Vendors and fulfillment are critical to taking your product or service from concept to cash. These could be graphic designers, they could be web programmers, they could be fulfillment houses, they could be CD duplicators. There are all kinds of different types of vendors that you may come across in your business. Here are a few tips on how to build a quality relationship with these people and cut back on your fulfillment costs.

Number one, what you could do is send them referrals and recommendations. I constantly, as much as possible, try to send the people that I work with more and more business. The reason is because I want them to see the value of the relationship with me goes much further than the business I personally do with them. That way the relationship is not only benefiting them with the business that I give them, but the business that I also bring through the people that I associate with. They’ll quickly see me in a favorable light. The key here is to try and provide them a benefit as quickly as possible - a great way is to send as many referrals as you can.

Joint venture projects is something else I have done with my vendors in the past. An example of this is when I worked with a graphic designer on a product. She did the graphic designer element, I put together the product and did the marketing side and then we split the profits.

Hello! I completely eliminated my cost up front and this saved me a ton of money. And in the early stages, I didn’t even have the money to be able to send to that graphic designer. This was a great strategy.

Some people tell me, “Yeah, but Stu, you’re giving away 50% of the profits. That’s a big chunk of money.” Well, time out for a second. I’m of the viewpoint that it’s better to get your projects completed and making some money versus keeping all of nothing and not getting anything completed.

If I wasn’t willing to work on building that relationship with that vendor, that project would have never been completed. If I didn’t get that project done I would be making no money from it. Instead that project would remain in the pile of possible ideas, bringing in no profit.

When you are on a tight marketing budget, you’ve got to get creative. And that is one creative idea that I’ve used. I’ve also used that with web developers.

Another tip I suggest when working with vendors and you want to save a lot of money is to do a lot of work ahead of time. By doing this you are going to save the vendor time and save them effort. Don’t be afraid to ask them questions like, how you could save money, or what else you can do to cut down their time or effort. Vendors want to help you, they want to do business with you. They also know people have budgets to work within and they will help you figure things out.

My last tip for now is instead of creating a completely new project design everytime, create a template to use. This way you can use it over and over again without having to pay your vendors again to do the same work. I’ll tell you more about it in detail.

We will use developing e-Books for example. Instead of getting a graphic designer to design a specific layout for each of your e-Books you generate, it would be a lot easier and cheaper for you to get them to design a template. That way you can use that template for every e-Book you generate after that point instead of paying for it again.

That is a completely different approach, yet it will save you hundreds - if not thousands - of dollars in the long-run. Yet, it’s pretty much the same amount of effort for the graphic designer. So that’s another creative idea on how you can save a lot of money when working with vendors, and also building relationships with vendors.

As you can see, these are just a few quick examples on how to both cut costs and build strong long lasting relationships with vendors and fulfillment companies. Once you start thinking outside of the box, many more strategies will come to you.

By exploring your creativity ideas will come to you when you need them the most!