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Episode Transcript
Alex Chan | Paul O’Donohue
The question for the day is if you are a CEO or business owner, are you recession ready? In this particular part of the series, we’re talking about key strategic plays that we can put in place in order to navigate tough economic times ahead. And joining us is SalesStar founder and CEO Paul O’Donohue. Paul, thanks for going through the entire series with us and for joining us again today. Now, this is an interesting one, isn’t it? Because we’re talking about how we treat our suppliers, not our customers. And because during recessions, people often cut back and they try to tune their suppliers into a bank and they don’t pay then on time do they?
Yeah, I think that’s a mistake, Alex. You know, and it’s a we’ve got to treat our suppliers as key partners. You know what happens if you lose your key partner and they’re supplying what impact is it going to have on your business? I mean, right now, what we’re experiencing is supply demand, shortages.
Yeah, supply chain.
Supply chain issues. So, I mean, I believe you’ve worked with one of our key accounts recently who was in many of our key accounts getting impacted by supply chain issues. What was the advice you provided them?
Oh, they said that they could use supply chain issues to their advantage by getting people into to act with urgency and to go ahead and give the order now so that they can stay productive down the track. So they were trying not to look pushy, though, simply giving them advice. If they didn’t run into productivity issues, they need to order now. So they created this atmosphere of FOMO or fear of missing out by saying you need to act more urgently and it works. The supply chain issues worked in their favor, but interesting with regard to our suppliers, I wonder if this is an idea for our viewers why not actually have some strategic meetings with your key strategic partners and that includes your suppliers and to help each other?
Alex There are a lot of builders. I’ve just come back from Australia in particular. There are a lot of builders going bust and there’s, there’s certainly one customer that’s actually growing market share at the moment. And their key strategy was to build really key partnerships with their suppliers, paying them on time, forecasting accurately, making sure that they were the number one customer that they would supply, and so they start to dominate and grow market share just because of that strategy.
Yeah, a funny thing happens, doesn’t it, Paul? If you treat your suppliers well, you help to alleviate some of those supply chain issues. Funny that you go to the top of the priority.
Yeah, absolutely, Alex. Hundred per cent with. We’ve got to look after our suppliers.
Yeah. Thanks for that, Paul. Now for that, for our viewers, remember if you want to have assistance to make your performance even better, reach out to a SalesStar high performance coach because they are, of course, there to help. Thanks for watching this series. We’ve got another one to go. So keep on following and that will help you to ensure that you are ready to face a recession. We’ll see you at the next session.
