Win-Win Negotiation… How to Get the Best Prices from Suppliers & Vendors – Article #15

In many businesses, vendors and suppliers are common. Many times, you can’t operate a business without them. In spite of the fact that you may become friends with vendors and suppliers, you’ll still have to negotiate pricing, warranties, and service with them to keep your costs down and your profit margins high. Ultimately, the relationships you have with vendors and suppliers can help drive the success or failure of your startup business. Therefore, you’ll want to master the art of negotiation. You need to know how to get the best prices from suppliers and vendors in a way that is honorable and above reproach. In addition, you’ll want to do so without burning bridges or harming anyone. So join me as I share nine ways you can negotiate pricing. 

Podcast Time Index For “How to Negotiate with Vendors and Suppliers”

00:31 – How to negotiate with Vendors and Suppliers
02:47 – Vendors can help improve a Business’ service quality
05:05 – Realize that the Vendor is in business, just like you
07:25 – If possible, learn from the Vendor
09:35 – Prepare your request
12:44 – What is the Vendor’s motivation?
14:28 – Provide them with an expectation of your annual product flow
18:12 – Never accept the first pricing offer
19:35 – Don’t use only one supplier
20:25 – Negotiate in the off-season
22:04 – Know when to back down
23:14 – Sign off

9 Ways to Get the Best Prices from Suppliers & Vendors

1. Realize the supplier/vendor is in a business just like you.

Just like you, suppliers want to earn a profit. They probably depend on suppliers or vendors themselves. If you constantly “attack” their prices or bully them to decrease their production or delivery times, they’ll begin resenting you. After all, who are you to question their earnings or to attack their ethics? If you’re trying to make money while expecting them to make nothing, that’s hypocritical.

Back in my landscaping days, I worked with a plant supplier in the startup phase of her business. I knew that she was propagating (breeding, growing) some grasses and bushy ornaments herself. Yet, she was also buying certain plants with long propagation periods from another nursery. Therefore, it wasn’t right to beat up her price points on Sago palms—for example—that she had to purchase for a premium from another supplier. However, she had a little bit more room to negotiate prices on the plants she was propagating on her own.

So my first point is simply this. Don’t forget that vendors are trying to earn a profit just like you are. They want to do things that are honorable and above reproach, just as you do. Yet too often, I see business owners forget that suppliers and vendors are in business just the same as they are. They treat them disrespectfully or spitefully instead of respectfully. Maybe it’s just my upbringing. My momma always told me, “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.”

2. Learn about your vendors.

Next, to negotiate successfully with your vendors/suppliers, you want to know who they are. Who are you talking to? What are they like? Do they have interesting personality traits? What do you know about their families? Do you know their personal or business goals? You see, the better you know your vendors, the more likely you are to “win” your negotiation. It’s been my experience that if you establish a connection with vendors, they are more likely to help you or want to help you.

Let’s go back to the plant supplier in her business’ startup phase. I knew she wanted business from my landscaping company. If she could gain my business, she would establish instant credibility in the marketplace and attract other customers. I knew that because she and I had gotten to know each other before we ever got to the negotiating table. Therefore, when we sat down to negotiate prices and terms, I knew my advantage. I knew that she would reduce her prices in such a way that I couldn’t say no to using her products.

3. Prepare your requests.

Now, the more you prepare for the task of negotiating, the smoother the negotiation will likely go. That’s Negotiating 101, folks. If you prepare for the negotiation, you’ll learn facts that could potentially help you. I’ll give you an example.

When I was working with the aforementioned plant supplier, I needed certain plants and grasses for the typical landscape style I drafted. Therefore, I did my homework. Many of my customers wanted azaleas, so I researched their costs. When I did my research, I found that her cost was about $1.50 per plant, which included costs for labor, mulch, and fertigation. Yet, she priced her azaleas to the public at $14 per plant. Therefore, I knew the markup involved.

Next, I looked at what other nurseries were charging for people in my position who were ordering tens of thousands of these plants every year. I discovered that the majority of other vendors charged $7 – $8 per 3-gallon plant. So when I went into negotiations with “my” supplier, I started at $5 per plant. Obviously, if I had been in her position, I wouldn’t have taken $5 for a 3-gallon azalea. However, we finally negotiated a $5.70 per plant cost, excluding licensed azaleas. Since I was prepared for negotiations, I “won” the contest, but she was able to make the money that she needed, as well.

4. Understand the supplier’s motivation.

Do you know what the vendor gains by providing you with supplies or services? In other words, what’s in it for the vendor? This is important to know. As you’re becoming friends with suppliers like in point #2, it helps to know their motivation. If you just listen as they talk, you can often identify their motivation which helps you prepare for negotiations.

I know certain vendors incentivize their sales staff by offering bonuses, vacations, or promotions to those who reach a certain dollar amount in sales. That’s motivation. Other vendors offer incentives when representatives sign new clients or sell a certain number of products. The plant supplier I was working with needed me as a reference. Gaining my business meant possibly garnering business from other landscapers in my area. Therefore, her motivation was gaining my business for the long-term proliferation of her business. On the flip side of that, my motivation was getting a fair price on a product so that I could turn a higher profit in my company.

