Treasuring your suppliers

SUPPLIERS and competitors are two vital parts of your business. Most organisations regard them as potential antagonists, ready to create costs or impel narrowed margins in a battle that could only be described as exhausting, or even terminal. These are quite the wrong ways to run relationships that will substantially determine your success, even possibly your health. I'll start with suppliers.

In two weeks' time I will look at the opportunities with competitors.

Have you ever thought about who were the suppliers in your life? I don't mean business or work, I mean right from the start when you were a baby. And I don't mean the chemist who sold your mother the medicines to ward off childhood diseases. I mean your real suppliers. Your parents, your grandparents, family, helpers, teachers, friends. Perhaps you didn't think of them as suppliers but they were. Because they supplied you with education, with standards, with information, with support when you were down, with congratulations when you triumphed.