George is an account manager for a manufacturer of children's toys. His employer recently announced a new product that has rapidly become the hottest item in the entire toy industry. In fact, this new toy is selling to the major chains so well that George was just informed it's now on allocation. It seems his company just can't make them fast enough to fulfill the demand in time for the upcoming consumer holiday buying season.

In order to be fair in how the allocation process is set up, George's employer sends out a survey to each of the account managers asking them to indicate who they had promised the new toy to, and in what quantity. As requested, George sends back the information and later receives an approval which goes on to state that only the accounts listed are guaranteed the new toy in the quantities promised. With this authorization, George lets each of his accounts know exactly what they will receive and that everything will be shipped in time to have inventory for the holiday buying spree.

To his pleasure, all his customers are pleased, except that he must turn away new requests to increase the size of their initial orders. It seems this product is getting hotter by the week, but the factory is already stretched to capacity as it is. Fortunately, all his customers understand this, but thought maybe there was a chance George could pull some strings and squeeze in a few more toys anyway.

About two weeks after confirming everyone's allocations, George gets a phone call from the head buyer of a department store chain that in the past has never purchased much from George's company. The reason stemmed from the fact that this particular buyer used to work for a competitor toy manufacturer and had hard feelings about George's employer for a long time. Anyway, this buyer indicates it's now time to "bury the hatchet" and order a modest quantity of this hot new toy to be delivered as soon as possible. In fact, this buyer even states that he will order an assortment of other toys sold by George's company as an additional incentive to make sure George commits to getting him some of this hot new toy item. George concludes the phone conversation by saying he is sure he can pull off the request.

A very exuberant George calls his sales manager with the great news that he has finally cracked this hold out account, and all it will take is for the sales manager to find some extras of the hot toy item to ship in time for the holidays. But to his displeasure, the sales manager says the only way to get the extra toys is to pull back on orders committed to other account managers, but he is not willing to even consider this. This leaves George with the only option to go back to his regular clients and advise them it's now necessary to cut their previously agreed upon allocations. George knows that his reputation is "on the line" if he does this. But, he also doesn't want to miss the chance to bag a major new client either.

With these facts, what should George do? What options does he have and how should he proceed?

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

George is in a great dilemma whether to shift partial or complete allocations from present account... View the full answer