Throwback: The Art of Negotiation - How to Create Bidding Wars and Win at Sourcing

In this episode, host Josh welcomes back Afolabi Oyerokun, co-founder of Honu Worldwide, for part two of their sourcing and supply chain series. Afolabi shares expert strategies on negotiating with suppliers, including creating bidding wars, managing minimum order quantities, and securing favorable payment terms. He emphasizes the importance of building strong, respectful relationships with suppliers to gain trust and better deals. The conversation provides actionable tips for entrepreneurs and brands sourcing products from Asia and the US, focusing on efficiency, quality, and cash flow management to help scale product-based businesses.

Chapters:

Introduction & Guest Background (00:00:00)
Host introduces Afolabi Oyerokun, his background, and expertise in product sourcing and development.

Sourcing & Bidding War Strategy (00:01:40)
Afolabi explains his process for creating bidding wars among suppliers to get the best price without sacrificing quality.

Negotiation Tactics & Relationship Building (00:04:31)
Detailed negotiation tactics, including silence as leverage, and the importance of building strong personal relationships with suppliers.

Personalizing Supplier Relationships (00:07:21)
Afolabi shares how personal touches and genuine interest in suppliers’ lives can lead to better deals and trust.

Handling Supplier Price Verification (00:09:23)
Discussion on how to respond if suppliers ask for competitor quotes and how to handle lowest price negotiations.

Securing Best Prices for Reorders & Managing MOQs (00:10:18)
Strategies for maintaining good pricing on follow-up orders, managing minimum order quantities, and creative solutions for packaging MOQs.

Summary & Key Takeaways (00:13:22)
Host summarizes main lessons: product development, supplier relationships, and the importance of payment terms for cash flow.

Closing Remarks (00:16:35)
Final thanks and acknowledgments from both host and guest, wrapping up the episode.

Links and Mentions:

Tools and Strategies 
"Sourcing Mastery Course": "00:01:15"

Key Strategies Discussed 
"Bidding War Strategy": "00:02:11"

Takeaways 
"Product Development": "00:13:22"
"Supplier Relationship": "00:14:27"
"Payment Terms": "00:15:38"

Transcript:

Josh 00:00:00  Today. I am super excited for our conversation. You guys are going to love and absorb a lot of great information of how you're going to become more efficient in your product sourcing, product development, three PL storage, all of that good stuff. And we've got an expert here to talk about that. I'm excited to introduce you to Afolabi Oyerokun. This is him coming back for a part two series because his first interview went so well. But he is the co-founder of Honu Worldwide in Innovative Product development, sourcing and three PL company based in Pennsylvania, USA. Afolabi has always been passionate about finding things, haggling and negotiating prices. His obsession with finding good quality products at bargain prices led him to help several seven and eight figure brands increase their profits and scale rapidly by buying smart from Asia and the US. He is behind the successful launches of several multimillion dollar products on Amazon and other retail channels. An entrepreneur at Heart Lobby owns and has sold a few seven figure private label brands. He loves helping people design, develop and manufacture innovative products.

Josh 00:01:15  He is also the creator of the Sourcing Mastery course, which teaches people the best practices for product development, sourcing and supply chain management. So with that introduction, welcome back to the podcast.

Afolabi 00:01:30  Thanks, Josh.

Afolabi 00:01:31  I'm happy to be back. I really enjoyed our past episode and I'm really excited and pumped up, you know, to continue on this point.

Josh 00:01:40  Are there any sneak peeks that you could give us of kind of the best tips? You know, if you are working directly in terms of how do you make sure you, you know, you're not getting you know, there's not going to be fraud. They take your money and run or what are some tips in terms of, I think, most importantly, getting the best price possible without sacrificing quality. Do you have any tips or sneak peeks that you could give a give us from your course? Because it relates to, you know, working directly with the manufacturer?

Afolabi 00:02:11  Yes, one of the great. One of the funniest and, interesting things I put on the course is to set up a bidding war with, your suppliers.

Afolabi 00:02:23  how I do it is. So when I'm sourcing products, I sourced product from, let's say, five different suppliers. Sometimes it could be up to ten suppliers, and then they give me the pricing. I don't negotiate at the first time. I wait till the end before I negotiate my prices. And then when I get all this prices from the suppliers, then I call for a video or, or image samples. I'm like, let me see you samples, do a video or do a photo. I see that, oh, okay. From the ten suppliers I might shortlist only 5 or 6. So from the six I said, okay, can you send me samples? I need physical samples. They say, oh, you got to pay for sample, no problem. Update. So I pay them for sample or pay for the sample shipping. They send me the samples and I take a look at them. And maybe I like only three out of the six people, six suppliers that sent me their samples.

Afolabi 00:03:16  So I cut off three, I keep three, so out of the three I would say something like, hey, without them knowing, see, they don't know that all these three, all the suppliers don't know each other and they don't know I'm getting samples from different suppliers. So let's say one comes up at $2, another one comes up at $1.50, an