Vendors and suppliers are part of your business team. Take care of them, and they will take care of you.

Too often businesses go for the lowest cost, delay payments, and generally abuse their vendors. And then they complain when they get in a pickle, and nobody wants to help them out. I’ve seen it, and I’ve been on the receiving end as a vendor myself.

Better to treat vendors with respect. This includes paying your invoices in a timely fashion — your vendors are not your personal bank. Here are some quick examples:

Printing company – A significant part of our consulting business was training, which we promoted by direct mail. We often printed 50,000+ mailing pieces each year. We also printed brochures and other sales collateral. We even self published two books.

All of these were projects done by the same printer for over 25 years, until I stopped doing public classes after my business partner died. We often had offers from other printers to do the job cheaper, but always declined. And we always paid their invoices right away.

Why? Because our printer was a valued part or our business team. More than once they bailed us out of a crisis. We knew we could depend on them, and they knew they could depend on us. Over the years, we even became good friends with the owners. It was a pleasure doing business together. (They are now successfully retired.)

Training company – Contrast the above with a company for whom we did contract training years ago. Invoices were often delayed for months, even though they had been paid in advance. It got so bad, we put them on payment in advance (a C-client.)

They eventually went bankrupt, stiffing many other contract instructors along with several hotels. Needless to say, they did not recover. Nobody wanted to work with them again. The sad part is their materials were good, and they could have owned their training niche forever.

As an aside, I’ve done contract training for another firm for the last several years. They pay promptly and are a sincere pleasure to work with (an A-client.) They are successful, and pretty much own their training niche.

Two training companies — two vendor philosophies. One long gone years go —  one still successful after many years.  

Test laboratory – Not a client, but a colleague who started his business a few years after we did. He slowly grew his company, always taking care of his customers, employees, and vendors. As a result, he had a sterling reputation with reciprocated loyalty.

Although he started on a shoestring, he recently sold his company for many millions of dollars. Many times I’ve cited him as an example of how to build and run a business, and could not be more pleased with his success.

It is really pretty simple… just follow the Golden Rule! What goes around comes around. 

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