Is that a sentence that fills you with dread? As a category manager you may have had this a few times from customers and managers internally. And here’s why it's scary and what you can do to reframe it in your head.
Your recommendation
This means that someone wants you to tell them what you think. They want to know what you think as you are the custodian of the market and customer understanding: you’ll know more than anyone. It’s a massive compliment that someone wants you to tell them what you think they should do, so think about it from that angle.
The dread starts to come in when you begin to consider what needs to be done to get to that recommendation. The reports you will need to pull, the data you need to pick through, the people you might need to try to speak to. It’s the time to get to that answer and the detailed work needed in a short timeframe making this feel difficult.
Close of Play
What does that mean? If someone wants something by close of play they aren’t going to do anything with it today. Their close of play might be different to yours. Close of play to them is when their working day ends. That’s not a point where they’re about to start spending time reviewing something afresh. Close of play also adds to that dread of needing something done by the end of the day on a limited timeline. That timeline might also have important things in for you outside of that request. So what do you do?
The first thing, however annoying it might be, is to prioritise. Is this business and relationship critical? Are other things in the rest of your day less important? Can you clear your diary to get it done? If it's more than is physically possible and the relationship and work is critical, are you able to escalate it and get some more resource to help?
Ask and define
Secondly, ask when they will be needing the information, is there a meeting at midday the next day the requestors real timeline? Then start to define. “If you need this for close of play I will only be able to review (insert sources) to meet this deadline”. Then if you think this could go into the next day “If you can wait until (insert time) I can review (insert list of sources). If the request is internal, then it would be worth outlining what you can’t attend or need to drop to meet the close of play deadline.
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