The More You Give, The Higher You'll Get Dumped On

Looking forward to hopefully starting a project with an industrial parts distributor/manufacturer based in Sheffield, I met the top sales person Tuesday.  One interesting topic was how to gain more share of each third-party distributor’s spend on their kinds of products.

An instructive example was with one distributor that took advantage of deferred payment on initial, first-time stock.  Their start-off order effectively gave them a year’s worth of inventory.  And then when it came to pay, they started to play up, constantly asking for more they were untitled to.

Everyone must have plenty of examples of where you give an inch, yet the other side takes a mile.  This organisation’s approach has just altered as a result, and now they say a firm, but polite “no” to any such suggestions.

I’m reminded of the mentality of people who never change their terms until a relationship has fully formed.  It’s kind of like the opposite to those annoying banks and mobile phone providers, when they offer new customers ridiculous deals but don’t match them for long-time customers.  And it seems like a great way to foster genuine, mutually beneficial long-term conduct.