Securing your Vendors

Vendors are part of the supply chain and are needed to get your products and/or services to your clients. This blog walks through the basics of how to find vendors, what to look for in potential vendors, and resources to help you identify the good ones. Specific vendors will vary by the business, but this article hopefully give you general direction on working and securing the right vendor.

What is a vendor?

A vendor, also known as a supplier, provides businesses or people with things such as inventory for a business, equipment, office supplies, maintenance supplies, and most everything else a person or business needs. Your business may require different vendors, and each vendor your business partners with becomes part of your supply chain.

Picking your vendors isn’t as simple as just partnering with one and checking that box. Not every vendor will match what your business needs and picking the wrong one can harm your business and your business’s progress. We’re going to go over how to find good vendors, the different aspects you, as a business owner, should look for in your vendors, and how to maintain positive professional relationships with them to keep your business stocked with what it needs.

How to Find Good Vendors

Looking through different vendor options can be overwhelming. What do you look for? What do you need? How can you tell the good from the bad? How many vendors in your supply chain are too many? To make sure vendors are a good fit to partner with your business, you need to implement a Vendor Risk Management (VRM) process.

This process is to help you assess any risks in working or connecting your business with a third party, such as a vendor. It is best to be done before you enter into any deal or contract with a third-party entity and throughout the professional relationship. When picking vendors for your business,

Here are some things you should do in order to make sure you make the right picks:

• - Figure out what your business needs to run successfully.
• - Create a list of prospective vendors to choose from.
• - Create draft contracts to go over with prospective vendors.

Tipalti has a great article with a section all about what you should include in a contract with potential vendors.

- Compare potential vendors to the list of criteria you list for your business.

- Request overviews of what vendors can supply your business with. Taking the time to look over options and plan your decisions helps make sure you make the right decision for your business and develop a positive and stable supply chain for your business.

What makes a good vendor?

Stability

Making sure the vendor is stable enough to provide products for your business without interruption. If a vendor goes under or has a freeze in production, your business also stalls due to a lack of product. Making sure you pick a stable vendor to provide your business with a steady supply helps ensure your business won’t be at risk.

Price

Request and analyze price proposals from potential vendors to compare and find the best fit for your business. Making sure the price of goods from a vendor meets your business’s budget is important.

Pick one that’s too expensive, and you risk either not being able to afford to keep your business supplies or shrinking your profits. Pick something too cheap, and you may find the quality of what you receive to be subpar and not satisfactory for you or your customers. Your goal isn’t to find the cheapest offer. Your goal is to find the best deal for what your business needs.

Ability to meet demands

Not all vendors are made for the same types of business. Some are designed to supply multi-million-dollar companies, and others are designed to supply little mom-and-pop shops. Making sure the vendors you partner with are built to maintain the supply your business needs is one of the first aspects to sort out.

Ethical Views

In today’s political and social environment, what your business stands for is just as important as what your business provides, which means making sure your supply chain has the same views that your business does is important. To do this, research what potential vendors have supported or done in the past and recent times and ensure it aligns with what your business stands for.

For more information on what to look for in a potential vendor, check out these articles:

• The Four C's Companies Consider When Choosing A Vendor

• Selecting a Vendor — The Ultimate Guide of 2024

• 7 Expert Tips For Strategic Vendor Selection and Procurement

• How to Choose the Right Supplier for Your Business

Reviews from Customers

Checking reviews from past and current customers of potential vendors can help you understand what a partnership with them may look like.

How to Maintain a Positive Relationship with Your Vendors

You’ve found your vendors and built up a good supply chain. Now, how are you going to keep them doing business with you and determine down the line if you should continue doing business with them?

- Make sure payments and deliveries are prompt. It is important to ensure you pay your vendor on time and that they deliver the products and services you’re partnered with them for. If you’re late on payments, they may not see your business as a trustworthy partner. On the other side, if they aren’t able to maintain a steady supply for your business, then you may need to look for a more reliable vendor.

- Maintain communication with your supply chain. Keeping communication open helps strengthen the relationship between vendor and business, which can keep all parties involved happy.

- Provide recommendations of your vendors in your network. When a vendor in your supply chain shows themselves to be good to do business with, letting others know helps show your vendors that you appreciate them and help them grow, which means they may be able to provide your business with more down the line.

Creating a stable and supportive supply chain can set your business up for success and provide everything it needs to run smoothly. We here at Comprehensive Consulting Solutions for Small Businesses understand how this may feel like an overwhelming task, but with a bit of guidance, you can have a solid supply chain figured out, and we would happily provide the help you need!