When you are considering which metal fabrication supplier to use for your company’s needs, relationship building may not be one of the first requirements on your list of priorities to check. Stop to think about it, though. All companies run on the strength of their relationships with their workers, their suppliers, and their customers, so building and reinforcing them is extremely important. This is why D+M Metal Products’ core values center on developing our people and building relationships and why this will be a main focus for us in 2020.
Mission Statement
D+M Metal’s mission statement reads: “Our mission is to develop and use our talents and resources to provide superior products and services while establishing long-term relationships with our customers, suppliers, and community.”
Building Relationships within our Workforce
Building strong relationships starts from within our company. Work doesn’t just consist of punching the clock coming in and out because people aren’t robots. It can be a challenge to meet our customers’ needs, the needs of the company as a whole, and the needs of the individual people who work for us, but in doing so, our business grows stronger and becomes better over time.
One of the ways we accomplish this is to invest in training our workers and spend time fully incorporating them into our work environment. We view the success of our workers as a partnership. They work hard, and we support them in their individual career goals. They invest their time and abilities in our company, and we invest in tuition to get them further training.
We also invest time in community building. As a society, we’re all experiencing pretty rapid change, and that directly impacts the workforce. In a world where people are more and more on their phones, it can be hard to build and nurture healthy, respectful relationships at work, including vital mentoring relationships. Communication and interaction are key to increased productivity, quality output, and job satisfaction, though. We are choosing to focus on creating an environment where teamwork is emphasized and rewarded.
Building Relationships with Our Suppliers
Without our suppliers, we cannot produce anything for our customers. We might as well not open our doors. Our suppliers do more than just drop off aluminum and steel, after all. They are excellent sources of information about the industry and even advice for how to navigate fluctuations within the metal fabrication business. Through clear communication, reasonable expectations, and trustworthiness in our business dealings, we work to keep our relationships with our suppliers in good shape.
Building Relationships with Our Customers
The most important way to build relationships with customers – not just to attract new customers – is to do what you say you will do. When customers see that you can deliver what they ask for on time, with quality workmanship, at the price quoted, they are willing to trust you with more work. Trust is the oil that enables every interaction to run smoothly without unnecessary friction.
At D+M Metal, when we say we will call you, we call. When we say we will follow up with more information, we will follow up. We stand by our products and guarantee their quality. We are willing to go the extra mile to make sure that the relationships we have created with the companies we do business with continue.
We believe doing quality work and conducting business honestly is worthwhile, but we are also happy when our customers let others know that their experience with us has been positive. Word-of-mouth reviews are so much more valuable in this business than online reviews because they can’t be easily manipulated. They are based on authentic interactions over time and long-term customer satisfaction.
Ultimately, building relationships with our workers, our suppliers, and our customers is about optimizing satisfaction for everyone, including us. We like knowing the people we do business with. We enjoy getting to know people over time and to trust and depend on them more and more as well. Making relationships about more than financial transactions is important to us, and that’s why it’s in our mission statement and our goals for doing business in 2020.