How to Maintain a Productive Relationship with your Dropshipping Suppliers

Dropshipping suppliers can actually have a huge impact on a company’s processes. Suppliers play a central role in driving revenue, and that should never be ignored. Finding reliable dropshipping suppliers can help a business grow at scale. Developing a strong relationship with the suppliers makes day-to-day working more enjoyable for everyone. It can also get you a better deal, help with collaboration and strengthen goodwill.

All business relationships have conflict no matter how good they are. Always try to avoid conflict but recognize when conflict is present. A good dropshipping supplier relationship will be able to withstand some amount of conflict as long as both parties want to resolve the conflict in a productive way. Building a strong partnership should be your goal when selecting vendors and suppliers. These partnerships will only strengthen your business and allow you to focus on your core competencies.

Ways to Improve Business Relationship with the Dropshipping Suppliers:

• Maintain Effective Communication

After finding good dropshipping suppliers, forming effective communication is important. Two-way communication is at the heart of any strong business relationship. If you don’t talk to your suppliers, you can’t learn enough about them to build mutually beneficial arrangements. If your business has the resources, consider creating a communication network with your dropshipping suppliers.

• Make Timely Payments

Nothing can boost a better relationship with the dropshipping supplier than making payments on time. On-time payments are a simple concept, but do you know how influential they can be to your relationship with the suppliers. If you don’t want to lose your suppliers, step one is making sure to pay them on time. This way, you will prove that you are a reliable customer and that you’re easy to work with. The better your payment history, the better you look as a business partner.

• Give Substantial Lead Times to your Dropshipping Supplier

Try to provide suppliers as much lead time as possible on your orders. Unless there’s a good competitive reason not to, share with them an honest projection of your requirements, and keep them informed of any major changes in that estimation. Offering dropshipping suppliers an adequate amount of lead time helps ensure that you remain in stock at all times, which improves your chances of doing better business than your competitors.

• Refer your Dropshipping Suppliers to Others

If you have a supplier and you are particularly happy with their product and/or service, show them your appreciation by referring them business. Think of your suppliers as partners. This may not apply to all your suppliers, but in some cases, it helps to consider vendors are partners that you work with rather than third parties who simply provide products and services.

Final Thoughts–

So, you’ve found the perfect dropshipping supplier, now it’s time to strengthen your relationship and ensure smooth sailing ahead. Establishing a relationship with a supplier is much like growing a client base. It requires a solid track record of professional behavior combined with a personal touch. To maintain a great supplier relationship, you have to approach it in the right way.