide on purchasing and reservation terms without reviewing every extension personally.
At RENTROP, this daily work is part of "turnkey sales management". The head of sales reviews deals and makes sure the agreed decisions are carried out. The business development director checks whether the head of sales returned to disputed reservations and what changed after their intervention. AI helps analyse available data and correspondence; the person responsible for the warehouse confirms actual availability. Decisions on purchases, money and commercial terms remain with the owner.
It is worth bringing one pair to the next review: who was turned away, and which deal the stock they needed was being held for. That will show exactly what the head of sales should have decided before the customer was turned away.
Stock must be reserved on the basis of an agreement with the customer. A salesperson's confidence is not enough.