Suppliers are a fundamental part of your enterprise that you should not overlook. Many businesses strive to maintain good relationships with customers, however unfortunately forget their supplier relationships. However, good relationships with suppliers have positive outcomes for smooth-sailing production, timely delivery of quality materials, customer satisfaction, and cost savings. Also, the benefit can be strategic by offering you business intelligence and trade secrets.

Below are 6 tips for establishing great supplier relationships.

1. Choose suppliers that align with your values

The stakes are high when you choose a third party, more specifically a supplier. It’s important to question your supplier’s mission, values, goals, and company culture when assessing whether or not they could be a good fit. When a company’s values align with yours, it’s typically a good indication that the partnership works well. Differences in overall mission, values, goals, and culture could potentially lead to conflict somewhere throughout the project.

2. Be a great customer

It is important to realize that as your company grows, you become a larger part of your supplier’s revenue, and in doing so, the success of both companies becomes intertwined. Maintaining a great supplier relationship is a two-way street. While you want to make sure your supplier is offering a great price and superb service when you purchase, say, household appliances, you also need to be a good client.

Always pay your bills on time and try to give suppliers as much lead time as possible on your orders. Unless there's a compelling, competitive reason not to, share with them an honest projection of your needs and keep them abreast of any significant changes in that estimation. When developing your lead times, it helps to be knowledgeable about your suppliers' production methods and needs. Treat your suppliers with respect and build rapport so they will be happy to help you long term. Good supplier relationships can have a long-lasting impact on your business.

3. Understand the needs of your supplier

Understanding the needs of your supplier will facilitate your cooperation. Suppose you are in the household appliance industry, what’s important to your manufacturer? Do they need you to follow a process or complete paperwork in a certain way? It is quite essential for you to pay attention to all those questions.

Respect their way of doing things and make it easy for them by following their processes and timelines. Give them what they need, when they need it, for example, insurance certificates, business information, or purchase order numbers.

4. Communication

Nurturing an effective business relationship requires communication. This means that you should be in touch with your manufacturer regularly. If it is possible, meet them in person at your office so that they can get a better feel for your business. Share your goals with your manufacturer and ask how they can help achieve those goals. A good e-commerce supplier will likely be able to offer some sound business advice and suggestions.

The more you make an effort to work together, the more likely your manufacturer will stick with you during challenging times. Make sure both sides understand what their roles and responsibilities are — only then can you take a relationship from a discussion and grow it into a long-term partnership. Respect what each of you brings to the table and leverage those qualities to propel both of your businesses to the next level of growth.

5. Timely feedback

Performance can’t be the best all the time and there is always room for growth. Keep the good suppliers aware of what's going on in your company. Tell them about changes in key personnel, new products, special promotions and so on.

Timely arrange a meeting with your suppliers to brainstorm partnerships. During your discussion, see if you might be able to help one another. Perhaps you could trade referrals or introduce one another to key players in non-competing industries.

When an open dialogue exists about where and how to improve, and you can mutually solve these problems together, trust forms in your supplier relationship. To nurture that trust and loyalty, make your suppliers feel like they are a part of your business rather than just a source of goods or services.

6. Find solutions to better manage your supplier relationships

Your company probably uses a wide range of technologies to improve your efficiencies. You can also use technological solutions to better manage your supplier relationships. For example, you may want to invest in cloud-based rebate management software that allows you and your suppliers to share deal information and collaborate. It’s an effective way to build transparency into your supplier relationships as well as create an audit trail of activities to help pre-empt any misunderstandings, and also significantly reduce your time and administrative costs, making it a much smoother process and more accurate.

Developing a great relationship with your suppliers should be as important as creating a good relationship with customers. It is not complicated to establish a meaningful relationship with your supplier; just follow these tips and watch your business grow.