Friday, February 10, 2012 VOLUME 1 ISSUE 19   HOME Handling those pesky vendors. by Chris Buckingham, President, Caesius, chris@caesius.com ********** Summary: The plethora of products and services addressing the CI space combined with low cost telephone and email sales tactics create a massive number of unsolicited intrusions by vendor salespeople. Are vendors pesky and annoying? Most definitely, but they’re not going away. Chris Buckingham provides a few tips on how to manage these vendor distractions to the advantage of you and your employer. ********** For information professionals and analysts, annoying telephone calls are no longer limited to aluminum siding salespeople calling during dinner. The plethora of products and services addressing the CI space combined with low cost telephone and email sales tactics create a massive number of unsolicited intrusions by vendor salespeople Add the vendor “elbow rubbing” that occurs at your local SCIP chapter meeting and the routine follow up calls from the exhibitors visited at the SCIP international conference and before you know it, vendors are eating up an inordinate amount of your time. Below are a few tips on how to manage these vendor distractions to the advantage of you and your employer. Ignore or exploit? The knee jerk reaction is to stay on task and ignore the vendors completely, but is this wise? Believe it or not, in spite of their peskiness, vendors just may have products that can make you and your employer more productive. But there are also some less obvious benefits. Knowledgeable salespeople (no oxymoron intended) can be very informative about professional and marketplace issues. Remember, they have a perspective from dealing with many customers on a variety of topics. Also, the good ones stay educated on your industry as well as theirs. By talking to them, you might get some valuable insights and learn about some new information sources. Salespeople can also be a gold mine of competitive information. They love to build rapport and are anxious to impress you with their conquests, so take advantage of their loose lips. Without too much prodding you can usually find out if your competitors are using their products and why. With some additional coaxing you might learn a whole lot more. Many vendors offer free seminars and other educational opportunities on industry topics, technology trends, etc. One of my prior employers used to host events like these annually on the French Riviera. Yes, you will have to put up with some vendor hype, usually in the form of a boring 15 minute Powerpoint presentation, but often these seminars can be very educational, particularly if the vendor brings in industry experts as speakers. A short sales pitch is a small price to pay for some continuing education. Finally, vendors can provide great support for your local SCIP chapters. Rather than complain about vendor participation, figure out creative ways to profit from it. Offer a variety of meeting sponsorships, for a price, of course. You might even consider annual vendor sponsorships where you offer a speaking engagement, signage, space at a literature table, etc. in exchange for a sizable annual contribution. Yes, you will be subjected to some over-promotion but in return you’ll get some good program content and raise substantial funds. Friday afternoon honesty All unsolicited vendor calls are an interruption and likely, an annoyance. After all, you weren’t just sitting around waiting for Paul Polyester to call and bend your ear about his overpriced competition killer. But, as established above, there are good reasons to “manage” vendors. My favorite technique? Set aside a couple hours every Friday afternoon just for vendors. Whenever a salesperson calls or requests an appointment, suggest Friday at 3 pm as a time to call back or visit. You’re not likely to have any internal meetings to deal with and the only salespeople who will interrupt their happy hour, golf game, or long weekend are those who believe they have a great fit for their product. So, you’ve cleared two hours on Friday afternoons for vendors, and the calls are coming in. One other piece of advice – give them the ground rules up front. Good salespeople want to know the decision making process and the current fiscal situation as early as possible. It saves them a lot of time. So let them know who will be involved and where the money will come from. If you give them the facts and they still want to talk then they’re fair game for “benign exploitation”. Empathy and used car tactics A couple of other worthwhile tips: Please remember, your company has salespeople too, and some of them are better than others. Chances are, some of the annoying tactics employed by a vendor’s salesperson are probably practiced in your own backyard. Be a little empathetic. After all, there are many good products represented by bad salespeople and it’s a disservice to your employer to reject a product for reasons other than its merits. Finally, always ask for a better deal. Once salespeople have invested the time and effort to take you through their sales cycle, they don’t want to lose the sale. In today’s economic climate, vendors don’t know where the next deal is going to come from so their salespeople are authorized to wheel and deal. For best results, make sure you have a basis for asking and you’ve rehearsed your request. Good salespeople know you’d rather pay less but will need to hear some justification before caving in. Are vendors pesky and annoying? Most definitely, but they’re not going away. Rather than letting their salespeople make you cringe, learn how to manage them to get the most for you, your employer, and your local SCIP chapter. Background Christopher J. Buckingham is president of Caesius Software (www.caesius.com), makers of WebQL, an award winning web harvesting software solution. He has over 28 years of experience in the computer hardware and software industry. Copyright 2002 Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals SCIP.online, volume 1 number 19, November 8, 2002. [PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION] There are no letters available. [POST]

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