I've gotten a number of very positive comments on my post last week: If Your Suppliers Are In Trouble, Then You Are In Bigger Trouble!
I wanted to expand on it, and to see if I could expand the dialog in the community----meaning, Please Send Comments---regardless of where you see this, at my blog site, the Customer Collective, Sales Management 2.0, Top Sales Experts, SalesMarks, or wherever. If you are a blogger, feel free to publish this as a "guest post."
The comments confirm my thoughts in the original post. This is an important issue for all businesses, and sales can take a great leadership position. Within our companies, from the top down, we have great focus on intensifying and deepening our relationships with our customers. The motivation is clear, we want to sell more.
At the same time, the same organizations are putting the screws to their suppliers, tearing up contracts, making very tough--possibly unprofitable demands, and making survival of suppliers difficult. And the sales people for your suppliers are trying to do the same thing as you, they are tyring to establish deeper relationships with your organization.
If we force unrealistic, unprofitable conditions on our suppliers, they can no longer afford to to business with us. We may be left with those that can---and they may not be the best suppliers, you know the old story, "I'd hate to be the astronaut flying in a space vehicle assembled by the lowest price suppliers."
Now that I've teed the issue up, I have some questions:
1. As sales executives/professionals, are your company's actions to it's suppliers impacting your ability to sell and deliver quality products and services?
2. What are you/can you do to change this?
3. As a supplier, are you engaging the sales executives in your customers to help build deeper relationships?
4. Is this helping you achieve mutually beneficial results?
I'd love your feedback and anything you can do to broaden the discussion!
I wanted to expand on it, and to see if I could expand the dialog in the community----meaning, Please Send Comments---regardless of where you see this, at my blog site, the Customer Collective, Sales Management 2.0, Top Sales Experts, SalesMarks, or wherever. If you are a blogger, feel free to publish this as a "guest post."
The comments confirm my thoughts in the original post. This is an important issue for all businesses, and sales can take a great leadership position. Within our companies, from the top down, we have great focus on intensifying and deepening our relationships with our customers. The motivation is clear, we want to sell more.
At the same time, the same organizations are putting the screws to their suppliers, tearing up contracts, making very tough--possibly unprofitable demands, and making survival of suppliers difficult. And the sales people for your suppliers are trying to do the same thing as you, they are tyring to establish deeper relationships with your organization.
If we force unrealistic, unprofitable conditions on our suppliers, they can no longer afford to to business with us. We may be left with those that can---and they may not be the best suppliers, you know the old story, "I'd hate to be the astronaut flying in a space vehicle assembled by the lowest price suppliers."
Now that I've teed the issue up, I have some questions:
1. As sales executives/professionals, are your company's actions to it's suppliers impacting your ability to sell and deliver quality products and services?
2. What are you/can you do to change this?
3. As a supplier, are you engaging the sales executives in your customers to help build deeper relationships?
4. Is this helping you achieve mutually beneficial results?
I'd love your feedback and anything you can do to broaden the discussion!
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