The Thomas Blog

Partners vs. Suppliers – Which One Are Buyers Looking For?

Buyers don’t look for new suppliers every day — it’s rare, time consuming, difficult, and even a bit risky to change suppliers.

So when they do look, they’re not seeking out a one-shot, “easiest” supplier — they’re looking for a new long-term partner so that they won’t have to go through the process again anytime soon. No matter what area of the sales cycle you’re targeting, here’s what you can do to position yourself as a true partner.

Four Good Reasons To Reshore Your Supply Chain

Reshoring your supply chain means you decrease your dependence on countries in other parts of the world. For example, if you’re building an automobile, you might assemble it in America, but if the bolts for the engine come from China, you’ll have to wait for them to ship across the Pacific Ocean. This could result in disruptions to your production schedule.

And, with production so far away, how could you ensure that the quality is up to par? If this isn’t enough reason to reshore your supply chain, here are four more:

How to Help Industrial Buyers and Win More Business

Industrial buyers want your help in making their job easier. It’s as simple as that. Don’t over think it.

How can you help them? Let’s take a look at the typical day of an industrial buyer to help identify areas where you can offer more support:

How Procurement Managers Can Break Out of the “No Quote” Blues

“Not for us.” “Volume is too low.” “We can’t do that size.”

You’ve heard every excuse possible. No matter how hard you try, sometimes it feels like you will never find a custom manufacturing supplier that will even give you a quote, never mind actually produce the parts you need. In an economy that has folks pushing to maximize every opportunity, it seems very counter intuitive that we would see this many possible jobs get turned down, doesn’t it?

11 Tips to Help Identify a Reliable Supplier

When starting your research to identify a new supplier, the knee jerk reaction is to look for the best price to lower cost. However, it is more important to look for the long term value of your partnership with this supplier.

Avoiding 4 Hidden Productivity Killers

What are some of the top enemies of productivity at work?

CareerBuilder recently put out a survey, which we’ll get to — just as soon as I finish this text message. Yes, most of the usual suspects are accounted for: wasting time online, social media, chatting with coworkers, and of course, cell phones and texting. Those are the obvious ones — the distractions. You can also run into hidden productivity killers, though — ones that come up in the course of just trying to do your job.

FAQ: Complying With This Harsh New Email Law

The Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL) recent has garnered a lot of interest — and a lot of questions from you.

I trust that the “email police” didn’t beat down anyone’s door, but for small businesses especially, the compliance effort can still seem overwhelming. With the law on the books for nearly a month, let’s take a look at some of those big questions, as well as others that may remain.

You Can Do Better Than “Somewhat” Effective Marketing

Would you go to a restaurant that a friend told you was “somewhat” good? How about a movie that was “somewhat” entertaining? Looking for a new TV show to watch? I’ll tell you about a few I enjoyed... somewhat.

It’s not exactly high praise, is it? So when 51% of b-to-b marketers recently called their content marketing just “somewhat effective,” with only 14% saying their content marketing was “very effective” — the rest saying “somewhat” or worse — maybe it’s time to take a look at how to get your content marketing back on the right track.

4 Ways You Can Flush Your ROI Down the Toilet

You can just hear the sound in your head as your marketing budget circles the drain, never coming back, with nothing to show for it. It’s the scenario you may find yourself in if you’re not thinking about return on investment (ROI) when you plan a marketing program.

ROI is a few things: it’s a measure of how effective your marketing is, how efficient it is, and how productive it is. But it really boils down to one yes-or-no, bottom line question: Was it worth it? You can have all the impressive metrics you want, but if the ROI isn’t there you may as well just toss those dollars down the bowl. How can a marketing program go so wrong? Here are a few ways.