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The Executive Life
By: Tama Swan, Associate Editor
Issue: 2009nov
Like most busy professionals, Lynda Gallant, CAS, is just an e-mail away from her colleagues. Whether she’s staying on top of her duties as vice president and sales manager at Pickering, Ontario-based supplier Somcan (UPIC: 7205) or answering member questions as board chair for Promotional Product Professionals of Canada, e-mail lets her stay in touch and juggle her busy schedule.
6:15 am It’s Thursday, so I’m planning to go into the office today. I’m fortunate because I work out of my home office three days a week, and unless something requires my being there on another day, I usually stick to this schedule.
7 am Before going into the kitchen to get breakfast, I log in to see what e-mails have arrived since the night before. Fourteen new ones—I’ll get to them when I arrive at the office.
7:45 am I visit the drive-thru at Tim Hortons (a Canadian tradition for coffee and donuts) and, luckily for me, few cars are waiting, which is amazing. Normally they’re backed up onto the street, so I just know it’s going to be a good day.
With coffee in hand, I drive to the office, which is only a 10-minute drive from my home. And because I’m there relatively early, I get a prime parking space. Parking spaces at our building are a hot commodity.
8 am In the office, I set out my laptop and files on the boardroom table. Since I only come in twice a week, I don’t have an actual office; we need all the space we have for those who are here daily. Being in the boardroom today is a good thing as there will be two meetings here that I can get ready for. I check e-mails again—have another eight to respond to, but two of them will have to wait until later as they require some research before I can respond.
8:30 am Others start arriving in the office, and the buzz begins. Summer used to be a quieter time for us, but this has changed during the last two or three years. The summer months are quite busy, and it makes me wonder what the next few months will bring; if we’re this busy now, it’ll be a crazy fall/winter season. I get my mail from Donna Turnbull in our accounting department, who collects my mail daily. In it is an important piece of information from one of our vendors—a new price list—that I put aside. I’ll have to go through it later to check for changes.
I pop in to say hi to Bev Mugford, our purchaser, who handles merchandise orders for customers. I check on the status of a few backorders for one of my customers. This particular account requires daily input and responses, so Bev and I constantly communicate back and forth regarding various issues related to it.
9:15 am My colleague, Jay Davis, and I sit down and review some key issues. We bounce ideas off one another constantly. I love exchanging ideas with Jay and look forward to these conversations. While we differ in the way we approach certain issues, the goals we share are the same and this is what makes it work. I never know what opportunities will come up during these brief meetings, but they are always interesting. This morning is no exception.
9:40 am I need to get ready for our 10 am meeting with a manufacturer. I review some previous correspondence and make a brief telephone call to someone who had questions regarding Promotional Product Professionals of Canada (PPPC). As this year’s PPPC chair, it’s a juggling act between managing the work load of my full-time Somcan responsibilities and that of the association. Just as I end the phone call, my appointment arrives.
This vendor and I have spoken many times via phone and e-mail, but it’s nice to finally meet him in person. We discuss some possibilities for working together, and Jay joins the meeting. It goes a bit longer than planned but it is a great meeting, and I’m looking forward to moving ahead to see if we can come to an agreement.
11:30 am I check my e-mails and discover there are 28 more messages. I respond quickly to those I can answer easily and make a mental note to respond to the others later today. An issue has arisen in the past few days from another PPPC member, and I take care of it with a phone call.
12 pm I phone Tania Dee, one of our employees who is working from home right now. She is assisting me with pricing and had some questions. I’m thinking it’s probably a good idea to get a quick bite before my 1 pm meeting.
12:20 pm I get in my car to go grab a toasted bagel and head back to the office. It’s a beautiful day outside today, and while it would be nice to sit outside enjoying the sunshine, I head right back to the office to get ready for my next appointment.
Back at the office I check my e-mails again. A couple of minutes later, the first two people arrive for our meeting. Jay and I take this time to review some details with them.
1:05 pm Everyone’s here and the meeting begins. We’ve been growing our business with this particular vendor tremendously, and now we need to talk about stock availability for the last quarter. If our assumptions are correct, our business with this manufacturer will continue to exceed initial targets, and we need to have clear-cut strategies for ensuring we have enough stock available for this fall/winter. Forecasting is a wonderful thing, when it’s done correctly, and we have to try our best to estimate our future needs.
Jay and two others leave the meeting when we complete this particular high-level strategic discussion, but I continue the meeting with the one remaining person. He will coordinate advertising for one of my larger accounts, so we discuss pricing, products, new opportunities, an upcoming tradeshow and other opportunities for possible added revenue. I’m feeling very optimistic about the next quarter after exchanging ideas with him.
After the meeting I review e-mails—another 20 or so in my inbox—and do some research needed to respond to earlier e-mails. I send those replies and begin working on copy and images for my customer. I work closely with the manufacturers to make sure all copy is correct and images are up to date. We’re working to such tight deadlines that I have until 5 pm tomorrow to submit revisions. I’ve finished most of them, but I need one last major vendor to get back to me.
2:50 pm I walk in the door at home and am greeted by Jake, our Labrador retriever. He just turned 11 and is beginning to show signs of aging. We used to go for long walks three times a day, but now we’re fortunate to get in two short walks. I grab his leash and take him out for a short walk, happy to be out on such a beautiful day.
3:10 pm Back at my laptop, I check e-mails and find a response from the last vendor I was waiting on for an answer. I continue working on the spreadsheet confirming prices and items recently selected by my customer. A few have changed since I presented, so I update the sheet and ask Marlene Foucault in the office to send updated spec sheets and images to me so I can submit them by e-mail.
3:45 pm I receive the spec sheets and images and submit to the buyer. Then more e-mails come in, one from a current vendor who has another opportunity for us on merchandise for the home. I check the website to learn more about this product, and after determining it may be a good fit for Somcan, I set up an appointment to see the showroom and plant.
4:20 pm I review the redemption report for the week and check our progress against the original forecast. Next I review the status report that gives the ETAs and shipping information for another customer’s orders. Looks pretty good—nothing really backordered, which is always a good thing.
5:10 pm Check e-mails again, respond to four and begin winding down for the day. My husband, David, will be home soon, so I start thinking about dinner plans.
After David arrives, we enjoy a dinner together comparing our day. My husband is in the tradeshow business, and it’s always amazing to me how many tradeshows there actually are in Toronto.
7:10 pm With dinner complete and the dishes out of the way, I return to my home office to check for e-mails. It’s a habit of mine, one that I wish I could break. Checking e-mails periodically throughout the evening until going to bed is standard procedure for me. So going back and forth from our family room to my home office happens until about 11 pm, when I make my way to bed and read for a few minutes. I love to read, but it’s one of those things that I don’t get much time to do—unless I’m on vacation.
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