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hi Simon Reynolds here and this week I want to talk about how you as an entrepreneur can deal better with your suppliers so as your company grows you'll get more and more suppliers more and more companies that are working with your company to help you deliver your product now therefore as the bigger your company gets the more it matters how you handle the relationship with suppliers so let me just give you a few ideas on how to make that relationship excellent idea number one make sure you take each of your suppliers to lunch once a year it's only 90 minutes or two hours at max but it makes a huge difference to the quality of your relationship I'm always amazed how when you're in a business environment when you go to lunch with someone often the relationship improves and if you do this just once a year what you'll often find is the price that they offer you may not be as high the quality of the of their service often goes up and the speed at which they deliver it to you often improves as well just because they think you're a good guy they put you in a in a different category to people where they're just working with them for money it's a small thing to do to take someone to lunch but it often makes a huge difference idea number two make sure you ask your suppliers for a better price at least once a year so make sure that even though you've got a good relationship with them that you're always testing them and always letting them know that you can't be taken advantage of just because you're a nice person just because they've had the business for a few years doesn't mean that you're not always thinking about price see I found that often suppliers will charge what they think they can get away with and sometimes the new the new client gets a better price than the old client now if you're the old client you've got to stop that you've got to make sure that in your case they look at price constantly with you and you want to at least do an annual review of prices to make sure that they're delivering at the right price and you must urge them constantly to lower their prices when possible by the same of course you don't want those prices so low that you're now a client that they don't care about it's a balance but it's worth at least focusing on idea number three for how to improve relationships with suppliers is make sure that you look for alternatives every six months who's to say that suppliers still the best the markets are moving very very rapidly so that if you have had a supplier for a year two years three years you want to make sure that there aren't new players that have come in with better offerings better prices better teams better speed etc and the only way you can do that is to take an arrow to every six months put it in your diary and start getting online looking at competitors making a few phone calls and making sure that your suppliers really are the best of breed in every area that you deal with them with and finally brief your team on how best to talk to suppliers so what often happens as your business grows is you're no longer the one dealing necessarily all the time with the suppliers so you want to make sure that you create a checklist for how your staff are to deal with suppliers for instance what timelines do they give suppliers what timelines today insist upon getting back how soon do they want the result to come back from the supplier what's the briefing form can you standardize that what other things could you list on a checklist to make sure that whenever your staff deal with any of your suppliers they do so in the most efficient and effective way you know it probably only takes you half an hour to create a very very good briefing form or checklist for all your supplier relationships and it will make a huge difference in the quality of what you get and the price you get it at so there's some great tips on how to deal with suppliers as your business grows dealing with suppliers well will be a critical factor in how much money you make