Want to predict how successful your business will be? Just take a look at how GOOD your supplier is. Many people suffer from the supplier’s POOR performance, but they can not give up the bad relationship because they don’t know how to find a good supplier! In this video, I will give you 4 outlines to anchor your supplier research to find a good supplier. Enjoy!
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Full Transcript:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Goodlife Warrior channel. I hope your day is going great. This year is going to be a pivotal year for many of us. Some of you already own your business. You want to make it bigger and better. Some of you are still thinking about starting a new business.
Whatever you have projected for your future, let me tell you, one of the most important skills you need to have is to learn how to find a good supplier to support your idea and to support your business. Many people quit or fail the business. It’s really because it is too frustrating to deal with bad suppliers. So in this video, I’m going to give you some outline and some pointers on how to find a good supplier. If you really want to commit and master this skill, I’ll point out to you where do you find the best training materials available.
If you hop onto Alibaba, do you know exactly what you’re looking for? A new product or a supplier? Essentially, we’re looking for a good supplier who can produce high-quality products for you. But then, why so many are people wasting hours of their time looking at the pictures, looking at the price, looking at the MOQs? Because these people don’t know how to qualify a good supplier yet.
Let me give you four outlines to anchor your research. If you use these four outlines, you’re going to save a lot of time.
The first one is, is this supplier legitimate?
This is the fundamental question to ask whether you find the supplier on Alibaba or off Alibaba. For the suppliers on Alibaba.com, there are millions of them. Do you think they’re all created equal? Not at all. Each one of them has a different status. Some don’t pay, some pay, some become gold, some become verified. For those of you who don’t know all these behind the scenes, it could be confusing. So, if you want to be sure that your supplier is legitimate, how do you start your research? Verified supplier plus trade assurance, this is the best combo. Of course, there are more to the verified supplier and the trade assurance, but we’re not going to cover that here.
The second outline, is your supplier competent?
This is the meat of supplier qualification, any new suppliers. Is there a way to tell if the supplier is competent? Definitely. Supply team management is my field. I work in this field for so many years. Thousands of suppliers have to pass my screening. Some passed, some don’t. Do you have the business strength? That’s first and foremost, are you financially stable? Second, do you have a product specialty? Only the suppliers have the specialty, then I’ll spend time to take a look at your technical strengths. Here is a pointer for you. If you know how to evaluate the supplier’s product breadth and depth, then you will have a clue whether this supplier is technically competent. If you are committed to learning, I’m going to teach you all of this.
The third online, the third anchor is, is this supplier trustworthy?
Just because the supplier is verified, just because Alibaba offers the trade assurance, it does not mean this supplier will not take your design, manufacture the product, and sell it as their own product. How can you know? Well, I don’t want you to become paranoid about this supplier trustworthy issue. Most of the suppliers are very good. But you as the business owner, if you have a very design-sensitive product, you need to learn how to ask the right questions, test the supplier’s intention, and know how to put recourse in place so you are protected if the supplier steals your design. Unfortunately, I cannot give you any specific pointers here.
So let’s move on to the fourth outline, which is about you. Are you the best match for good suppliers?
As you learn your ways to qualify the suppliers, the good suppliers, especially the good and experienced suppliers, are qualifying you. Are you worthy of their attention? If you’re not credible, you’re not professional. They’re going to either ignore you or they will give you a higher price. This has nothing to do with how much money you want to spend. You could spend $5,000 or $50,000. Don’t expect the supplier to kiss your ass because you are their customer. The fact is, mainly good, experienced suppliers are very picky and they’re hard to deal with, but a competent supplier is still 10 times, 100 times better than an incompetent supplier, especially in the long run. That’s why it is so important you do your part to become your supplier’s best match.
One quick pointer. Stop sending these casual messages to the supplier asking for a quote. Maybe people go onto Alibaba, find a very good product, excited, and send a supplier email. “I want you to quote this product, blah, blah, blah.” These casual messages don’t do you any good, because the good and experienced suppliers are carefully looking at the RFQ quote request. If your message doesn’t appear to be credible and professional, they will give you a higher price or ignore you. Once you get a higher price, it is harder, much harder to negotiate the price down. You see that the first round of negotiation begins when you sent the quoted message to the supplier. You need to treat each RFQ message like your buyer’s resume. If you want a good supplier, you have to appear to be worthy of their attention.
These are four outlines for you to qualify a good supplier for your business. Time to review. Where do you get the in-depth training on this? All the material along with my tutorials, step-by-step are included in Alibaba Sourcing Mastery Guide. This guide doesn’t just come along with the guide. It has my tutorial, but also it comes with two RFQ message templates and the RFQ form. These are very important because I want you to appear to be credible, professional, and worthy of a good supplier’s attention. It doesn’t matter whether you have experience or not. Use the template.
But wait, it also comes with the agreement. You know what it is, right? It’s a non-compete, non-use, and non-circumvention. If you have a design-sensitive product, you will need this agreement to be in place so you have recourse. This book, along with the tutorials, embodies all the wisdom, all the experiences that I had from dealing with thousands of suppliers.
If you are starting a new business or you want to take your business to another level, you need to get the Alibaba Sourcing Mastery Guide. Take advantage of the discount and the introductory offer. The link is below. I really hope you master this one skill, find the right suppliers for your business, not just once, not just twice, over and over again.
Check out the link, the Sourcing Warrior Mastermind link, undertake Sourcing Warrior’s quiz to find out your sourcing IQ. Make it fun, learn something, have a great day. I’ll see you in the next episode.
