Trust is a major factor when choosing suppliers, as well as deciding to stay with them for years. In fact, trust, follow through and understanding of your industry were some of the top factors you all shared when choosing and staying with your suppliers.
I’ve been intrigued by this insight, that I wanted to dig deeper. On Procurious, I recently asked a question of your procurement peers:
So how do you define trust? And what components of trust are most important when it comes to setting up your supply chain?
The answers I got back on the definition of trust were interesting and perceptive. Best of all, they told the story of HOW all of your ingredient suppliers need to PROVE their trust to you as a customer.
Supplier Must Have Consistently High Standards
“Trust can only come over time by consistent high standards, always.” Tweet this quote!
Working with a supplier that has consistently high standards is wonderful. Of course, this includes both customer service standards and ingredient quality standards.
For the life of your relationship, you should receive good customer service. In our industry, focus on things like reasonable response times, open communication, professional interactions and good follow through.
Read: 4 Traits Your Edible Oil Supplier Needs To Have
You should also receive steady ingredient quality standards over time. You can review the spec sheets of your items to understand what might change, and what shouldn’t. For example, the color of olive oil can change depending on the crop year, and that doesn’t indicate quality.
Having an agreed upon understanding of what standards can change over time and what must remain the same is important for both parties.
Suppliers Must Have Follow Through
When your suppliers follow through, they simply prove that they can do what they said they can do. Trust is earned in action, not in words. If your supplier commits to doing something, they should follow through with it.
If for some reason it is out of their control and they can’t follow through, they should explain why, and what they’re doing to resolve the situation. Which bring us to the next topic…
Suppliers Need To Share Information
“Trust is about sharing. Companies that demonstrate trust are willing to share information.” Tweet this quote!
Secrecy never leads to trust, especially in a supplier/customer relationship. If you placed an order and the inventory is late, are your suppliers open about why? Was there a situation outside of their control (like the recent closer of the west coast ports, which has affected many suppliers). Did they share the information within an appropriate amount of time?
It’s also helpful to understand how the back-end of their company works to be able to work together fluently.
For example,
- Are they importing which requires more lead time?
- Do they stock inventory in-house? If so, how much?
- When and why do their prices change?
- How do they contract their own costs?
All of this is information that an open supplier will share, because it allows you to understand how their business functions, what they can offer well, and what they will need from you.
A supplier that is secretive or closed off can create issues both in the consistency of the supply chain and can impact how trustworthy you feel about their business is.
Do Things For The Good Of The Relationship
“[Trust is] not second guessing, but knowing that this supplier will have your company's interest at heart.” Tweet this quote!
In a good relationship, you love each other. You want to see each other succeed. You both do things for the good of your relationship. Perhaps your supplier may lose money to keep inventory steady for a short period of time. Perhaps you give them a “pass” when inventory comes in late because a 3rd party truck broke down along the way.
Relationships require give and take and compromise. Trust is built when you both have the others’ best interests at heart. In essence, this is when you work to build a win-win relationship, where you’ll both benefit. This is really the only kind of relationship that will last, so of course, we should all work to create this.
In Conclusion
Remember that trust takes a long time to build, but it can be broken in seconds.
It’s exceptionally important to choose a supplier that you feel you can trust and that you can depend on to follow through with your supply chain needs.
No one said it better than Ernest Hemingway:
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” Tweet this quote!
Topics: Industry Trends, Purchasing & Procurement
