A Preferred Vendor Program is the Key to Your Success
While a promotional products distributor or salesperson can provide the highest level of service to and build the strongest relationships with their customers, without a solid source for products, true success will always be out of reach. Without quality vendors that you can rely on, you’re going to have trouble providing engaging new product options, filling customers’ orders on time, maintaining up-to-date information on where orders stand, accurately invoicing your customers, and of course, obtaining the best possible product pricing. This is where a preferred vendor program comes into play.
An ideal vendor possesses several key traits that elevate them above the countless other organizations in this industry. These include quality, timeliness, responsiveness, support, and innovation. Unfortunately, not all vendors are up to the task of embodying these traits for their industry partners. So as a promotional products distributor or salesperson, how can you possibly achieve your growth goals without support on the vendor side?
A preferred vendor program is a strategic solution that provides your distributorship with a number of key advantages. These are designed to help strengthen your relationships with customers, obtain competitive advantages over other promotional products distributors in your market, and ultimately grow your business faster and more profitably. Let’s take a look at some of the distinct benefits that a preferred vendor program can provide to your business.
How a Preferred Vendor Program Helps Your Business
1. It Just Makes Life Easier
Many promotional products distributors will understand the pain and hassle of searching for vendors for specific products. It takes time — time that could be better spent elsewhere. Then, you have to go through the motions of meeting with them to learn their capabilities and processes. Once you’re sold, you finally start to send them customer orders (every one of which is important regardless of size) — only to be disappointed when they drop the ball. Now, you have to start the process over again.
With a preferred vendor program, all of this work has been done for you. More importantly, it’s been done for you months and even years in advance — allowing the program to sift through the vendors that can’t live up to the expectations set forth. Not only does this save you the hassle of having to conduct vendor research, discovery meetings, and initial “proof of capability” testing, but it also ensures you’re working with great vendors right from the start. Each vendor in the program has trudged through the gauntlet of proving themselves and has emerged victorious.
2. You Get Exclusive Pricing and Products
Hey, if there’s nothing exclusive for you in the arrangement, how is it different from any other vendor relationship? You might like one vendor for one reason or another, but if they can’t help you grow your business and provide you with competitive advantages over other vendors (and indeed your own competition), you might begin to question your decision to remain with them when your competitors start stealing your customers out from under you.
With a preferred vendor program, companies that have proven themselves are more likely to receive your business and therefore are more willing to provide you with exclusive benefits as opposed to any other organization. This includes competitive pricing — allowing you to sell more products for less expense to your business and earn more with a wider margin. This also includes exclusive products that are available to you and no one else, giving you a competitive advantage over others who may be vying for business in your area. Together, being able to offer your customers better pricing and more product options will help you close the deal.
3. You Receive Better Service and Support
By taking advantage of a preferred vendor program, you’re going to be working with those vendors more than other organizations might be. This means they’re more inclined to provide you with dedicated support. This can mean anything from a dedicated service representative to a more responsive communication channel where you can reach them with any questions or concerns. Across the board, preferred vendors will provide you with higher-touch service than you’d receive with any other promotional products supplier.
If you’re a distributor with a larger promotional products organization such as iPROMOTEu, this higher order of service and support gets combined with corporate-level services to further enhance your offerings to customers and your own internal operations. The preferred vendors have been hand-selected by the organization and are in constant communication with them, ensuring that all parties are on the same page, and that you never have to worry about where your customers’ orders are.
4. With the Right Partner, It Accelerates Your Growth
In addition to gaining access to better pricing, exclusive products, and more personalized service and support, a preferred vendor program — in the hands of the right partner — also becomes part of a more appealing bigger picture. For example, at iPROMOTEu, our preferred vendor program not only connects Affiliates with better pricing and options, but when coupled with our order financing and back-office support, our Affiliates are able to sell more products, faster, and with less administrative pressure.
This is incredibly important as your distributorship starts to grow. With more orders coming in (and larger orders), the need for a solution that not only provides you with great product options for less expense but also eliminates the need to manage all of those orders yourself is critical. We provide our Affiliates with such a solution through order financing, total billing management, order follow-up, and more.
5. You Get More Lucrative Opportunities
By working with a preferred vendor for more product offerings, you help them increase their revenue while simultaneously increasing your own. This has the opportunity to provide a potentially lucrative cash redistribution on product purchases with some of these vendors in exchange for your loyalty and business.
Grow Your Business with a Preferred Vendor Program
iPROMOTEu has worked with countless promotional products vendors over the past 20 years. This has given us an in-depth understanding of which vendors provide the best service, offer the best products, communicate with Affiliates best, and deliver positive results each and every time. We have cultivated an industry-leading, best-in-class preferred vendor program that our organization of 1,100+ affiliated distributors and salespeople take advantage of every day.
With the iPROMOTEu Preferred Vendor Program (iPVP), you can stop wondering whether your vendors are helping you grow your business and actually see the impact they make on your bottom line. Everything we offer is designed to connect our Affiliates with the tools, resources, and expertise they need to grow their business, increase their income, and enjoy their careers like never before. Learn more about what our Affiliates have to say about us and our program here.
If you’re ready to take your promotional products business to the next level this year, we’re ready to help. Our preferred vendor program is just one of the many solutions we offer to make your distributorship more efficient, competitive, and profitable.
Contact our team today to learn more about the program and how it can help you grow.