Manage your suppliers

Building good relationships with suppliers

It pays to invest time in building good relationships with your key suppliers. If you can save money or improve the quality of the goods or services you buy from your suppliers, your business stands to gain.

Hints on dealing with your suppliers

Consider some of the following when working with your suppliers:

• Meet your contacts face-to-face and see how their business operates. Understanding how your supplier works gives you a better sense of how it can benefit your business.
• Meet the people who'll be managing your account and make sure they can be easily contacted.
• Ask about their plans for development or expansion. Will this affect the goods or services they're providing to you?
• Help your suppliers by placing orders in good time, being clear about deadlines and paying on time. See the page in this guide on how you can help your key suppliers.
• Keep an eye open for any opportunities you can pass their way - in a good customer-supplier relationship they'll do the same for you.
• Make your business important to your suppliers and they will work harder for you. Some suppliers may offer better deals if you promise to use them exclusively. However this may cause significant problems if they go out of business.

Don't ignore opportunities offered elsewhere. Keep your options open by monitoring the deals offered by other suppliers.

Consider whether a contract or a service level agreement (SLA) is necessary. This process will guard against complacency on the part of the supplier. See the page in this guide on service level agreements.

Subjects covered in this guide

• Introduction
• Get quality service from your suppliers
• Building good relationships with suppliers
• How you can help your key suppliers
• Use technology to improve efficiency
• Service level agreements
• Review your suppliers' performance
• Ending supplier contracts
• Here's how I reduced supplier costs

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