The Listing Isn't the Win. Managing the Buyer Relationship Is.
Most brands treat a Coles or Woolworths listing as the finish line. It isn't. It's the start of a relationship that gets tested, quietly and continuously, every day it isn't actively managed, right up until the next range review decides whether you stay on shelf.
Key Takeaways
A listing is not a guarantee. It's a probationary position that gets reassessed at every range review.
Buyer relationships decay by default once the launch excitement fades, not because anyone decided to neglect them.
The Mandatory Food and Grocery Code gives suppliers formal rights, but it doesn't replace the day-to-day discipline of managing the account.
Brands that survive multiple range review cycles treat account management as infrastructure, not a task someone gets to when they have time.
Neglect compounds. We call this build-up Relationship Debt, and it always comes due.
Relationship Debt: The Framework
Here's a concept worth naming, because it explains something most founders feel but haven't articulated. Relationship Debt is what accumulates when a brand stops actively managing a buyer relationship after the listing goes live. Every missed check-in, every unanswered data request, every promotional slot left unfilled, adds a small amount to a balance nobody's tracking. It doesn't show up anywhere. There's no invoice. It sits quietly until the next range review, when it comes due all at once, usually in the form of a delisting decision that looks sudden but wasn't.
Founders rarely see it coming because the early signals are so mild. A buyer who used to reply within a day now takes a week. A quarterly business review gets pushed twice, then quietly drops off the calendar. None of it feels like a crisis. That's exactly the problem.
Why the Relationship Fades the Moment the PO Clears
Getting ranged takes months of preparation, and most of that effort is front-loaded into the pitch itself. Once purchase orders start flowing, the internal energy that drove the listing effort naturally redirects towards the next opportunity, and the account that took a year to win gets managed reactively, if it's managed at all.
Buyers notice this shift faster than brands realise. A category manager at Coles or Woolworths carries a portfolio that can run into hundreds of SKUs, and the suppliers who get proactive attention are the ones supplying data, insight and support without being chased for it. Everyone else fades into background noise. Given that Woolworths and Coles together account for the overwhelming majority of national supermarket grocery sales, with Woolworths holding 38% of supermarket grocery sales nationally and Coles 29%, there simply aren't enough buyer hours in the system to chase disengaged suppliers. The chasing runs one direction only, and it isn't the buyer's. ACCC
What the Code Changed, and What It Didn't
The Mandatory Food and Grocery Code, in force since April 2025, requires large grocery businesses to deal with suppliers in good faith and to appoint a code mediator suppliers can escalate to. It's a meaningful structural protection, particularly for smaller suppliers who previously had no formal recourse against unilateral contract changes or unexplained delisting. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
What it doesn't do is manage the relationship for you. Good faith is a floor, not a strategy. A buyer acting entirely within the Code can still deprioritise a brand that isn't showing up with data, isn't flagging supply issues early, and isn't making the buyer's own KPIs easier to hit. The Code protects against bad conduct. It has nothing to say about mediocre engagement, and mediocre engagement is what actually costs most brands their shelf space.
Retail Buyer Relationship Management Actually Looks Like After Listing
The brands that hold shelf space across multiple range review cycles run a small number of disciplines consistently, not exhaustively.
They treat the buyer relationship as a live account, not a closed deal. Someone owns it by name, checks in on a set cadence, and shows up to the review with sell-through data already prepared rather than scrambling for it the week before. Coles alone introduced more than 500 products during a single reporting half, which gives some sense of how much competing noise a buyer is filtering through at any given time. A brand that arrives organised isn't just easier to deal with. It's memorable for the right reason. Coles Group
They flag problems before the buyer finds them. A supply delay, a packaging change, a formulation update, all of these land better coming from the supplier first. Buyers forgive disruption. They don't forgive discovering it themselves.
They separate the relationship from the person. Category managers move roles more often than brands plan for, and a relationship built entirely around one buyer's goodwill resets to zero the moment that buyer leaves. The account needs to survive a personnel change, which means the discipline has to live in the process, not in a single relationship.
None of this requires a large team. It requires someone whose job it actually is, rather than a responsibility bolted onto whoever has spare capacity that week.
The Uncomfortable Trade-Off
Most founder-led brands don't lack the will to manage this properly. They lack the bandwidth. Founders are running supply chains, fundraising, and managing cash flow, and the buyer relationship is the thing that gets deprioritised precisely because the consequences take months to surface. By the time a delisting notice lands, the Relationship Debt was accrued long before, and there's rarely enough runway left to repay it before the next review.
This is the exact gap our outsourced account management outsourced account management function was built to close. It functions as embedded infrastructure between listing and review, not a periodic consultant brought in when something's already gone wrong.
FAQ
How often do Coles and Woolworths run range reviews?
Review cycles vary by category and retailer, but most categories are reassessed on a rolling annual or biannual basis. Exact timing is published on each retailer's supplier portal, and brands should know their category's schedule well before the review window opens.
Can a retailer delist a brand without notice under the new Code?
The Mandatory Food and Grocery Code requires large grocery businesses to deal with suppliers in good faith, and grocery supply agreements must be documented in writing. This gives suppliers more visibility and a formal escalation path through a code mediator than existed under the old voluntary code, though it doesn't guarantee a listing will be retained. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
What's the difference between account management and sales?
Sales wins the listing. Account management protects it. They require different skills and different time horizons, which is why the brands that scale successfully tend to separate the two functions rather than asking one person to do both indefinitely.
Is outsourced account management only for brands that can't afford an internal hire?
Not usually. Most brands that use it already have commercial capability internally. They use it because a dedicated, experienced function focused solely on the buyer relationship outperforms a stretched internal resource managing it alongside five other priorities.
What's the first sign a buyer relationship is decaying?
Response times lengthening and scheduled check-ins being pushed without a firm rebooking are usually the earliest signals. Neither looks urgent in the moment, which is precisely why they get missed.
The Listing Was Never the Finish Line
A range review doesn't ask whether your product still deserves shelf space in isolation. It asks whether the relationship behind that product has been worth the buyer's continued attention. Brands that treat the period after listing as passively as the period before it was active usually find out the difference the hard way, at the exact moment it's too late to fix.
If you want an honest read on where your Relationship Debt currently sits, book a strategy call with our team. We'll tell you plainly whether your accounts are in good shape or quietly accruing risk ahead of your next review.
About the Author: Milun Spasov is co-founder of MV Retail Advisory, bringing senior commercial leadership experience across Australia's major retail and FMCG sectors. Read more about Milun and the MVRA team.
