Buyers' Expectations from Their Suppliers

External relationship management assumes more strategic significance as companies become reliant on third parties. The key purposes of these engagements are to gain competitive advantage and to add value to a company’s internal operations. Thus the process of managing business relationships during all respective stages is a critical success factor. This paper explores the fundamental expectations buyers have from their potential suppliers. This is done in order to create an understanding on how to improve the results of intercompany engagement processes the intitial stages of the relationship management continuum applied by industrial companies. The fundamental questions to be answered are “What do industrial buyers expect from their suppliers?” and “What are the key attributes of a good supplier?” It is generally understood that to become a supplier to a company requires passing their supplier qualification program and thus meeting the respective supplier qualification criteria. Therefore it is important to understand what such programs and criteria might be and are they generic ones or specific to a particular industry or even a company. Furthermore a question of interest is: “Are the ways proposed by literature and described in industry processes aligned with: a) the true evaluation criteria of purchasing decision-makers; and b) the ingredients of a successful relationship”?