Getting your products and services from concept to cash you need vendors and fulfillment. Anyone from web programmers, fulfillment houses, graphic designers. Whatever type of vendors you may need to use in your business this article will outline a few tips about how you can lower your fulfillment costs while building quality relationships.
One great way to build your relationship with someone is to send them as many referrals as you can. By sending them recommendations and referrals they will see your relationships as having more value then just someone they do business with. When I do this with the vendors I work with I am now not only benefiting them by giving them business but by also bringing more business to them. This puts me in a much more favorable light then most of their costumers. You want to give them as many benefits as quickly as possible - sending referrals is a very easy method to do so.
I've also done joint venture projects with my vendors. Here's a quick scenario. One of the people that I was working with was a graphic designer. We decided to do a joint venture project together, where she would do the graphic design at no cost, I would provide the product and then put for the marketing effort, and together we would split the profits.
Just like that I saved myself a ton of money! The costs for a graphic designer were gone and when I was first starting out I used this strategy a lot because I simply didn't have the money to put down for elements like that.
I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Good plan, except your only going to make half of what you could have made." Just stop and think about it. I take the standpoint that it is much better to get your projects actually completed and make some money instead of not getting anything completed and make no money.
If I wasn't willing to work on building that relationship with that vendor, that project would have never been completed. If I didn't get that project done I would be making no money from it. Instead that project would remain in the pile of possible ideas, bringing in no profit.
When you are on a tight marketing budget, you've got to get creative. And that is one creative idea that I've used. I've also used that with web developers.
Another tip I suggest when working with vendors and you want to save a lot of money is to do a lot of work ahead of time. By doing this you are going to save the vendor time and save them effort. Don't be afraid to ask them questions like, how you could save money, or what else you can do to cut down their time or effort. Vendors want to help you, they want to do business with you. They also know people have budgets to work within and they will help you figure things out.
Another idea is to create a template versus a one-off project, so that you can use it over and over again without incurring more costs each time. Let me explain that in a little detail.
We will use developing e-Books for example. Instead of getting a graphic designer to design a specific layout for each of your e-Books you generate, it would be a lot easier and cheaper for you to get them to design a template. That way you can use that template for every e-Book you generate after that point instead of paying for it again.
Even though this may seem like a different approach, it will save you tons of money in the long run. For your graphic designer its about the same amount of effort, but saves you money. This is just another creative idea on how you can build quality relationships with your vendors but also save yourself a lot of money.
In this article, I've outlined a few really quick and easy strategies that can help you build stronger relationships with your vendors and fulfillment companies while saving your money. Many more strategies will come to you once you really start thinking about it.
By exploring your creativity ideas will come to you when you need them the most!
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