Supplier relationships are essential for all energy brokers, but are you able to get the maximum benefits from them?
A broker with established supplier relationships can achieve several benefits that will streamline operations and gain more energy opportunities.
Let’s look at a few ways your relationship with suppliers influences your sales.
The Trust Factor
The core of the broker-supplier relationship is trust.
Are you a proven seller who will represent the supplier appropriately or are you completely unknown to them?
As a known broker, you gain a reputation for closing deals and staying productive. You will become an asset to the supplier, so they’ll want to keep you on board.
More Opportunities
As a known broker, you’ll also gain more traction when you have a critical deal that requires more attention from the supplier.
Whether you need special pricing or expedited information – or even both – if the supplier knows you’re a valuable asset, they’re going to give you more priority and get you what you need faster than they would a stranger.
That means you can compete in energy opportunities that might otherwise be inaccessible.
Payment Plans
Not every supplier offers upfront payment plans, but if they do you’ll usually need to bring lots and lots of business to them before they’ll offer them to you.
Upfront payment plans for unknown brokers mean high risks for suppliers. Who’s to say they can retrieve the funds if your customer drops?
A known broker, on the other hand, will have consistent sales with the supplier. If the customer cancels the agreement, the supplier will have escrowed money to collect any payments that were fronted to the broker.
There’s no guarantee they can do this with an unknown broker.
Think of it this way: the more you sell, the less risky you are for suppliers.
Conclusion
Brokers can’t afford to have loose relationships with suppliers. Otherwise, they’ll lose valuable opportunities and advantages in today’s increasingly competitive retail energy market.
The challenge, of course, is maintaining a high-value relationship with a supplier—and even more so with several suppliers. It takes tons of sales and even more time to build and maintain these relationships.
At Broker Online Exchange, we’ve built and maintained the supplier relationships for you.
Our consistently high volumes along with our well-known integrity have made us a network of choice to the supplier community.
When you partner with BOX, you not only gain access to our first-rate supplier relationships, you also gain the numerous benefits that these relationships engender.
Check out our list of suppliers to see the largest broker-supplier network in North America.
