Contributed article in our small business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly
As a business owner, you’ll have a lot of people to keep happy. Not just your customers, but also your employees and your clients. Your clients in particular are the companies and individuals that will help you to supply your products to your customers. It’s important that you develop a good relationship with your suppliers so that you can work together to grow your business. Understanding your client’s needs and how to communicate with them effectively is the key to keeping them happy, so read the top tips to keeping your clients happy.
Communication
Understanding your client’s needs is vital to the long-term success of your working relationship. To understand their needs, you need to maintain good communication with them. One way you can do this is to have a set way to communicate by email or phone that makes it easy to get in touch. It should be a two-way system so that they can also get in touch with you if there are any problems. After a while, you’ll know what your client needs to get the orders completed. You can then try to predict this by giving them the information as soon as you have it to make it easier for them.
Understand Their Restrictions
When you’re taking on a new supplier, you should be asking questions about their processes so that you’re aware of their restrictions and limitations. For example, if you know that they need 24-hour’s notice to complete an order, then you should keep to this time frame. Trying to seek quicker timescales will only cause friction and make the relationship more difficult.
Try to Keep Things Simple
It’s important to keep the ordering and payment systems simple because you’ll only make more work for your supplier and your team if there are a lot of steps to follow. Many suppliers such as balingwiredirect.com will use a computer based system that allows them to communicate directly with the customer. By having a similar system at your company, you can speed up the ordering and payment process and make it easy to use. It’s also a good idea to use the same system with all of your clients so that you don’t waste time having separate ordering procedures with different companies.
Negotiate Contracts Professionally
When you’re negotiating a new contract with your supplier, you should remember the fact that they’re also in business to make money. You need to be realistic about cost and not try to squeeze as much out of them as possible. Of course, you want a fair price, although your clients may agree because they don’t want to lose your trade, which could cause issues down the line and may even jeopardize their continued operation.
Maintaining a good relationship with your clients is as important as those you have with your customers. The people at both ends of the chain can have a significant effect on the growth of your company, so you need to keep them happy.






