No business is able to operate without suppliers of some sort keeping them afloat with essential goods and services. It’s simple the manner in which business progresses. Even giants such as Disney cannot provide their own internet service within their headquarters, or design their own managed IT services, because investing in developing this would be a redundant sunken cost when they could gain high-tier servicing from another service with their as their main value offering. Of course, this is obvious to anyone with even the slightest understanding of business life.

That being said, even someone with many years of experience can struggle to demand higher value from their suppliers. This is because while you may need certain goods and services to continue operations and find your best value for your clients, investors and staff, using them without assessing the quality of this business relationship can be troublesome. Sometimes, we can value loyalty to one brand more than we should.

With that in mind, demanding higher standards from your suppliers in a manner that starts and ends with you is important. Let’s see how that might take place:

Reliability

Reliability is an important part of the supplier relationship. If you find that the products you are being supplied with are of a lower quality, of uneven quality, or are not packaged or delivered correctly at least 95% of the time at least, or if they do not make up for their mistakes adequately, then it’s important to take your custom somewhere that deserves it. This, in itself, can help you avoid experiencing a knock-on effect on your output. This is why services like gasoildrums.co.uk dedicate themselves to the golden standard of routine delivery and excellent safety measures, as is expected when delivering items of a sensitive nature like this. 

Value

It’s also important to consider the value of the goods you are receiving. Paying for a brand name may work if you are selling your product based on that, but it’s also important to see if there are other items or resources on the market that can function in just the same way for less. To use a granular example, does a chef need to pay more for organic cucumber to populate his side salad if this is not an advertised part of the menu? Perhaps not. Value, carefully considered, can help you look to the best option, regardless of goodwill.

Mutual Goodwill

That being said, goodwill is of course important. It might simply be that you wish to engage in more of a B2B relationship with your suppliers, approaching them with a deal that can benefit you both as you supply one another, or perhaps even ask for further servicing from them for a discounted cost, as you provide the same. It may take some time arranging this proposition and you may have varied results, but sometimes, a business you can engage in this with can be very useful to ally yourself with powerful players in your industry.

With this advice, we hope you can demand higher standards from your suppliers.