Keep Those Quality Providers

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Having a solid, quality group of dependable service providers on your side is a major plus for any outsourcer. Just take a look at all the trouble some people have finding them, let alone keeping them.

Quality service providers help business grow with solution-bound ideas. They’re team players, and they help set the tone of the company that they work for — which is why it’s so important that you make an extra effort to keep them working for you.

The question is… how?

Quality Providers are in High Demand

Recommended Reading: How to Hire, Train & Keep the Best Employees for Your Small Business: With Companion CD-ROM

A departing service provider could inadvertently wreak havoc on a company, but the fact is service providers leave all the time. They’re temporary workers, after all, often lining up 3 – 5 different contracts with different outsourcers at a time.

As soon as their work is  done at one job, they’re outta there right on to the next. It’s nothing personal – it’s just the way things work in the contracting world. It good for contractors, but bad for you.

Problematic Issues

Not only do you lose all of a provider’s skills when s/he leaves, you face having to train the next service provider to perform as well as the one who departed.  Even worse, you may get a reputation for losing great service providers especially if this is a reoccurring nuisance.

For recent events, check our Employee Retention section

As mentioned in our outsourcing book, service providers talk to each other, and if word gets around you’re unable to keep a few good ones under your belt, future providers may become suspect and hesitate working with you.

What To Do

To keep a quality service provider, take an invested interest in his/her ideas and goals. Service providers have been around the block a few times and can make some relevant, experienced, and successful contributions. Learn what puts a fire under a particular service provider’s belly, and try to drive that fire toward future projects.

Got an upcoming meeting? Ask the provider to participate and lend his or her input. A provider that stays with you through the thick and thin is the provider who contributes to a company’s growing process. Should it ultimately come down to a choice between losing a fantastic provider and hiring him/her, shoot for the latter. The benefits are simply infinity-fold.