What I wish I had known then - Volume 1: Vendors

I saw a fairly hostile debate on my LinkedIn feed this morning. A customer was publicly shaming one of their vendors. He was offended by their marketing efforts and implied that they are unethical for offering the opportunity to participate in an off-site team building activity. A whole bunch of vendors in this person's network offered their perspective on the situation and unfortunately it devolved into Facebook.

Of course the vendors weren't listening to the customer which is a big no-no in any case. Defensiveness can be a natural reaction to offense and the resulting debacle wasn't fair or reasonable across the board. I decided to disengage from the whole thread since my "voice of reason" is probably biased.

Unfortunately what I saw was all too common. Vendors not respecting customer's boundaries and customers dismissing the value and expertise brought by specialists. Admittedly I was this type of customer and unfortunately I tended to see vendors in a negative light. I spent almost 20 years as an IT customer. Then I spent the last 10 years working as a Consultant, Solutions Architect, and SE. Some of that time was working as a re-seller consultant doing things that are really very cool. Some of that time I spent as a Manufacturer SE, using my practical background to help fit my products into customer environments while also doing all of the "salesey things". Now I'm working as an Account Manger for another Value Added Re-seller. I happen to think that my perspective on this topic is uncommonly comprehensive.

In many of my years as an IT customer I was similar to Brent from The Phoenix Project (great audio read by the way if you don't know who that is). That guy who knows all the things and doesn't need help from anyone. As a result I had a very transactional view of vendors and their products. I didn't want to hear about how smart their engineers were or how experienced their project managers were. I didn't care who else they knew. I didn't want to hear about how any Success Stories, White Papers, Reference Architectures, Managed Services, Professional Services, Deployment Assistance, or Training Classes could help me. You were not getting enough information about my infrastructure to help with Architecture or Design, and you were definitely not getting enough insight into my companies fiscal dealings or Initiative Priorities to help me plan or budget.

What you'll notice about that whole last paragraph is that my vendors were not given the opportunity to help me. I was not engaging as a partner and I was discounting everything they could bring to the table. At the time, I was trying to protect my company and my budget from salespeople. I didn't respond well to being challenged by those I viewed as service providers. I didn't see or expect value and so I obstructed them from getting access to the things they needed to provide it. Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In retrospect, I could probably quantify the loss to my employers brought by this arrogant attitude toward vendors and I have to say that its not a great feeling.

So, here is my discourse on the lesser known truths about vendors. Certainly there are exceptions, but in general these things should hold water. Yes I am a vendor and yes, I strive to make sure that these all apply to me and the company I work for.

They genuinely want to help.

Most vendor's account teams are passionate and knowledgeable about their offerings and their main driver is to help. Confident that they have useful solutions backed by effective teams, they just really want to help you be successful. If they don't have a great product or a great team to support it, they will usually change jobs quickly.

They know more about your business than you think.

Think about it. Your potential vendor is a trusted adviser to many of their customers. They are calling on a vertically and horizontally aligned market. They are talking candidly with your peers about the challenges in their businesses. Your vendor has probably talked to 20 people sitting in your same seat and has likely seen the solutions to problems that you don't even know you have yet. If you hear them out and share information openly, you might be surprised at the insights they are able to provide.

They are probably experts in your field.

Vendors might try to establish credibility but that is a forced effort for most of them. People in service roles who genuinely want to help tend to take a modest approach and not brag about how talented they are. The truth is that vendors recruit top talent and after those people have made the rounds learning from their peers across the market, you can bet that they know quite a bit about your field. This goes for your SE's and you AM's as well. It can be worthwhile to take advantage of the opportunity to benefit from your vendor's skill and experience, especially if they aren't charging for it.

They are not middle men.. women... er persons.

Some customers look at re-sellers as middling profiteers. "Why can't I buy this direct?", "I don't need any Value so give me the lowest price", "Why should I pay your markup?" Here is the truth. In most cases, your re-seller is not marking product up. Manufacturers don't have time to give white glove treatment to every customer. They just aren't staffed for it. There's no way for a global company to put an expert into every meeting in every customer in every territory. So what they do is outsource the white glove sales experience to re-sellers. Not just anyone can resell enterprise hardware and software. The re-seller has to maintain expertise and service capability around that product. In may cases your re-seller will know their product better than the manufacturer does because they are implementing it every day and not just talking about it.

What does this mean for price? It means that your re-seller is paid by discount. You would pay the same price or more with a direct purchase. Why would you pay more? Well you have less knowledge of how their products are priced than your re-seller does you also don't have the working relationship with the manufacturer that your re-seller has. Therefore a direct negotiation will be less effective. Another piece is that manufacturers view their sales team's time as very valuable. The amount of discount your vendor receives for their sales services may be more than they to charge for their efforts. Often ethical re-sellers will pass some of this discount on to the customer.

They are knowledgeable about business operations and fiscal matters.

When your account team starts asking about the books and the calendar, they aren't just trying to figure out how much money is on the table with $'s in their eyes. Every business looks at cash flow and capitalization differently. Sometimes there can be a financial advantage to aligning project dates with manufacturer fiscal boundaries. Some manufacturers have busy seasons, shutdowns, or manufacturing challenges where there is real value in tracking the dates of future projects. For lengthy projects there are vendor side staffing / scheduling requirements to consider. Your vendor may identify where projects may collide or might benefit from moving before or after another project. Sometimes there's an opportunity to consolidate projects in creative ways that may save money or tech debt. Some vendors understand how to make sure the customer comes out on top of a bidding process. In general bidding results in higher costs. I know its counter-intuitive but it's true. Many vendors have access to finance arrangements, dynamic leasing vehicles, or true OPEX consumption models. They may even know how to help you get budget approval or streamline things through your procurement department. Many sales folks are retired executives or have spent a career in the Fortune 500 and know how navigate in ways you might not expect. Your vendor shouldn't be a web store, they're a B2B relationship. Operational and Financial collaboration is usually to your benefit and they might have some tricks to teach you.

You can trust them.

Vendors don't just want to help, they often see their identity as a trusted adviser and will make great efforts to deserve your trust. They deal with your IP, your money, your trade secrets, your security boundaries, and your reputation with your peers. They may even REALLY wish they could hire your best people. Maintaining ethical standards is number one with most vendors. As a consultant, my customers would call me at night, give me badges, and FOBs or key-rings with unlimited access. I've had customers who slept better at night knowing that I have VPN access and all the root passwords. One customer would never even hit enter without sending me a text message. My customers know that I have to charge them but I am going to charge them fairly. News of unethical behavior travels fast and somebody who is still employed in an IT service or Account Management capacity is probably trustworthy.

They view themselves as a member of your team.

When you have real partnership with a vendor, they know you. They know your team, they know your business. They have built some of the things that keep your lights on and they take pride every time they see your logo. A great vendor partner will take advantage of the above mentioned sales outsourcing to provide you with free consulting or services. They know when you need your budget submitted, how much room to leave for negotiations, and the mobile number of the remote hands in your co-lo. They know which service needs to be restarted and they remember where you saved that file in the middle of the chaos.

If you don't have vendor relationships like this then I encourage you to think differently the next time a sales call gets through or the next time a vendor asks you a challenging question. Ask other people you trust who they work with and who they trust their business with. Maybe give those people a shot. Open the kimono and try partnership for a change, you might be pleasantly surprised!

If you made it to the end of this, I really appreciate your time and I hope that it was worthwhile.