How To Build Quality Relationships With Vendors And Lower Costs
A select group of people, known as vendors and fulfillment companies, are crucial in taking your products from concept to cash. You will come across a wide range on vendors – graphic designers, web programmers, CD duplications, fulfillment houses – all of which will affect your business. If this group of individuals can affect how your business is run you want to build quality relationships with them. This article will outline a few tips on how to do just that, while lowering 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.
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.
I’m sure some of you are thinking, “Good plan, except your only going to make half of what you could have made.” Just stop and think about it. I take the standpoint that it is much better to get your projects actually completed and make some money instead of not getting anything completed and make no money.
If I wasn’t willing to work on building that relationship with that vendor, that project would have never been completed. If I didn’t get that project done I would be making no money from it. Instead that project would remain in the pile of possible ideas, bringing in no profit.
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.
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.
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.
We’ll use an e-Book as an example. Instead of getting your graphic designer to design a specific layout for your one e-Book, why don’t you just get them to design a template you can use to every other e-Book you develop?
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!
Ideas will come to you when you explore the possibilities of creativity!
Filed under: Marketing