How to brief your BizGift supplier

Very often the entire deal between the promotional product buyer and his supplier may be over before it even starts. The reason is insufficient brief. Simply put, wrong brief results in wrong offer, wrong offer means no deal or deal with lots of troubles.

There are some products where the brief can be simple. You choose let’s say a pen from your supplier’s catalog, tell him the quantity and in how many colours your logo will be printed and you will get quite accurate quote.

The difficulties begin, when you ask for a product tailor made to your needs. Lot’s of variables enter into the picture and the more you specify the more accurate and competitive quote you will get. The moment your supplier has to guess or estimate, unless he is a suicidal kind of business person, he will always be guessing on the safe side – meaning more costly option. Why ?

For example you send over a picture of a reasonably complicated bag and ask for a price. From the picture materials can be guessed, but not really clearly and definitely not those used inside the bag that you can’t see on the photo. How to quote ? Just guess. If the supplier guesses wrong on the cheap side, he is likely to get the business because of the low price and then loose money. If he guesses wrong on the expensive side, his client will not get the deal and blame him for overcharging him … In fact the supplier simply quoted as inaccurately as the original brief was …

It is not always possible to give 100% accurate and detailed brief, but here few bits of info that should not be left out from any brief to your BizGift supplier:

• Detailed description

• Material specifications

• Dimensions

• Photos from different angles or detailed drawings or samples if available

• Budget

• Your delivery time requirements

• Branding requirements (size, technology, number of colours)

• Quantity you want to get quoted on

• Deadline for offer

There may be other details necessary for different kinds of products, but the above list is already very helpful to your supplier. Your suppliers may still ask you for more information or some clarifications – don’t feel annoyed by that. Those who come back to you and ask for more information are those who care and want to give you the best deal. Those who simply send you a price no matter how inaccurate your brief is are those most likely to get you or themselves in trouble later on.

Stay tuned to BizGiftGuru for case studies on How to brief your BizGift supplier on different kinds of products and in different situations.

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