The biggest difference between an everyday metal salesperson/ order taker and a top metals salesperson is that they treat their vendors as well as they treat their customers. They know that they have to treat their vendors well because often times, they need to ask for a better price or delivery in order to win a job.

Consider this. You get a phone call from a buyer you've never talked to before. They have a multi-line quote that will take 30 minutes to put together. Next, you get a phone call from a customer you've talked to for years with a similar quote. Whose RFQ gets worked on first? I can almost guarantee its the customer you know.

You've heard of the importance of CRM - Customer Relationship Management. Well I'm here to tell you that SRM - Supplier Relationship Management, is equally important to your success in winning non-stock orders.

So just how do you accomplish SRM? Well, I strongly recommend that you take notes. When you do a search at MSO and get to a list of suppliers, you'll notice that to the right of each supplier is a link that reads "Edit Contact/ Notes". Here, you can add the name of your favorite contact, along with their specific email address as well as notes about the supplier/ company.

You can also make any supplier a Favorite Supplier, which will force them to the top of the list whenever a search results in that company.

So what kind of notes should you add? Well, basically anything that you learn about the company or person in your dealings with them. What's their favorite sports team? Do they have any kids? Pretty much any tidbit of information that would allow you to quickly re-establish rapport in subsequent contacts.

Because there are over 5000 suppliers in the MSO database, there may well be suppliers you only contact once or twice a year. Having a specific person and possibly some inside information about the person will make it far more likely that your RFQ gets responded to quickly and with favorable price and delivery.

In these days, the faster you respond, the better your chances of winning the job.