Once again, my daily affirmation from Seth Godin paid off. Sipping my coffee and thumbing through my morning messages, I clicked on Seth’s blog and started to read. . . “whoever buys the best. . . wins!”
It is all about collaboration to be able to develop the best overall benefit for all. The more your supply chain understands your underlying needs, corporate goals and objectives and challenges you face in the market, the better they can work with you to develop plans that will help you leapfrog your competition.
Working with your suppliers not only makes good sense, but it is good business and amazing things can come of it.
For instance, we work with our clients under non-disclosure agreements. This allowed the management team the flexibility to let us know about a challenge they were having in repositioning their brand internally. We were able to work with them to develop marketing materials and supporting collateral to support this change, behind closed doors and only launch it when the time was right.
Staff received new branded materials nationwide all at the same time, in the same manner and their was a live conference call to support it. The new brand has spurred better company pride and has led to new initiatives that have increased profits across the board. None of this could have happened without open and honest relationships between client and supply partners.
Far from being the cheapest solution. . . it did not go out for bid. . . but the results paid off in spades.
