Getting the first repeat order from a new industrial customer

The compressor maker in Pune placed a trial order for two hundred castings, and the parts went three weeks ago. Since then, nothing. A new industrial customer's first order is a test, whether or not anyone calls it one. The second order depends on what the buyer saw. Did delivery match what you said? How did you handle the first problem? Did anyone from your side stay in touch after the truck left? Price got you the trial. These three get you the repeat.

Why the buyer gave you a trial at all

The buyer already had a supplier. You got an order because the incumbent slipped, because your rate was sharper, or because a second source was wanted. Every one of those reasons comes with a watcher inside the plant.

Stores checks whether the count, the packing and the papers matched the purchase order. The quality engineer checks the first pieces harder than later lots. The machine shop or assembly supervisor finds out whether your castings machine cleanly. Accounts sees whether your invoice matched without a query. Nobody tells you what they saw. They tell the purchase officer, who decides whether to risk a second order.

Write down what you promised

During the sale, someone on your side promised things the shop floor never heard. A dispatch date. Pieces per box. A test certificate with every lot, and the heat number punched on each casting. On a trial order, every one of those is checked.

Before production starts, write a one-page promise sheet from the quotation, the purchase order and every email and call. Give it to whoever runs production and dispatch, and have them sign it. If a promise cannot be kept, you find out now, and you can tell the buyer before the buyer finds out.

The first-order file

Run this for every new industrial customer, from the day the PO arrives to the day the second order does.

• Promise sheet signed by production.
• Dispatch date checked against the promise three days ahead. If it will slip, call the purchase officer before the date, not after.
• Papers in the box: test certificate, inspection report, packing list matching the PO lines.
• Receipt confirmed with stores, goods receipt number noted.
• Incoming inspection result asked of the quality engineer, by name.
• A call to the machine shop or assembly supervisor once the first pieces have been used on the line.
• Any rejection answered in writing.
• Invoice raised exactly to the PO, and payment followed up politely on the due date.
• The next requirement asked about: the schedule, sister parts, and how suppliers are rated.

The call to the supervisor is the easiest to skip, and the purchase officer cannot make it for you. A supervisor who says "your castings machined well" to purchase is worth more than your best sales visit.

When something goes wrong on the first lot

Something often goes wrong. A short shipment, a late truck, a few pieces rejected. On a trial order, the problem itself matters less than what you do in the first two days after it.

Replacing the pieces is not enough. The quality engineer needs a written answer to three questions: what went wrong, why, and what you changed so it does not happen again. Many buyers have a corrective action format; ask for theirs and fill it in. If they do not, one page covers it. Send it to the quality engineer and copy the purchase officer, so both have it in the file when the next order is discussed.

A late delivery you warned about is a different event from one the buyer discovers at the gate. The first reads as a supplier in control of a problem. The second reads as a supplier who did not know, or did not say.

For example: castings from Udyambag to a compressor maker

Imagine a foundry in Udyambag, Belagavi, pouring and machining grey iron castings, with a trial order of two hundred housings from a compressor maker in Pune. The details are illustrative.

The castings went four days late, with no warning. The foundry had promised three weeks and knew at the end of the second that a core shortage would delay it. At the buyer's incoming inspection, two housings showed blowholes after machining. The foundry sent two replacements in the next truck and said nothing more. The quality engineer's note read "no response on root cause". The next schedule went to the old supplier.

With its next new customer, the foundry ran the file above. When a delay loomed, the owner called the purchase officer a week ahead with a new date and kept it. When three pieces were rejected, the foundry sent a one-page note within two days. It traced the blowholes to cores that had picked up moisture in the monsoon, and it now bakes cores and uses them the same day. The note also set out how the next fifty pieces had been checked. The owner called the machine shop supervisor after the first lot was machined. That buyer's second order came, for the same quantity, after a gap of three months. The file cost a day a week of the owner's time on the first lot, and it did not guarantee anything.

When the repeat order is not coming

Some trials are never meant to become accounts. You may have been asked only to check the incumbent's rate, or kept as a small second source on purpose. The file above will not change that. Ask the purchase officer plainly: "What share of this part could we earn, and what would it take?" The answer tells you whether to keep investing in the account.

Once the second order comes, the work changes from proving yourself to staying in the conversation when stock runs low. A re-order routine for machined parts covers that stage. The CNC machining page covers how job shops are chosen before that, and the manufacturing hub has the rest.

Open a file for the trial running now

If a trial order is on your shop floor or on the road today, start its file this afternoon. Write the promise sheet from the PO and the emails, and put the inspection call in the diary. For customers already past their trial, tick the boxes honestly; the first one you missed is the habit to fix. If you want a first-order routine built around your own shop floor, see customer retention strategy or tell us what you need.