We ‘do’ competition – no problem, you win some you lose some but…..
The UK Promotional Merchandise market is highly fragmented and over-supplied so we’re used to having to fight a seemingly never ending list of competitors for every order.
Now of course during the process of trying to win an order we don’t expect to see our competitors pricing, we get the rules of the game, but we do need a proper brief or the product codes and descriptions of the products that our suggestions will be compared to.
Sadly though, the reality is that in many cases we are left to make choices on behalf of the client only to learn later that we were not quoting ‘Apples for Apples’, that is to say we didn’t have the chance to quote for exactly the same product the successful supplier had offered.
So what’s the point of asking multiple parties to provide a competitive quote if the specification is not fixed? That’s not a genuine competition!
Or put another way, how can you be sure you’re getting the best deal if you haven’t asked your potential suppliers to quote for exactly the same thing?
So bring on the competition, because if its ‘Apples for Apples’ we usually win!
Tags: promotional merchandise