Bonus Tips For Boosting Vendor Relationships
1. Maintain a professional appearance.
The impressions created by your staff and facilities count for more than you think. Remember, you are representing your vendors as well as yourself. A neat, professional-looking facility and professionally attired employees have a positive impact on both customers and vendors.
2. Make your message bold and clear.
Create a concise, high-impact presentation that makes it very clear to vendors of the business you are in, your core competencies and strategic directions, and how the vendor fits into your strategies. Also, include vendor-related contingencies. This type of presentation is similar to one created to impress potential investors. It can be used to kick off joint planning sessions, a vendor's regional and national reseller meeting, and meetings with visiting VIPs.
3. Execute flawlessly.
Whatever promises or commitments you make, execute on them completely and in a timely manner.
4. Focus!
Be relevant to your vendors. If you attempt to sell everything to everybody, you become less than strategic.
5. Carefully consider vendor exclusivity.
When you have an exclusive selling relationship with a vendor (e.g., selling HP servers only), you can certainly gain favor with that supplier. But there's risk in putting all your eggs in one basket. Some analysts do not recommend vendor-exclusive relationships.