Summary: You may consider them a vendor or supplier. Treat them as a partner and how does your business change?

As discussed in The Leadership Loyalty Factor, there are four areas of loyalty you need in your company to experience continued success.

• Client
• Vendor/Supplier
• Employee
• Community

To continue on this path, we will next look at Vendor/Supplier Loyalty.  These are the people/businesses you rely on to assist you serve your clients, employees or community. I would go so far to say that you should consider them a partner – while they may not have direct financial interest in your company, they have an interest.  Both of you rely on each other to be successful.

For example:

• You need your printer so provide you with high quality business cards so may inform others of your business.  Your printer needs you to stay in business, so you will order more business cards.
• You need your payroll company to keep providing the service of payroll so you can pay your employees. Your payroll company needs you to work with you so you remain a loyal client, keep doing business with them and refer them to others.
• You need the community where your business is located to thrive and attract more residents as this is your greatest source for employees and clients.  Your community needs you to be active and profitable in order to attract other businesses and people to the area.

We don’t work in isolation, we need others to be successful. 

Take another point of view – don’t consider your vendors or supplies as just a vendor or supplier. Think of them as a partner in your success. When you treat them as a partner – how would you do business differently with them? How would your conversation change? Bring them into new projects sooner – would you have a higher success rate?

Try it and share your experience below.