Vendors and fulfillment are critical to taking your product or service from concept to cash. These could be graphic designers, they could be web programmers, they could be fulfillment houses, they could be CD duplicators. There are all kinds of different types of vendors that you may come across in your business. Here are a few tips on how to build a quality relationship with these people and cut back on your fulfillment costs.
To get started, you can send them recommendations and referrals. I try and do this with anyone I work with because if I am able to give them more business, the value of my relationship with them goes much further. It changes the way they view me now because not only do I give them the business I use them for, but also the people I associate with. I will become more favorable then most clients. What you really have to look at is how you can benefit your vendors quickly and easily - giving them referrals is a great way to start.
Joint venture projects is something else I have done with my vendors in the past. An example of this is when I worked with a graphic designer on a product. She did the graphic designer element, I put together the product and did the marketing side and then we split the profits.
Boom! Just like that I had almost completely eliminated my cost up front and now don't have to worry about coming up with that money. Starting out, this was really helpful as I didn't have the money to put up front to hire a graphic designer. So this strategy is really great for that reason and many others.
Some people will think, "If I split the profits with someone else, I'm going to loose a big chunk of money!" Time out. Personally, I think that it is better to actually get your projects completed, making some money, rather than not have any completed and not be making any money.
Instead of just letting those ideas sit on shelf, not making any money, I made an effort to approach and build a relationship with that specific vendor and was able to get those projects completed and off the shelf.
When you are on a tight marketing budget, you've got to get creative. And that is one creative idea that I've used. I've also used that with web developers.
The other thing that you can do to save a lot of money when you're working with vendors is do as much of the work as possible, ahead of time. You're saving the vendor time. You're saving them effort. You can ask them, perhaps, questions on how you could save money, how you could cut down their effort, cut down your overall project costs. These vendors will work with you. They'll help you. They know you have budgets to work within, and so they're always interested in working with you and trying to help you.
My last tip for now is instead of creating a completely new project design everytime, create a template to use. This way you can use it over and over again without having to pay your vendors again to do the same work. I'll tell you more about it in detail.
We will use developing e-Books for example. Instead of getting a graphic designer to design a specific layout for each of your e-Books you generate, it would be a lot easier and cheaper for you to get them to design a template. That way you can use that template for every e-Book you generate after that point instead of paying for it again.
That is a completely different approach, yet it will save you hundreds - if not thousands - of dollars in the long-run. Yet, it's pretty much the same amount of effort for the graphic designer. So that's another creative idea on how you can save a lot of money when working with vendors, and also building relationships with vendors.
In this article, I've outlined a few really quick and easy strategies that can help you build stronger relationships with your vendors and fulfillment companies while saving your money. Many more strategies will come to you once you really start thinking about it.
May ideas come to you when you need them most!
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