Hello and welcome to Business 300. My name is Philip Kulenshov and this is 300

seconds about business. We're all a busy people, so I have five minutes or less to get my point across.

Another five. This time about working with suppliers.

What I call suppliers, you might call something else.

Maybe subcontractors, trade partners, vendors, different businesses call them differently.

I'm talking about any other business that you hire to help you in your value offering to your customer.

A supplier is another business, so not you, that is helping you deliver value.

You need your vendors and suppliers in order to serve your customers.

If you care about your customers, you must care about your suppliers.

They are there to help you deliver the value you've promised, and you need to approach them with that mindset.

They're not your employees. They are other business owners, which means you are their customer.

But you also aren't an end-user customer. Again, you're asking for their help to serve your customers.

This is a business-to-business relationship. So when thinking about

approaching vendors, subcontractors, trade partners and suppliers as their customer, it's good to

consider what does a business owner want from a customer? What makes a valuable customer? Unlike your

employees, your vendors are business owners. Their incentive is more naturally connected to delivering value to your customers.

Their bottom line naturally makes that connection. They are incentivized to deliver value to their customer, to you.

However, just like we don't always understand what our customers value, our suppliers also may not naturally understand what it is we value.

A business owner needs to put some work into uncovering what is valuable to their customer

and then structure their business in a way to create that value and deliver on it.

A business owner is incentivized to figure that out because it affects their bottom line.

You can help your vendors with that.

...