The Quest To Become A Strategic Supplier
How You Can Become More Strategically Important To Your Customers
Who Do You Matter To?
Your company may not be strategic at a board level – that may be too much to hope for. Indeed, if you don’t contribute directly to corporate strategy and its success the CEO or CFO may know, or care little about; your company.
However, that does not mean you are not important in other ways. You may be very important to:
- Specific stakeholders, or departments
- Particular projects, facilities, or functions
- The achievement of particular milestones, metrics, or other results
- The buyer with a specific challenge at that point in time.
Just like beauty, strategic importance is in ‘the eye of the beholder (i.e. stakeholder)’. A key question therefore is ‘who do you need to be important to?’
It is important to decide whose strategy and performance you want to contribute to and to ensure that these stakeholders have sufficient power or influence over the supplier selection and the buying decision.
There is another dimension of the expression ‘in the eye of the stakeholder’ to consider. What matters is not whether you think you contribute to the customer’s success, but rather what they think. Making tangible the link between your product or service and the customer/stakeholder’s success is key.
Q. How tangible is the link between your product or service and the customer’s success?
Peter Viljoen: 
StartupSandy: 
the Senator: 
Martin Lindeskog: 
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