Power Strugle

I need help on how to handle this power struggle. We have a customer that has been bought out by a larger company in the past 3 years. Before they were bought out the managers of the branches called us to come and do work. Also the maintenance manager called us on some of the same branches to do some of the same type of work plus big dollar amount jobs. Please note we know most of these managers from doing the work before they were bought out. Now since the smaller company was bought out we see a power struggle. The branches have tripled and there are 4 or 5 people overseeing the construction and maintenance of these buildings from the corporate headquarters. We have had on more than occasion for a manager to ask us to do some work on their branch and have been told by one of the corporate maintenance managers not to do the work. (Spring Cleanup) Talking to the Branch Manager we stated that we were told not to do the (Spring Cleanup) work by corporate. In reply we were told that ("It is my branch and I will sign the authorization for the work please come and do it") We do not want to cause a (P****** match) between these people. If we go do the work then Corporate will be mad and if we do not do the work than the manager will be mad. We feel we are in the middle and we are going to lose work because of this situtation. We have even considered dropping the account because of it. Our company stands to lose if this doesn't get straightened out right away. How do we approach this without going over anyones head. Do we give up the account or what?

I make make a longer response about other issues later but under the acceptance signature & printed name line on all our contracts it says: "By my signature above I do attest and affirm that I am duly authorized to assume commitment for payment as described above."

One way is saying to the manager that you respect his authority and you are more than willing to do the work if you can get a signed order number from both him and the corporate. Myself soon as I get an order number or some thing is in writing the paints on the ground! Do we give up the account or what? .....not if the account is a big one. Have a look how much they have paid you since you have been doing work for them. We do some large coperate companies that change over managers every so often and come across this same situation, when the account is big and we are getting large amounts of work from them I don't care if I spend a week getting to the bottom of it and sorting it out with them, but I'm not going walk away from 80 or so grand a year. If the client is a small client with small branches that only gets done once in a blue moon then they are costing me too much time sorting the problem out, thats when it's time to say, as soon as your ready please call me I'm more than willing to do the work, but you have in house problems that need to get ironed out first. I'm very straight with my clients, they seem to respect that, than pussy footing about. I'd rather be out quoting or painting, paint on the grounds money in a the bank!

We had a similar situation, and decided to side with the one who had the most authority, in our case it was on the corporate end. When the store level and the corporate end disagree, I tell the store level to contact corporate and work things out, because we need authorization from the corporate end to proceed. One thing to note with just having the store level sign the work order, is that come pay time will that be more of a struggle to get paid? in our case it will hold things up for sure, and as much as 30 days extra.

Send them a price asking for a 50% draft, see if it makes it through corporate and you get half down before starting the job.