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Who’s Your Partner?

Written by: Andrew Field March 14th, 2007
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No business is an island. But while we focus heavily on our customers and employees, we sometimes forget another key stakeholder: our vendors.

An unfortunate discovery yesterday reminded me that it is our job to communicate our expectations to our vendors clearly and unambiguously, and their job to execute crisply. If we are sloppy in our Purchase Orders, we can expect sloppy execution from our vendors. That lesson cost us $1,800.

Treat your vendors like valued partners. At the same time, hold them to a high bar.

Andrew Field is President of PrintingForLess.com, known by its thousands of happy customers as "America’s Print Shop." He works and lives along the Yellowstone River in southwest Montana.

Posted in Business Partners
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Comments

  1. Jimmy Gekko     Says:
    April 24th, 2012 at 1:54 pm

    Totally agree. Not holding partners accountable or checking on them prior to major engagements can be a costly mistake. Recommend you run background checks and business credit reports on them to protect your exposure, using a site like experian, http://www.experian.com/small-business/business-credit-reports.jsp