How to plan a repeat order before the first one is delivered

Plan the repeat order while you are taking the first one. Ask how long the goods will last, write down the date they will probably run low, and put one check-in a lead-time before that date. Do not wait for the invoice to clear or for the buyer to ring. The check-in belongs at the point of use, when their shelf is emptying, and not at the point of sale, when you feel the relationship is warm.

Why does the second order go to someone else?

Because stock does not run out on the day you remember. It runs out on a Tuesday, in a hurry, and whoever answers the phone first gets the order. If you were not in the buyer's mind that day, you were not in the running.

Many suppliers treat delivery as the end of the job and the next call as a fresh sales call. The buyer sees it the other way round: delivery solved the problem for now, and the call that matters is the one that arrives before the problem comes back.

Is the rhythm a date, a season or an event?

Decide which kind of buyer you have, because each needs a different trigger.

Mixing them up is a common error. Ringing a seasonal buyer every thirty days wastes both your time and their patience.

What do you ask while taking the first order?

Three questions, asked as part of the order and not as a survey.

1. "How long will this quantity last, and when do your own customers buy most?" Get a number of weeks, or a month.
2. "Who decides to reorder, and who actually places it?" In a small shop they are one person. In a bigger firm a clerk raises the order and a manager approves.
3. "What would make you buy this from someone else next time?"

The third feels bold and is the most useful. The answer is usually plain: a late delivery once, a size that was missing, a payment term. Now you know what to protect.

What goes in the reorder record?

Write it on the order record, not in your head.

• Expected low-stock date, from the buyer's own number.
• Check-in date, earlier by your own lead time, so there is time to pack and move.
• One named person who makes the check-in.
• The question to ask, about their stock and never about your order: "How many sizes are left on the shelf?"
• Outcome, always one of three: reordered, not yet (with a new date), or lost (with the reason).

For example: a school-cloth wholesaler in Bhilwara

Imagine a wholesaler in Bhilwara who sells shirting and trouser cloth to tailors that stitch school uniforms. The wholesaler used to ring every tailor about once a month. Some answered kindly and bought a little. Most said "not now".

Nobody had told the wholesaler the pattern. When the question was finally asked, a tailor said, "I buy the cloth for the whole school session in one go, in the weeks before schools reopen. After that I only top up." The monthly calls reached the tailors in the wrong weeks, and in the right weeks a travelling agent got there first.

Each tailor's buying month went on the order sheet, with the check-in set about five weeks ahead (counted back from the opening week: a fortnight for the mill to deliver and cut, a week by road, the rest for the tailor to decide), and rang with one question: "How many metres of grey do you expect to need this session?" Tailors who were ready ordered on the call. Those who were not said why, and the date moved. With invented figures: of 40 tailors, 14 ordered on that call and 9 more within the following weeks, while 6 had already bought from a travelling agent. It was not a clean sweep, but the order book began to follow the school calendar.

What if the buyer buys only when something breaks?

Then there is no date. There is a reason to hold stock. Tell the workshop which three spares fail most often on the machines they run, and suggest keeping one of each.

An add-on belongs at the check-in only if it solves the same problem that caused the first purchase. A related item with no link to it feels like a push and spends trust you were building. The upselling and cross-selling page is the related service.

When is a reorder plan not worth it?

Skip it for a one-off buyer: a wedding order or a single project is finished once delivered. Skip it for a customer you served at a loss, who needs no reminder. Spend the check-in on buyers whose repeat business you want.

If you serve many small buyers, a register with a reorder column is enough. If you serve a few large ones, the check-in is a phone call you make yourself.

Keep the register in front of someone

A date in a register helps only if somebody reads it. Pick a fixed morning each week to look at check-ins due in the next fortnight, and make those calls that day. Record the outcome even when it is "not yet": after a few months that column shows how long your goods really last in each buyer's hands, which is worth more than a forecast.

Your first task is small: for your five biggest buyers, ask the three questions at the next order and fill in the record. Repeat orders sit in the after-the-order stage of the sales process, and if you want the routine set up around your own buyers, customer retention strategy is that work. You can tell us what you need to begin.