Chris Wheeler's Worldly Inferno

In my current role, one of my responsibilities is vendor management. I handle all aspects of the vendor relationship from vetting vendor prospects, to negotiations and finally to solution architecture post launch. While I totally understand that each client is different and has their own unique organizational constraints, I’ve noticed a pattern in vendor interactions over the years that I’d like to share. If you find yourself engaging with a client, it would be wise to heed the following advice to ensure you (and I) have the best experience possible.

• Send meeting invites – I have an incredibly packed schedule.  Not only am I dealing with vendors, but also am triaging a billion other things at any given time.  So, as you can imagine, my time is hard to come by.  Unfortunately, for vendors, I don’t have a free calendar with tons of whitespace allowing for a bunch of ad hoc meetings.  I find it most useful when a vendor sends out meeting invites for predetermined times to chat (either in person or over the phone) so I can be sure to allocate my time and not bail when another internal meeting comes along.  You’d think this would be common sense but you’d be amazed at how many folks I deal with that ask my availability and then schedule a meeting with no subsequent invite to block off my calendar.  And how much time does it really take to compose and send one out?
• Check your presentation – Remember, you may be sick of looking at your slide deck for sales demos.  But, it’s the first time I, as a prospective client, get to see how you operate.  How do you put thoughts together?  What do you tout as the biggest advantage of using your service?  How much attention to detail do you put into your opportunity to wow me during my first impression?  Always check your copyright.  Is it 2 years out of date?  I’d rather not see a copyright than an old one.  Are you continually having to tell me not to look at the latest use stats of your product because they aren’t reflected in the deck?  If so, why haven’t you updated them?  Do you have my company name inserted at random places in the slides to show a customized sales effort – but the company name and/or logo is out of date?  How hard is it to look at my company’s homepage to get the latest corporate info?  You probably deal with the slide deck day in and day out and don’t see details as being that important, but when I have limited knowledge of your company, all I can do is judge based on what I’m presented.  A side note here as well is don’t share too much about existing clients, unless you preface it with the fact you’ve gotten the client’s permission.  The first thought that pops into my mind is if they’re that cavalier about expressing potentially sensitive data about other clients, what does that mean for my company’s data if we become a client?
• Check your audio equipment – This should really be a no brainer.  But, apparently some sales folks didn’t get the memo.  Before you bring me and potentially others into a conference call, make sure your $%^& works!  I had a call recently where the vendor’s speaker phone kept ringing during the presentation.  Really?  Same goes for presentations with crying children, dogs barking, or significant others talking about grocery lists in the background.  If I can ensure that you’re not interrupted with random life events with my participation, why can’t you?
• Stay within time – If you schedule an hour long meeting, stay within that hour. I can’t tell you how many times I have to cut people off before we even get to the meat of the discussion because my meeting time is up and I have to run off to another one.  Don’t be afraid to send meeting invites out with a generous meeting time frame if you think you’ll need it (use reason here).  I’d rather leave a meeting early and get back time in my schedule than have to drop off and schedule a follow-up.
• Minimize meeting frequency – Piggybacking on the previous point, my time is valuable and my calendar is full.  Sales folks love to speak to potential and actual clients in person rather than in email threads because it allows for a more personable experience.  I get that.  But, having to jump on the phone every time I have a question with my phone ringing off the hook and people pushing me to meetings instead of answering questions in email gets very annoying.  Either become more liberal with what you express in email (which can be a great tool since it requires less work for me to share with other internal people than writing up minutes and sharing that), or lump everything into a catch all meeting.  I know your priority for closing the deal focuses on my attention but remember that I have other things going on.
• Don’t leapfrog me - This is where judgment comes into play and a little bit of context is good before executing.  Sometimes vendors won’t feel they’re getting the attention they deserve so they go as far up my management food chain as they can to get some attention.  Ironically, my management pushes them back to me.  And then you’re left with me knowing you tried to go over my head to get me to do something.  It rarely if ever works, so please don’t try.  You’re trying to sell me something or keep my business, so the onus is on you to be responsive and accommodating. In turn, we pay you cash.  I don’t work for you, nor do I owe you anything.  I guarantee if I’m doing my job right, my management will listen to me over you every time.  Also, there’s nothing worse than a vendor not responding in a timely manner to my queries and then trying to elicit a response from me to meet their schedule (which is usually dictated by quarterly sales goals).
• I don’t care about your quota - I actually had someone tell me just how valuable I would be as a customer after he explained what his quota for the year is and where I fall into that spectrum.  Again, I don’t work in sales nor do I want to.  I am not beholden to your quotas and quite frankly am a bit offended when told the only value I have to the vendor is in how quickly they can meet their numbers.  Sales 101, I would think.
• Don’t be a sore sport – Vendor client relationships are as old as capitalism.  But, part of the relationship is the dating (just like in real life).  Just because I go out on a date with you doesn’t mean I’m obligated to marry you.  Same with business.  When a vendor goes dark after I turn their solution down, you might be missing opportunities in the future.  Things change along with needs for solutions.  Some solutions don’t work out.  I always have a short list of folks to go to that I’m not currently engaged with but trust enough to hit up as a secondary choice.  However, if you’re pinging me every day before I decide, then when you find out I’ve chosen another solution and go into radio since, I remember that the next time I’m in need.  Again, it reminds me that I’m just a short term figure to help a sales quota and that doesn’t instill confidence in a long term relationship at a later date.

Sales is a vital piece of any organization.  But if you’re not careful, you end up espousing an image that isn’t as flattering as you think it is.  And at the end of the day, I’m responsible for defending why we have certain vendors in place.  Make my job easy by not instilling fear and angst about what you’ll deliver on and how you’ll handle the relationship.  I’m reasonable, but to a point.  Use common sense and pay attention to how your interactions are perceived (along with the consideration you’re getting) and you’ll be pleasantly surprised.