There are more customers, but it is unclear which figures to rely on. Imagine a fastener supplier: the salespeople have brought in new buyers, each discussing their order for next month. Then a message arrives saying that building work has been put on hold. The façade company postpones its purchase. The ventilation contractor follows. Then the roofing contractor.
They are different companies, with separate negotiations, and each needs different materials. But they were going to buy them for one site, where work has been delayed.
The owner asks the team to find more customers so that they do not depend on one in future. Yet the report already shows more customers. I would first find out what exactly the sales department counted as growth in its customer base and which orders could stop for the same reason.
Salespeople brought in real buyers. The dependence has not changed
A salesperson met a contractor, supplied the material they needed, got a recommendation and made contact with a neighbouring crew. This brought the company new agreements and money. It makes sense to keep using this way of finding customers as long as the orders are profitable and can be fulfilled.
But this has not yet answered the owner's question about dependence. In the report, each new buyer adds a separate row. Meanwhile, the start date for work and the decision on whether to continue the project remain the same for everyone on the site. If future purchases are waiting for that decision, the new rows do not give the team as many independent sources of orders as the list suggests.
Look at the promised purchases. One contractor's salesperson is waiting for installation to begin. Another contractor's salesperson is waiting for site access. A third contractor's salesperson is waiting for approval of the next stage. The events have different names. The head of sales needs to check whether they can happen independently or whether everyone is waiting for work to resume on one building site.
Buyers are counted by company. Dependence is checked by looking at the event that could stop their orders together.
A shared address does not yet prove that all purchases are linked
It is easy to go to the other extreme here: group together everyone delivering goods to one address and declare them one buyer. The team would then lose the distinctions that are the reason for keeping deals separate in the first place.
A contractor may buy fasteners for several sites at once. Part of the batch under discussion is needed for the site where work is on hold, and part for repairs elsewhere. Or a tenant in a building already in use may themselves be paying for alterations to the premises, which do not depend on the neighbouring project.
So I would look at the enquiries, the list of items to be supplied and the correspondence about dates. Where will this particular material be used? What has to happen before the order is placed? Which part will the buyer postpone if work stops? If the documents do not show this, the salesperson checks the conditions for the next purchase with their contact. They do not need to uncover the entire history of the contractor's relationship with the client.
The answers may reveal different situations:
- The entire delivery under discussion is needed for one stage that has not yet started — note the dependence it shares with other orders for that stage.
- The enquiry includes materials for different sites — separate the relevant items and do not attribute the whole order to one building site.
- The buyer is buying goods for their own stock and confirms that the purchase will go ahead regardless of specific work — keep it separate.
- The intended use and the condition for the purchase are unknown — record just that. For now, a lack of information is no reason to treat the order as independent.
A salesperson's assurances that a customer is reliable do little to help here. You need an answer about this purchase. Even a reliable contractor may postpone buying material they have nowhere to use yet.
A sales plan for new customers can lead the team to the same building site
The most obvious solution is to set a higher sales plan for bringing in customers. But a salesperson who has already found a way into a site will follow familiar connections. They will get contacts for other contractors and diligently carry out the new task. There will be even more buyers, while dependence on the same project remains.
It would be odd to ban these sales. The team has found a way to attract customers that works. The question is what task it is given next: get more orders from this building site or find purchases that will go ahead if work there stops. The same requirement to expand the customer base can hide different tasks.
In the second case, the head of sales must give the salesperson time to work on other sites or on other purchases by a contractor they already know. And check that there is a separate need there: a specific material, a place to use it and a condition for placing the order. A buyer's promise to invite them to the next site some day does not yet change anything in the sales plan.
Even a limit on the largest customer's share may provide false reassurance. Each individual contractor's share will be small. Meanwhile, the common reason their orders could stop will go unnoticed in the report.
A pause in building work must change how all linked orders are handled
Suppose one salesperson has already received a message that the work has been postponed. Their colleagues continue handling purchases by the other contractors according to the old dates. Every deal record has a next call scheduled; the salespeople have not forgotten anything. But so far this new information has led to a change only in the deal linked to that message.
This is where the head of sales steps in. They find the orders under discussion for the same project and give the salespeople a specific task: check whether the delay has affected their delivery. The buyer may already have ordered the material in advance, moved it to another site or confirmed the purchase for the original date. One message is not enough to remove everything from the sales plan indiscriminately.
By the next review, there should be a clear basis for where each affected order stands: the date has been confirmed, the date has changed, the volume has been reduced or there is still no answer. In the last case, a person remains responsible, with a date set for the next check. The team handles confirmed orders according to the agreements made; talk of a possible pause does not in itself cancel them.
The head of sales shows the owner the total value of the deliveries under discussion that depend on the event and, separately, what has already been established about them. Adding all the revenue from these buyers for last year to that total makes no sense: it describes work already done, while the issue now is what will happen to future orders.
Over a week, check how orders are linked, not how much the customer base has grown
You can start with one project that stands out in the upcoming sales plan. The head of sales gathers the deliveries under discussion for it and checks the intended use of the materials and the conditions for purchase. Unclear items get a note about what is unknown and a task for the salesperson. This does not require rebuilding the entire CRM system.
At the next weekly review, return to the same list. Which purchases really are waiting for a shared event? Which just happen to share an address? Which still have no answer? Separately, check whether new enquiries from this building site have become part of the overall picture or have again become independent rows simply because they came from new companies.
It is easier to check the team's work using a delay that has already happened. The head of sales brings up the first message about it and checks when the team returned to the other linked orders. If there has not yet been a pause affecting the linked orders, you can examine it as a scenario. It will show whether the team can find dependent purchases; how quickly it responds to a real event will remain untested.
There is another side to check in this trial: did the team delay a normal order while looking for all the buyer's connections? The customer must receive the promised answer on time. If the team has stopped issuing agreed invoices while clarifying the future sales plan, the head of sales has added an obstacle where they wanted to remove uncertainty.
After a week, it may turn out that there is no significant shared dependence at all. In that case, there is no need to keep investigating for the sake of a neat diagram. If the dependence is confirmed, that is still no reason to promise to quickly replace those orders with orders from other sites. First, the head of sales must show where such purchases could come from and what work is already under way on them.
The owner decides what dependence they are prepared to accept
A large project can be a deliberate choice for a company. No one is obliged to turn down good orders for the sake of a more balanced list of buyers. The owner decides how far they are willing to rely on this project and how much time and money to allocate to finding other sales.
The head of sales is responsible for ensuring that the decision is based on the actual links between orders. In their daily work, they check what new enquiries are for, return to unknown conditions and change the team's tasks when a shared event has affected several buyers.
At RENTROP, this work is part of “turnkey sales management”. The business development director checks the decisions made by the head of sales: on what basis linked purchases were called independent, what the head of sales did after the first message about a delay and what the salespeople had found out by the set deadline. The choice of projects and the level of risk acceptable for the business remain with the owner.
Start with the upcoming sales plan: have the head of sales show which orders under discussion will stop together if one chosen project is delayed.
There may be more buyers, but dependence on a building site falls only with orders that will go ahead without it.