Business and Money Tips

How many times have you selected the cheapest vendor only to discover later that you have just paid top dollar?   Over the years the relationship between supplier and customer has focused hard on many of the wrong things. Price alone is almost always the most important factor in selecting any supplier.   Yet we know that price can only account for out-of-pocket costs actually paid out to suppliers.  Other factors that are overlooked are more important in determining the overall cost of purchasing and its ultimate value to your organization .  The overlooked but important factors include Cost of Value-Added services (like customization and design), rework, returns, inspection, administration and inconvenience cost.  More important, these costs exclude the opportunity costs of not doing business with suppliers who can provide significant benefits , which include: Joint Strategic Planning and Product Design Coordinated marketing Joint Customer Research...

As we know, one of the most important job of a salesperson is to bring in new business, that is new customers.  Since the market is fixed (there are hardly any new customers newly set-up), new business often means getting business from other competitors .  How to break into existing vendor relationships?  How to make people switch their existing vendor to you? Never ask the stupid question of "What do you like about your existing vendor?"  This is because such a question is simply opening the door for your prospect to start valuing his current vendor and undermine your efforts to break into this prospect.  Instead, ask questions that focus your prospect uses in selecting a vendor .  This is really 'Customer Focused Selling' as we are focusing on solving problems for the prospect. There are 6 Questions that a Salesperson Can Ask to Get People to Change Their Existing Vendor: Would you share with me the ideal qualities you look for in a vendor? How d...