How To Build Quality Relationships With Vendors And Lower Costs
Vendors and fulfillment are critical to taking your product or service from concept to cash. These could be graphic designers, they could be web programmers, they could be fulfillment houses, they could be CD duplicators. There are all kinds of different types of vendors that you may come across in your business. Here are a few tips on how to build a quality relationship with these people and cut back on your fulfillment costs.
Number one, what you could do is send them referrals and recommendations. I constantly, as much as possible, try to send the people that I work with more and more business. The reason is because I want them to see the value of the relationship with me goes much further than the business I personally do with them. That way the relationship is not only benefiting them with the business that I give them, but the business that I also bring through the people that I associate with. They’ll quickly see me in a favorable light. The key here is to try and provide them a benefit as quickly as possible - a great way is to send as many referrals as you can.
I’ve also done joint venture projects with my vendors. Here’s a quick scenario. One of the people that I was working with was a graphic designer. We decided to do a joint venture project together, where she would do the graphic design at no cost, I would provide the product and then put for the marketing effort, and together we would split the profits.
Just like that I saved myself a ton of money! The costs for a graphic designer were gone and when I was first starting out I used this strategy a lot because I simply didn’t have the money to put down for elements like that.
Some people will think, “If I split the profits with someone else, I’m going to loose a big chunk of money!” Time out. Personally, I think that it is better to actually get your projects completed, making some money, rather than not have any completed and not be making any money.
Instead of just letting those ideas sit on shelf, not making any money, I made an effort to approach and build a relationship with that specific vendor and was able to get those projects completed and off the shelf.
Whether you are just starting out, on a tight budget, or just want to get projects done economically, you really have to look to be creative. Joint venture project with my vendors is one creative idea I’ve used with multiple different vendors.
The other thing that you can do to save a lot of money when you’re working with vendors is do as much of the work as possible, ahead of time. You’re saving the vendor time. You’re saving them effort. You can ask them, perhaps, questions on how you could save money, how you could cut down their effort, cut down your overall project costs. These vendors will work with you. They’ll help you. They know you have budgets to work within, and so they’re always interested in working with you and trying to help you.
My last tip for now is instead of creating a completely new project design everytime, create a template to use. This way you can use it over and over again without having to pay your vendors again to do the same work. I’ll tell you more about it in detail.
Let’s say, for example, you were looking to develop an E-book. Rather than asking the graphic designer to do a specific layout just for that E-book, why don’t you hire the graphic designer to create a template for which you can use for any E-book that you generate?
Even though this may seem like a different approach, it will save you tons of money in the long run. For your graphic designer its about the same amount of effort, but saves you money. This is just another creative idea on how you can build quality relationships with your vendors but also save yourself a lot of money.
As you can see, these are just a few quick examples on how to both cut costs and build strong long lasting relationships with vendors and fulfillment companies. Once you start thinking outside of the box, many more strategies will come to you.
By exploring your creativity ideas will come to you when you need them the most!
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