Lowering Your Costs With Vendors While Building Relationships
Getting your products and services from concept to cash you need vendors and fulfillment. Anyone from web programmers, fulfillment houses, graphic designers. Whatever type of vendors you may need to use in your business this article will outline a few tips about how you can lower your fulfillment costs while building quality relationships.
To get started, you can send them recommendations and referrals. I try and do this with anyone I work with because if I am able to give them more business, the value of my relationship with them goes much further. It changes the way they view me now because not only do I give them the business I use them for, but also the people I associate with. I will become more favorable then most clients. What you really have to look at is how you can benefit your vendors quickly and easily – giving them referrals is a great way to start.
Here is another tip that I have also done – joint venture projects with my vendors. This is an example of one jv project I’ve done. Graphic designer are great at what they do and can really change the way people view your products. The graphic designer I was working with and I decided to do a joint venture project together – she would do the design at no cost and I would do the marketing and put together the product. Then we would split any profits.
Boom! Just like that I had almost completely eliminated my cost up front and now don’t have to worry about coming up with that money. Starting out, this was really helpful as I didn’t have the money to put up front to hire a graphic designer. So this strategy is really great for that reason and many others.
Some people tell me, “Yeah, but Stu, you’re giving away 50% of the profits. That’s a big chunk of money.” Well, time out for a second. I’m of the viewpoint that it’s better to get your projects completed and making some money versus keeping all of nothing and not getting anything completed.
If I didn’t create that type of relationship with this specific vendor, I would never have completed those projects and would therefore wouldn’t have made any money. Those ideas would have been sitting up on a shelf, not making me anything.
You really have to push your creativity when you are on a tight budget. Joint ventures is a creative idea I have used more than once. Web developers is another vendor I have used this strategy with.
Another tip to save money that I have learned over the course of using vendors is to have as much work done ahead of time. By doing this you are cutting down on the time and effort your vendor needs to use on your project. You can even ask your vendor questions, like, how could you decrease they’re effort, reduce your overall costs, etc. Vendors will answer these for you, they want to work with you. Everyone has a budget to work within and vendors will be willing to help you stay within it, they are always interested in your business and will help you meet your goals.
Here is another tip – create a template instead of just a project. This way you can use it more than once, without having to pay for the same thing twice. I’ll go into more detail to explain it better.
We will use developing e-Books for example. Instead of getting a graphic designer to design a specific layout for each of your e-Books you generate, it would be a lot easier and cheaper for you to get them to design a template. That way you can use that template for every e-Book you generate after that point instead of paying for it again.
This is a different way about going things – the thing is you will save tons of money – thousands – in the long-run. As for the graphic designer its about the same amount of effort for them to put forth. This is just another idea about how you can again build your relationships with your vendors, but also save a lot of money.
Your vendors and fulfillment companies can really make a difference in your business and these are just a few ideas on how you can build your relationship with them and also cut costs. More strategies will come to you if you only start thinking outside the box!
By exploring your creativity ideas will come to you when you need them the most!
Filed under: Internet Business