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Developing Relationships Relationships matter. So much so that it’s vital to develop good vendor and supplier relationships continuously. The foundation for these relationships includes the following: Respect: Relationships are built on mutual respect. If you don’t respect a vendor or supplier than the relationship will be doomed to fail. Trust: Building trust provides the cornerstone of your vendor or supplier relationship. Trust is a two way street that must be cultivated at all times. Trust becomes important when times get tough. Mutual Benefit: Relationships need to provide benefits to both parties. Without mutual benefits the partnership will be on shaky ground since the incentives to stick around are lacking. Fairness and Honesty: Fair and honest partners will always win out in the long run. Any short term gain realized by lying, cheating or taking advantage of a partner will tarnish the long term relationship and destroy trust.
Close collaboration on especially critical category items; sharing future plans and ambitions to ensure supplier understands buyer's road map; transparency during tendering/bidding processes; providing feedback/debrief in case of unsuccessful tendering efforts; sharing excellence reports.
Distributor & Vendor relationship is a mutually beneficial relationship to both parties.
One of the strongest factors to the success of this particular relationship is transparency. The market condition changes constantly. The transparency can enhance the understanding of inflecting factors & act collaboratively to tackle the issue.
All the ethical essentials in any respected relationship should be present: mutual respect, appreciation, recognition, transparency & friendliness. A partnership needs positive mindset & trust in order to function efficiently.
No party is perfect, so when major mistakes committed by one of the two parties (with potential damage to the partnership), the occurence should be handled very carefully to perserve the mutually beneficial partnership & prevent it from becoming a toxic relationship.
At the end, mutual benefit should always be preserved & sacrifices should always be made sporadically by either party for the good on the long run.
This can be fully answered by reading this book, The Science of High-PErformance Supplier Management - Randy A. Moore CPM, CPCM
ISBN 0-8144-0633-5
