61 resellers: what wholesale taught me about trust

The first nine essays of this series have been about people working inside the same structure: colleagues, shifts, departments, teams.

This last one is different. I go back to Albania, to a network of people and businesses who were not my employees. They had their own interests, their own decisions and their own responsibilities.

And that is exactly where I learned something that holds for the whole series.

What I have and what I do not

My role as General Sales Manager in the wholesale distribution of household appliances is confirmed. My responsibility was not limited to sales. The work included coordinating sales, the warehouse, accounting, technical service and customer support.

The national B2B network of 61 active resellers, which I built and managed in that role, is confirmed. And the development of that channel was linked to revenue growth of around 30 to 40 per cent. I write that as a link, not as proof that one caused the other.

But for how exactly the resellers placed orders, how often, how transport worked and what the delivery times were, I have no confirmed information. Nor for the number of resellers when I took on the role, the pace of growth, how new partners were found, or how long it took to reach 61. I will not write that I started from zero, or that I added so many partners a month.

Nor do I have a documented case for a ranking of the main difficulties, a specific conflict over payments, stock, deliveries or competition, or the promises and terms I negotiated with a particular reseller.

What remains are the confirmed facts, and the lessons I have drawn from them. I present the second as reflections, not as measured results.

A sale is a whole process

As General Sales Manager, a sale was not just closing an order for me. It was linked to the product being available, to the order being fulfilled, to the financial processes and to the service that came after.

That is why the commercial relationship had to be seen as a whole process. It is the same thought I wrote about in Mistakes get lost between departments: a process does not end when I hand the work over.

A partner is not managed like an employee

An employee works inside an organisational structure, with defined roles and responsibilities.

A reseller is a business of its own. It has its own customers, its own costs, its own priorities and interests.

You cannot run a relationship like that just by giving instructions.

A partner is not managed like an employee. They need a reason to keep working with you.

And when you have 61 relationships like that, you cannot rely only on memory, on your personal relationship with each one, or on fixes in the moment. You have to think about the continuity of the way of working.

A network does not become stable just because it has many partners. It becomes stable when the relationship works even when you are not personally in every conversation.

Trust as clarity and continuity

Trust in a commercial relationship should not depend only on a manager's ability to persuade the other side. It should rest on clarity and continuity.

If I were building a relationship with a reseller today, I would focus on clear expectations, accurate information, communicating problems, and keeping commitments.

I would not promise a result I could not confirm just to secure the order.

It is better to explain a limitation in time than to create an expectation you cannot meet.

What links the resellers to last mile and the hotel

The most important lesson I take from this experience is that cooperation is not built on authority alone.

In Albania I worked with a network of resellers who were not my employees. Later, in last mile in Germany, I worked in an operation that included partner transport companies and drivers who were not all in my direct structure.

They are not identical situations. But they have one thing in common: the result also depends on people over whom you do not have full hierarchical authority.

In those cases it is not enough to say what the goal is. It has to be clear what is expected of each side, how information is exchanged, who carries the responsibility, and what happens when the process does not go to plan.

In the hotel too, where a process can pass between several departments, the same logic holds. You cannot personally control every action. But you can help build a way of working where responsibility and information do not get lost.

Authority can help you make a decision. Trust is what keeps the cooperation going.

The question that links all ten essays

This series began with the first night in a new hotel and with The first 30 days. Then it covered the briefing before the shift, training, escalation, mistakes between departments, KPIs, the conversation after a mistake, teams with many languages, and documenting processes.

Now it ends in Albania, with the 61 resellers.

At first sight, wholesale looks far from Night Audit or last mile. But the question that links them is the same:

Have I built an operation that works as a system, or an operation that depends on my presence?

A manager cannot be the answer to every question, the solution to every problem and the check on every decision. If everything needs their presence, the operation may be active, but it is not yet independent enough.

For me, leadership is not measured only by the results I achieve when I am there. It is also measured by the clarity, the responsibility and the ability of people to carry the work on properly when I am not around.

The partner relationship card

The last tool of the series is for any relationship where the result depends on someone you cannot control: resellers, suppliers, transport companies, other independent partners. Five questions:

1. The shared interest. Why should this partner keep working with me?
2. The expectations. What have we agreed each side will do?
3. The information. How do we find out in time when something is not working?
4. The problems. Who takes responsibility, and how do we act when there is a deviation?
5. The continuity. Does the cooperation work without my daily involvement?

If the answer to the fifth question is “no”, you do not have a network. You have a few relationships that depend on you.

Closing the series

From a network of 61 resellers in Albania to last-mile operations and hotels in Germany, I have worked in different settings, but with one shared challenge: how to organise the work so that the result does not depend on one person alone.

I have learned that documents are not enough without being applied, KPIs are not enough without understanding the causes, and authority is not enough without trust.

A manager has to know when to step in, when to ask for accountability, when to listen, and when to leave people the room to make decisions.

For me, the goal is not to build a team that cannot work without me.

The goal is to build a way of working that keeps running when I am not there.

Because in the end, a manager's value is not how many things pass through their hands, but how well things keep going when they no longer pass through them.