Developing strong relationships with your suppliers

Developing strong relationships with your suppliers

Any successful business will strive to bridge the gap between it and its suppliers. Suppliers contribute immensely to the growth and sustenance of any business. Don’t exploit the relationship between you and your suppliers by placing unreasonable demands on them. When you invest quality time to build a strong relationship with your suppliers, you will end up saving more money and getting better quality products and services to your clients.

How to develop strong relationships with your suppliers

• Meet your suppliers face-to-face and check how they operate, this will help you figure out how their mode of operation can benefit your own business.

•Ask your suppliers about the future plans of expansion and see if that will affect their business dealings with you.

• Help your suppliers’ businesses by placing your orders on time and making payments for their supplies on timely manner. You must be clear to them about deadlines in their supplies.

• Always check some opportunities you can pass to them. A good relationship with your business partners is all about creating a strong network where opportunities can be shared with each other.

• Coordinate and plan your business schedules with theirs, it helps both partners keep to time. Analyze and forecast your sales strategy and inform them about it on time so that they can meet up with your demands.

• Always review your suppliers’ performances. Make sure you are getting your supplies at the right prices, and quality.

• Respect, Trust and be Honest with your suppliers. If you don’t respect a supplier, you can’t build a strong relationship with him. Trust becomes an important factor in building a relationship especially during difficult periods. Trust must be cultivated over a period of time. Lying and cheating will only result in a short term benefit because when the truth comes out, it will break a relationship, therefore you need to be honest when dealing with your suppliers.

T Ward Shipping have been trading as shipping agents for over 100 years, we still maintain close ties to Leith, Edinburgh's main port to provide direct access to main shipping channels