Some of the most valuable business conversations I’ve had were with suppliers who were no longer doing business with us.
Years ago, I inherited responsibility for a purchasing operation with a number of former suppliers that had largely disappeared from the business.
It would have been easy to assume they had simply found better customers.
Instead, I started reopening the conversations.
And I asked what had happened.
Some of the answers weren’t particularly comfortable.
They involved processes, relationships, pricing, communication and the way we were doing business.
But once people were willing to talk candidly, we could begin addressing the underlying problems.
Some of those former suppliers eventually became important business partners again.
Over the following 14 months, those reactivated relationships contributed to operational improvements and roughly $2 million in EBITDA.
The financial result mattered.
But it started with something much simpler:
Being willing to call people who had stopped doing business with us and listen to what they had to say.
That experience reinforced something I had learned much earlier with former customers.
A dormant relationship may contain business.
It may also contain information you need.