Fill Your Vendor List with Quality Business Partners | Natura®

By Jacob Rodriguez

As a property manager, you work with many vendors from an assortment of industries with varying personality types to ensure your properties look great and remain profitable.

Working with vendors is probably not the most exciting part of your job, but they are important to your business. You need them and they need you.

So how can you save yourself the headache, disappointment, wasted time, uncomfortable conversations, and put simply ineffective working relationships?

Your vendors are not just suppliers. They are business partners that either help keep your business running smoothly or hinder your productivity and become an obstacle that slows you down.

Consider these questions when choosing a great business partner:

• Do they care about your business and your growth?
• Are they in it to help you provide better service and/or products to your customers, or are they in it for themselves and the money?
• Does their product or service solve your problems? – They may have a great elevator pitch, but if they can’t truly solve the problem that you are faced with, they are not a good business partner.
• Do your values align with theirs?  – What are their core values and do they align with yours? This is so important, and will determine whether the time you spend will be productive, valuable, and enjoyable or ineffective and painful. They don’t need to be perfectly in line, but if you believe in treating your employees well, you should do business with those that treat their employees well.
• Are they easy to do business with?  Do they invoice the way that you want them to, and do you know who to call when you need something? Are they flexible to work with you and your processes, or do their processes create a headache for you?
• Do you find value in what they provide?

Ultimately, your business partners should be one that saves your time, money and helps you to grow your business and achieve your purpose.

At Natura, we love working with property managers and hotel managers that care about their environment and are always looking for innovative ways to revitalize and refresh a space. Our designers love to work with the client (unless otherwise informed) to produce a design that looks beautiful and works to benefit the environment at hand.