It seems The Advertiser is getting tighter on changing supply figures and applying a different rule to how they will alter your supply figures week to week.
My understanding is that formerly the 'acceptable' returns rate for The Advertiser was 6% of your sub-agent sales. Now in recent discussions it has been told to me that in general a flat 3% rate will be used on the rounds total supply. On the surface this seems to favour home delivery heavy rounds and make things hard for Sub-Agent heavy ones.
The other point is that they review week to week based only on last weeks sales figures. I don't think I need to explain how short-sighted these sort of reactionary changes can be. One bad day and we are going to be forced to scrape and beg for a decent supply the next week, or rely more heavily on the top-up service.
It should be pretty obvious that Agents have all the incentive in the world to minimalise the amount of returns we handle, and are the ones with the best knowledge of our territories and all its peculiar needs. Its another case of The Advertiser not wanting to trust Agents, or accept that certain area's have external factors that can lead to some significant variance in sales.
We supply some markets that can sell an extra 200+ Sunday Mails when the weather is good, but when it rains we get high returns. left unchecked I know that one wet week is going to ruin the next weeks fair weather, and not only in lost sales but in our sub-agents confidence in us that we are capable agents.
Everyone that has a BP in their territory will also know that there seems to be no shortage of supply for them, and in general I have noticed are consistantly among the highest returners among all our sub-agents. The Advertiser is able to keep supply bumped up to suit their 'prefered' partners it seems.
We get told high returns are a cost issue, and so their answer is simple. Burden the Agent with more administrative costs having to double check and fix supply alterations applied with a formula rather than our own expert knowledge.
As far as I am aware most area managers will look at supply figures on Thursdays. Agents wanting to be proactive will need to set time aside this day to check for any changes and be prepared to contact their area manager to make any alterations.
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I have just been reassured by our area manager that supply changes will more adaptive and take into account the size of the round and the number of sub-agents.
I feel a bit more reassured though I still think the data they use will still create more reactionary changes as opposed to solid changes adjusting to longer term trends.
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