4 Tips to Choose the Best Vendor.
An expert vendor is your ticket to success in your industry. You cannot choose an average vendor and expect to win big. Of course, with vendors, vendors, and yet more vendors all around, you may feel overwhelmed for choice. You may find it challenging to choose the best vendor for your business. Once you have chosen your vendors though, then you’ll want to make sure that you have something like this suppliers performance management to help make sure that they are helping your business.
Here are a few tips to help you choose the best vendor.
1. Does your Vendor share your Vision?
When it comes to choosing the right vendor for your business, you want to make sure you and the prospective partner are clear about the project. Your partner should be aware of your expectations, goals, and vision. Since both of you would be working together, you may want to find a collaborative partner, who is willing to go to any length to learn more about your business, so their work reflects your visions.
It is not only about understanding the blueprints, but also about getting to know the client and learning about long-term interests and most critical points on the agenda.
Related: B2B Companies Should Accept Credit Cards to Increase Revenue.
2. Length of commitment with vendor?
How long do you plan to work with the vendor? The answer to this question would help you make the right choice. So you may prioritize the depth of engagement and length of commitment when it comes to selecting a vendor. Be clear and specific about whether you’re looking for a vendor for a long- or short-term commitment.
Related: Ditch Paper Checks and Move to eChecks to Save BIG on Transaction Costs.
3. Honesty about Vendor’s abilities.
Make sure you choose an honest and upfront vendor. You do not want to end up with someone that make tall claims and fail to keep promises. Remember, if someone promises you the moon, it’s better to move on to another. The vendor must be upright and honest in their claims and truthfully represent their skills. They should be honest about what they can and cannot provide. Companies that are honest about their potential shortcomings are a better choice compared to those that promise you the moon for the sake of it.
When you look at a deal, pull out a microscope to check for blind spots that may negatively affect their business. While you should be clear about your expectations and vision, the best vendor would not hold back anything and answer all of your questions.
Related: Check Your Credit Card Processing Rates Before The Holidays.
4. Expertise
You look for the best vendor to benefit from their expertise. It would help to do some homework to prepare a list of questions and engage in a fruitful conversation to check their level of expertise in the niche. Talk about what exactly you want and what they can deliver. Listen to them about what they understand regarding your business and expectations. Remember, since there are two partners in a partnership, one partner alone cannot do all the talking. Both sides need to share their views and ideas. If you are a vendor and reading these tips to help start or maintain a business relationship, you can also check out TradeBeyond to see how you can be an officially approved vendor that is certified in certain sectors.
Related: Set up Your Business to Receive Payments, the Right Way!
Bonus Tip: How to choose the best merchant account provider.
If you currently accept credit cards and ACH payments then you work with a merchant account provider. How good of a deal do you have with your current provider? You probably can’t say because you don’t know all the rates that other competitors give. We do!
We know exactly what to look for when shopping for a new merchant account provider. Among some of the checks we perform for our Free Merchant Account Analysis are:
- We will check your Tiered Pricing structure to see if your credit card pricing is separate from your check cards. Most providers bundle both these rates up and that costs you more.
- We will evaluate your Interchange Pricing structure to check your mark-up and if you are processing under the correct industry code for your business.
- For Purchasing Cards, we will find out if you are taking advantage of Level 3 Line Item rates.
- We will also find out if you are paying any “hidden charges” like AVS fees, batch fees, annual fees, PCI Compliance fees and others that may be costing you money every month.
Related: ACH, Paper Checks, eChecks, Electronic Payments! Confused Yet?
If you have any thoughts about EMV capable terminals, I would like you to read my previews blog post titled, “EMV Capable Terminal – To Lease or Buy? Don’t Get Scammed!“. I came across providers that have been leasing EMV capable terminals to their customers on a 2 year lease (for $2400) when you could buy it outright for about $200.
Contact Us for more information on Credit Card Processing, or eChecks and ACH Transactions. Or take us up on our FREE Merchant Account Analysis offer. We’ll analyze your merchant account rates and let you know how to Save! If you are ready, you may be able to Switch and Save!