How to maintain your supplier contract

By Madison J. Gray
Black Enterprise

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December 13, 2006--Once you've landed that potentially lucrative corporate contract, there's still more work to be done.

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After getting in the door comes the most important part and - the hardest work - of being a supplier: sustainability. That means creating a long-term relationship with the client by cultivating a continued knowledge of the needs of the company. If a supplier is lax with a relationship, a company can easily take its business elsewhere.

Know Your Customer

"We know our customers well and in order to play this game," says Thomas Hammons, president Hammons Paper Group, a wholesale paper distributor based in Stamford, Connecticut, "we have to talk to the customer about what he wants."

Hammons firm, which sells $12 million alone in paper for circulars to Target Corp. and also supplies all of the circular paper for Office Max Inc., says staying on top of market conditions, and small touches, such as simply making a phone call to stay in touch with the purchasing manager keeps his business on his clients' radar screens.

Sustaining and Growing the Relationship
Most corporations already set up a series of guidelines for sustainability with their suppliers. These basic guidelines for staying in good stead with the client can often be found on their Websites.

But just sustaining a relationship isn't enough and suppliers shouldn't wait for their clients to come to them.

"Part of it is about being in constant search mode for opportunities," says Diego Osuna, manager of supplier diversity and development for Minneapolis-based General Mills Corp., which does more than $200 million in business with minority firms. "First of all, the quality of the goods or services have to meet our specifications, that's a given. The pricing is also important and more and more we like to see suppliers who like to interact at a national and at a global level."

Osuna says his company encourages its buyers to "put themselves in the shoes of the minority suppliers" by reminding themselves that they might be dealing with smaller companies that may not have the abilities of larger firms. "We also talk to the suppliers and give them advice on what General Mills buyers like to see and what the "unwritten code" is for presenting. One thing about our suppliers is they have found new business through their relationships with us and their business model has evolved."

Keep Your Ear to the Ground

It's vital to know the changing environment of a client's business. In fact, not knowing can be very costly for a minority supplier. Cynthia Franklin, editor of the KIP Business Report, a publication that monitors African American businesses in the New York region, says complacency should be avoided.

"A successful minority supplier on that end becomes a true partner and are not passively sitting back waiting on the next RFP (request for proposal) to come," Franklin says. "They are active participants in the industry and they anticipate what their clients needs might be."

It's much easier to lose a relationship with a corporation than it is to win one, so a supplier must always be on top of the situation, Franklin says. "Ultimately, you have to think of yourself as a problem solver and what they are buying from you is a solution and they can go anywhere to get it."


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