5. Provide the vendor with an expectation of your annual product flow.

To be fair to vendors and suppliers, you need to provide them with a realistic estimate of what you’ll need from them throughout the year. You don’t want to lie about this, but you can make assumptions as to the estimated amount of products you’ll need during that time. If you’re ordering hundreds or hundreds of thousands of a particular product each month or each year, can vendors offer you bulk discounts or price breaks for high volume orders? Set your expectations so that vendors can prepare for your product and business flow. However, make sure the vendors don’t require you to meet your obligations for these special pricing points.

When I was negotiating with the plant supplier, I knew that I used a lot of Aztec Grass. Typically, I’d use about 100 Aztec plants per landscaping job, and my goal was to do 100 landscaping jobs per year. Therefore, it was possible that I’d need 10,000 1 gallon Aztec plants. So if I purchased that many plants from her, what price point could she provide me? Now, I couldn’t guarantee that I’d order 10,000 plants, but based on my workflow, she and I knew I’d get close. Therefore, she dropped the price by $1 a plant. That’s not insignificant! I think we were at about $3 per plant. She dropped it to $2, which meant a possible $10,000 profit to me!

6. Never accept the first pricing offer.

There’s another rule of thumb to follow when negotiating with vendors and suppliers. Never accept their first pricing offer. That’s basic business. You don’t do it in real estate. You don’t do it at car lots, and you don’t do it in lawsuits. Whenever you’re selling your business, you never accept the first offer. That’s common. Now, obviously, there are exceptions. But as a general rule, you never accept the first offer. However, you must be prepared with a counter-offer or you may have the vendors come back and ask you for better pricing. Sometimes, you even have to be prepared to walk away.

When I ordered individual units from my plant supplier, she often attempted to raise my price, and I understood why. The market price moved very fast on plants, especially palm trees, and I would often have to position the conversation for a repricing strategy. Many times, I had to be willing to walk away and use a competitor if I had to.

7. Don’t limit yourself to one vendor.

No matter how much you like using a particular vendor, you must never limit yourself to one vendor or supplier. Don’t position the future success of your company on the back of one vendor. What if that supplier has a business glitch? What if the company has a production delay, and you need products now? What if you need one thousand widgets, but the vendor only has 500 in stock?

What if I had only used my friendly plant supplier? One time, I made a mistake positioning a particular product. All of a sudden, I needed 10,000 Aztec grasses immediately. There was no way she had that in stock. Thankfully, I had multiple suppliers at my beck and call who could help me fill that order, but think about what would have happened if I didn’t. How much money would I have lost by turning down that project?

8. Negotiate in the vendor’s off-season.

Another good thing to do when you’re negotiating is to negotiate in the vendor’s off-season. Oftentimes, you can gain your best pricing during the supplier’s offseason. If you’re slow, they’re slow. That usually means they’re willing to offer better deals. Even if your business isn’t as cyclical as the nursery and landscaping business, it probably has slower periods at some point during the year. For instance, if you’re working with school-based businesses, summertime is a good time to negotiate because school is not in session. Yet, if you work in the pediatric dental field, you probably wouldn’t negotiate for better deals in the summertime because that’s when all the kids are going to the dentist. Remember, the school’s not in session.

In my landscaping business, I would have been foolish to ask my plant supplier for a decrease in pricing in the heat of the spring or summer. That’s the busiest time for a nursery. It’s when their work from the fall and winter is coming to fruition. That’s when they’re going crazy, delivering jobs all over. However, in the fall, after the rush of planting is done and when the average consumer’s mind is far away from their landscape, the nursery suppliers often had their weakest sales months. That was often the best time to negotiate pricing.

9. Know when to back down.

Finally, you have to know when to back down. You know, I always want to be the customer with which the suppliers look forward to doing business. I want to pay on time and be pleasant to work with. I don’t want to be “that” customer that we all hate to see coming. You know those customers. You almost have to put on a suit of armor to get prepared for those customers when they walk through the door. No, I don’t want to be that guy.

Go back to point #1: the supplier is in business to make money, just like you. The vendors are trying to feed their families, just like you. They’re trying to turn a profit, just like you. So whenever you’re negotiating with your vendors, you want to be fair. You don’t want to attempt to steal their time or profits. As a result, there will be times when you have to back down.

Words of wisdom…

I want to leave you with a quote from John F. Kennedy. He said, “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” Yes, negotiating can be scary, but it’s necessary for helping control costs within your new business. Trust me, learning how to get the best prices from suppliers and vendors comes with practice. It will get easier in time.

Next Article in the Series: Developing your new business’s marketing plan.

Have more questions about negotiating great deals with your vendors and suppliers? The business experts at Financially Simple are here to help! Contact us, today!