We hear from a lot of enterprise content buyers about what they don’t like about working with vendors or what “contracts from hell” look and feel like. Here are a few things that will annoy customers. Hint: this is not a good climate in which to be annoying.

• Forced bundling.
• Arbitrary price increases where no discernible value is added to the product.
• Having a near monopolistic position and invoking bullet number two with a take it or leave it stance.
• Having salespeople that don’t return phone calls and/or invoke both items 3 and 2 while making no bones about it and while not returning calls.
• Integrating products and brands by “name” after myriad acquisitions but leaving the back-office pieces, like separate contracts, usage reporting, invoicing, and customer relationship management, non-integrated with the customer having to pick up the pieces.
• Not being able to invoice in local currency, or defining users and user groups (for pricing purposes) by geographic or worse physical location. We even heard of one company that sends out separate invoices per user! Note: according to Tom Friedman the world is flat and the only companies that can’t integrate invoices these days are phone and cable companies. Everyone else needs to be in the 21st century.
• Attorneys that negotiate contracts who act and sound like frustrated prosecuting attorneys. Customers are not adversaries and behaving like a Rottweiler (a breed I happen to love by the way) is not a good idea.

It’s hard to believe some of this is going on in this day and age but truth be told, some of the largest companies are the biggest offenders and in this era of duopolies in almost every segment and sub-segment of the industry customers are going to start biting back. We’ve been saying that as prices increase, budgets decrease, and the top 2, 3 and 4 vendor positions get staked out, we’re going to be competing on different battlegrounds (think experience) and market share will be won or lost on how easy companies are to do business with, especially since the enterprises we are talking with are no longer willing to put up with duplication. It’s a luxury they can no longer afford even when multiple points of view are important. They’ll get the multiple points of view from other than the top 2 or 3 market share leaders (in duplicate or triplicate). Customers – please send along suggestions for “what does the ideal vendor and contracting and contract process look like.” As is often the case, people tend to talk more about what they don’t like vs. what they do like. So in the spirit of honey vs. vinegar – send along some honey and we’ll share your ideas!  Respond to this post, send an email, call, fax, or use a postage stamp. We’re all ears.

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5 Responses to “Seven Ways to be a Vendor from Hell (Yes, Real Companies are Doing This)”

1. Rya Ben-Shir wrote on 21 Jul 2009

   I love it when vendors offer:

   - concurrent unnamed seats
   - the rights to share content throughout the company on an as needed bases
   - the right to post full text searchable documents on our library portal
   - do not insist that we remove the item from our portal or computers should the subscription terminate
   - appreciate and work with us when our budgets cannot allow for double digit increases

2. Mark Pandick wrote on 22 Jul 2009

   Vendors willing to ‘unitize’ their offerings. Rather than make us commit upfront to a specific number of seats, analyst hours, postings, etc., vendors will allow us to use a certain committed number of units/$ as we best see fit and when we need them.

   Vendors willing to ‘trade off’ unused services for other services (i.e., we buy too many web ids b/c a vendor ‘forced’ us to take a higher minimum than we knew we would likely use — we shouldn’t have to leave money on the table, it just leaves a bad taste.

   Vendors and customers act as trusted partners, particularly these days when we all are experiencing pain on the customer side with budget and staff cuts. Vendors can’t expect price increases without demonstrating incremental value.

   Vendors are pro-active, notify us, act more as customer support than a sales person in for the quick sale.

   Vendors, when publishing information about your company, would do well to provide a heads up and ability to at least react to potential inaccuracies before publication.

3. Mark Chagaris wrote on 22 Jul 2009

   The hardware and software vendors of years past exhibited behaviors similar to those being exhibited by some vendors in the publishing world today. The key to changing the behaviors and business practices of vendors today might be changing our behaviors. It worked with the hardware and software vendors, it can work with publishers.

   Like most of the elements of management, vendor management is more of an art than a science. Some vendor management artists that I’ve observed over the years took off the gloves and created leverage that resulted in positive change and improved vendor relations. Here are two of many leverage points to consider using:

   ***Make sure that it’s not lonely at the top***
   Sales people and sales managers love getting sales orders and making their numbers. They hate for many reasons, escalations to senior management. If you experience a non-responsive or recalcitrant sales rep, ask for (this action alone will bring about a sudden change of attitude) the name and number of the global sales and marketing executive– and then make the call. There often is a real gap between what the executives believe is going on in the field and what it really going on. Approach the call with the executive as collaboration, building their awareness, giving them the voice of the customer. Try to negotiate the terms, level of service, responsive, etc that you need right then and there. After you lay out what you need and why, assuming it is reasonable, ask the question: “Mrs. Jones, I know I’ve covered many items that will return me to the status of satisfied, maybe even loyal customer. Are you the person who can authorize the changes we discussed? Senior executives 1) like to exercise their authority, 2) don’t like to say no to a client and 3) like to show the sales force once in awhile that they can close deals too.

   *** Don’t give, without getting***
   Sales people love asking questions. Why? Because the answers to their questions, in addition to helping them provide the best solution for you, also helps them discover your leverage points. As buyers of their product or service, you are entitled and empowered to ask as many or more questions. The basic rule is don’t give up information without getting information.

   Asking questions will help you discover their leverage points. The more you can learn about their world, the more you can leverage what is important to them. Here a few examples:

   Sales Rep: How is your budget looking for next year?
   Client: That’s the question of the day around here. How is this information useful to you?… Or.. .“You know, you got me thinking, I’ve never asked you about your budget or quota –what can you tell me about it, how are you measured?”

   Sales Rep: How do the recent organizational changes impact the decision making process for purchases?
   Client: “I’m sure that there will be some changes.” Let me ask you a question, how are decisions on pricing/ terms exceptions requested by clients made at Acme?

   Sales Rep: “My sales manager is going to be in town next month and she would like to meet with you and your manager. Can we schedule the time now?”
   Client: (after hearing and approving the agenda) “If I make the time available, will Mrs. Jones agree to address the following items and answer the following questions during the first part of the meeting?

4. Outsell Inc. :: Thinking Out Loud – Agile Publishing » Blog Archive » Six Sure-Fire Ways to Scotch a Technology Sale wrote on 06 Aug 2009

   [...] CEO, Anthea Stratigos, recently wrote a post on “vendors from hell,” focusing on the sins of publishers and info providers. Since part of my role involves dealing with [...]

5. Outsell Inc. :: Thinking Out Loud – Valuing Information » Blog Archive » Ten Ways To Be A Buyer From Hell wrote on 12 Jan 2010

   [...] Anthea Stratigos wrote, enterprise content buyers often tell us what they don’t like about working with vendors. Well, [...]