Supplier Management: What's Love Got To Do With It?

If you've ever been on a dating app, you understand the fatigue that creeps in pretty quickly. At first you're excited -- lots of new potential matches that could enhance your life! But after awhile, you start to notice that every man in your area is named Chris and has the same exact weird half beard and fish picture. (Oh wait, that's probably just me...)

But wait -- this kinda sounds like supplier relationship management in your CW program too, doesn't it? Stay with me here... I can't tell you how many buyers I know that have shared with me how all cold emails from firms saying they're "excellent IT staffing providers" have started to look and sound like the same e-mail from the same vendor...over and over. That's bad for everyone. Staffing, Buyers and MSPs are an ecosystem -- we rely on our complex and interconnected relationships to get the job of talent enablement done. If you aren’t clued into the nuances of how to manage the relationships that keep your program running, you won't be operationally excellent for very long at all.

So with that in mind, here's my lighthearted take on how looking for love can have some pretty similar overlaps to looking for staffing business partners that will be true value adds to your CW program. It's good, time-tested advice that's being served up to you in my signature brand of finding strange connections between my work life and my personal life.

Start Here

• Know what kind of relationship you’re looking for before you start looking.? The first step towards supplier optimization is supplier rationalization. Take stock of the people that you already have in place, what your business looks like and where you see it going. Does this relationship make sense? Are we both still invested?

Review the following:

• Look at your supplier scorecards. Where are the folks who aren't submitting candidates or are slow to respond? That could be your first cut.
• Consider location requests and global strategy. Have you been getting a lot of one-off requests for Eastern Europe? It may be time to start finding some support.?
• Are you meeting the needs of your business partners? Take a look at the reqs that were open the longest. Do you need someone who can crush it in those skill sets?
• Are there folks who continually break your program’s rules and won’t play nicely no matter how many times you have to drag their account manager into a “911 meeting”? Cut them.

• Make sure you’re presenting your most attractive self.? After completing a supplier rationalization, it's a good time to look at your documentation and understand how attractive you might be as a partner in the market. Sure, there are a thousand suppliers, but there are a lot of enterprise buyers, too. How do you know you’re worth getting supplier’s top recruiters and top candidates?

Consider these points:

• Have you reviewed your bill rates or mark up contractual obligations? Are you confident that they are competitive???
• Take a look at your conversion terms - are they worth suppliers, putting in effort to give you great candidates? Feedback I've gotten from supplier partners is that they need at least three months on assignment to start making money on the hire.?
• Do you have a well written, clear supplier guidelines document? And not the crappy one that an MSP will give you on how to use the VMS. One that the program owner has written, infused with company information and how to be successful at this particular company.

• You rarely want the one who’s always after you. This one is for my supplier friends. The best type of sell is a soft sell. In almost a decade of industry experience, I have never sent a contract to someone who has cold emailed me over and over. I once had a man cold e-mail me so many times that he legit changed the subject line of his e-mail to be "Puppies, Ice Cream...do I have your attention now?" (Spoiler: I blocked him.) Focus on moving slowly, developing relationships organically over time. I know that means no immediate ROI, and this is easy to say because it's not my paycheck on the line, but it will come in time and be a lot more sustainable.

• Ask a friend about reputation. Some of the best relationships I've been able to build with supplier partners have been because of referrals from colleagues or from benchmarking groups. I trust that my people know what’s important to me and will only send me to people who align with how I work. Don’t forget to ask your internal company contacts. I met my friends at TekWissen because our Twitter supplier diversity leader, Kristen, had a funnel of diverse owned vendors she shared with me. And once you find people who crush it for you, share their information with your peers. Rewarding success is incredibly powerful and builds trust.

Get Serious

• DTR (Define the Relationship) There is so much power in a well written supplier guidelines document. Outlined what you expect from your supplier partners, but also define what commitment they can expect from you. (Look at you, making yourself an attractive partner!) We all know there are only so many recruiters working on a request at once, and unless you have given someone Tier 0 status, there will likely always be competition for their top candidates.

Attractive Commitments To Suppliers From Buyers:

• A closely curated supplier pool. (Happy you did that rationalization now, aren't you?)?
• Limited request release, around no more than X suppliers per req.
• A committed cadence of supplier scorecards and partnership.
• An outline of what score carding metrics will be and their weight. That way they know what success looks like to you and can aim for it.
• An open line of communication with you, your MSP, and hiring managers. That last one is a bit controversial, but if you have a small pool of people you trust to be respectful and purposeful with their comms, you’re taking work off of you and your MSP leads. Plus, you’re allowing them to build their brand and business internally. Win, win.

• Dance with the one who brung ya. Reward excellent long term partners as much as you can. Not all rewards need to be monetary or exclusive reqs…although I am certain an exclusive req would go a long way. For example, my friend Tara from Swoon has an open invitation to throw potential references at me, no warning or notice. I will do that for her because I know that she and Swoon will always get it done for me and that they treat their contractors well. That’s golden to me and I want to help them succeed as much as I can.

Other ways to reward your key players:

• Give them a shout out. Use your LinkedIn presence to tag your account manager in a celebration post when they do something really crucial for you.
• Do a yearly awards ceremony: “most improved”, “most FTE conversions”, “best X company spirit”. Have fun with it.?
• Create a “Supplier Council” and have quarterly or annual meetings with your top performers to listen to their feedback on the market and your program.

Long Term Commitment

• Invest your time and attention into your long term relationship. Show up and show face. Attending a scorecard meeting, a happy hour, a conference, to show your appreciation for the work folks are doing on your behalf goes a long way in growing a relationship. You can’t neglect people just because they’re already in your program…there are a finite amount of candidates on the market, and infinite places to send them. You want to stay top of mind.
• Keep it real. By this time, you should have a strong enough relationship with your suppliers that you can handle a little real talk when it's time. Cultivate a relationship grounded in honesty. I do this by opening the door with a supplier during a program kick-off call. I will outline that I welcome feedback on program operations, pricing, etc. If that feedback doesn’t come in over time, I reach out and ask for it. I will action the feedback and let my staffing partner know what I've done. This shows that I'm listening and receptive. It also lays the ground work for trust over time. Your suppliers are the folks who are closest to the market and see your program team in different way than you do; use that different point of view to help catch any of your blind spots.

Your turn: What are some relationship threads you’ve noticed in supplier management??