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Over the last few decades, I’ve established hundreds of new customer accounts and served several thousand customers – mostly B2B.
Admittedly, l’ve encountered only about 10 customers – individual purchasing staff who had been downright rude and abusive.
How about you?
Supplier – business partner
Supplier – problem solver
Supplier – customer
Supplier – opinion leader
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Business Courses and Tips 
Dear Eric,
This is a good reminder. Even suppliers among themselves share information about the nice and not so nice customers, the genuine ones that you should help and the permanent critical basis requirement type, almost a cry wolf case. I know of several customers who did not treat their suppliers very well, when they left or wish to leave their company and seek vacancy position from their suppliers, needless to say, they receive no reply. On the contrary, there are customers who discover the efficiency of their suppliers and draw them to join their company.
No matter how unhappy we are with the situation, we will always be civil in our approach to the supplier. Most of the time it pays as our suppliers come back with good options.
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Hello Eric,
I was just let down by a supplier right after your post comes up. What a coincidence! Nevertheless I still believe that just as we will go the extra mile in an urgent case for a nice customer, I believe our supplier will also try their best to help if we as the customer treats them well. But in all situation, it takes two hands to clap. Sometime the supplier who is the manufacturer takes on the “take it or leave it” attitude, leaving us at their mercy. If you can’t wait, then just cancel the order. On the other side, we have a customer screaming at us because of our commitment based on our supplier’s quote. If we can appease our customer by offering an alternate product, it is still no lost for us. Then there are those suppliers who undercut us once they know who is the end user.
As a middleman, ideally we want a win-win-win outcome, so everyone is happy. We have a supportive supplier, we can increase business for them. Our customer is happy with our support, so our business grows. More win all the way because our customers themselves could be suppliers/service providers who will gain trust, and the chain goes on.
I strongly agree that we need to build strong ties with our suppliers, but we also have to be discerning in choosing good and reliable suppliers.
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