Part 19 in a series of articles from Sales through Service: How to make customers want to buy again and again and again (because you’re so ‘great’!) by Guy Arnold
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Issue Number 17 – Variable or Disrupted Supply Chains
As competition becomes more and more global and springs up overnight, and economies become more and more unstable, irrational and changeable, supply chains can be disrupted and change overnight, leaving people high and dry struggling to fulfil their customers’ needs.
This is completely normal and will just get more and more of a problem to businesses as time goes on.
The answer of course lies in getting closer to your suppliers. You are just the customer of your supplier, so the same principles apply to your relationship with your supplier, as it does to your relationship with your customers, just with a mirror image!
The best way to do this is to use the Win-win agreement format to build great relationships with your suppliers, and drive this through your own Customer Focused Mission, your own customers’ real needs, inch by inch, using clear and simple measures.
- Make sure you are clear on your supplier’s mission: is it focused around your needs as a customer? If so, you can work together with them to build fantastic, long-term relationships. If not, you have a real issue here over the long-term, so either get them to change constructively with you, or find a new supplier who does have a Customer Focused Mission.
- Customer’s real needs: does your supplier have processes and systems in place that meet your real needs? Are they looking out for them and are they asking you for feedback on them? If not, how can you work more closely with your supplier, and how can you help them understand that by working closely you will meet each other’s long-term needs and goals?
- Go the Extra Inch®: is your supplier continually going the extra inch to improve supplies and processes and the way they deal with you? And are you continually going the extra inch to get closer and closer to your suppliers, to work together for a win-win outcome?
- Measure: what measures are you putting in place to help you deal with your supplier more effectively? Are you respecting your supplier, but holding them strictly accountable to delivering on key performance indicators, with clear consequences of success and clear consequences of failure?
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Next time: Issue Number 18 – Getting Buyers or other People to Talk with you and Return Calls
