Diagnostic Pattern
"Two of our companies are calling the same customer"
The symptom is real. The cause is usually somewhere else.
Two entities you now own carry the same line, or cover the same geography, and the customer has noticed. It looks like a territory admin problem. It may actually be an unmade decision that is costing margin and, where manufacturers are involved, can put an authorisation at risk.
What you think it is
Two of our companies are calling on the same customer - and the customer has started to notice.
So you circulate a territory spreadsheet, or let them compete on the theory that the best one wins.
What it usually is
A hypothesis to test, not an indictment on you or the team.
Roll-ups create overlap by construction: overlapping line cards, overlapping geography, sometimes both, and the customer experiences it as one company that cannot get its story straight. Left unadjudicated it erodes price, because two of your own entities are the competitive pressure, and it can strain a manufacturer relationship where the authorisation assumes defined coverage. Underneath it is a decision-rights gap: there is no agreed rule for who takes the customer and no one whose job it is to decide.
How to tell
Where do two of our entities carry the same line or cover the same geography - and who decides, today, which one takes the customer?
The move
Map the overlaps once, properly: line by line and postcode by postcode. Write a rule for who takes what and name who adjudicates the exceptions. Then tell the manufacturers what you did before they ask you about it.
You might think this is a territory spreadsheet problem. It may actually be that nobody has the authority to decide, so both keep calling.
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