How to Choose Reliable Suppliers?
Suppliers are essential for the operation of your business and they are as important as customers. They help you to provide excellent goods and services. If you have reliable suppliers, they can guarantee quality products that can be directed to customers for specific amount of profit. If you choose unreliable suppliers, there would be no guarantee on service level and you can’t maintain long term commitment. This type of supplier should be avoided whenever possible. Your best bet is to choose among registered and vetted suppliers who could meet stringent scrutiny and criteria. Suppliers are available in every size and level of reliability. So, it is important to make sure that you have suppliers who can become genuine partners. You need to be able to rely on them to build your business. Reliability of suppliers can be determined by their ability to meet your requirements. You should also check their experience and find out how long have they been in business. Also check their ability to sustain high level of pressure and massive production capacity.
You need to check the past track record of the suppliers and you need to speak to their other customers. It is a good thing if you are able to get second and third opinions about a specific supplier. Without traceable references, there’s no way you can tell whether suppliers are reliable or not. You should also check the levels of stock, so suppliers are able to deliver immediate, last-minute orders. Also, if suppliers have large enough stock, it is possible that your orders are instantly fulfilled. You should be aware that some suppliers don’t even have any stock in regular basis. It means that there is possible delay as products will need to be fetched from manufacturers or distributors. You should consider whether these delays can have significant and negative impacts on your business. There’s no way you are able to support customers properly if your suppliers are not reliable. If you have a group of suppliers who are working with, you should cut out any who constantly lets you down.
When working with suppliers, you should make sure that they have excellent corporate value systems. You should know what they believe in and whether they have excellent general work ethic. Values should be represented by their working habits. However, you should make sure that those flowery values are real and not imaginary. They should have customer focus and although they don’t interact with end users directly, they should make sure that end users will be satisfied. Good suppliers would rather terminate their business than supplying their customers by providing poor products. Good suppliers should also know how to deliver quality products. Everyone could thrive when there’s quality product. Salespeople could have positive attitude and be very jovial, but it isn’t very useful if your products are not up to par. Poor products you get from suppliers will have negative effects on your reputation and eventually, your overall profitability.
