Gary L Kelley - Journal

Most of my telephonic career has been spent receiving phone calls from vendors, with an additional 25% of vendor communications over email. Now I’m a vendor, and am astonished with the communications norms of companies.

Suppliers don’t understand what it is like to be on the firing line. Suppliers don’t get paged when something breaks in the middle of the night, and it’s expected you’ll be in late after entertaining a client. Add in performance reviews, 1:1s, budgets, etc and the day easily slips away to “wall to wall” meetings. Asking you to meet at 7AM (or 7PM) isn’t meant to be a negotiation technique; it’s a survival tool.

Companies don’t understand suppliers are trying to hone their message to meet their needs. As a generality, reputable vendors are focused on addressing an issue focusing on the remuneration second (of course it’s expected if the solution is good.)

In discussing this with some other supplier friends, they had a similar reaction, and offered the more senior the person the more likely a return conversation. So this post isn’t for the top of the house, it’s for the mid to emerging talent, written from the perspective of the company having suppliers calling on them.

Vendor Communications Bill of Rights

Cold Calls, direct mail, and broadcast emails – We reserve the right to delete these in the fastest way we can. Vendors cannot possibly expect calls back as we receive many of these daily.
15 minute follow ons – If you have a solution we may be interested in, we will have a short follow on meeting. This allows us to quickly determine if more time with a broader audience makes sense.

Suppliers are taught to let us talk.
In our first session, we want to know what you have to offer. Use this time wisely; using 15 minutes to talk about the history of the supplier company makes little sense.
Follow ups – we will get back to you either:
- When we commit to get back to you. If we say one week, we will reach back in a week. We know our calendar and other commitments
- Within 24 hours – since we are in meetings for great periods of the day, we’ll get back to you when we can. In many cases, we can only reach back before or after the traditional workday. Please do not take it personally if we are not responding immediately.
Saying NO – we will be clear when NO means “no” and when it means “GAME OVER.” We understand the selling starts at “no”, and understand you’ll come back. When it’s “game over”, please respect our decision. We will advise you of our decision within the decorum of sound vendor relations
Doo Dads, etc. – We have shirts, pen and pencil sets, coffee mugs, thermometers, desktop tool kits, golf balls, etc. Please don’t cheapen our relationship by giving them to us. And in some companies, we can’t accept gifts and it puts US in a bad position. Leave the merchandise in the car.

Dinners fall into the same category. Given our overburdened schedule, it’s hard to make time in the evening for a dinner. If we have a lunch meeting, let’s do it in the office and bring some nice sandwich wraps.

We know this puts you in a bit of a bind because you are supposed to spend time with us developing a relationship. We’d rather focus on the business challenges together in developing relationships.
RFIs, RFQs, and RFPs – we are issuing “request for” documents to get additional items of information on an effort. We know suppliers abhor these documents unless they wrote them. Please recognize your response is important and take the time to put together a nice package. We know when suppliers are simply going through the motions.
End Runs – Suppliers are adept at working relationships at all levels. We understand this. When we tell you “GAME OVER” and you escalate around us, you do so at your own peril.