Vendors are always messing up my day...

[Jeff Kershner]

Okay, the title may be a bit harsh...

But let's agree, it's not easy to push aside that possible, shiny new object, that might just correlate to the additional sales or service you need to make each month a huge success. So you accept and before you know it, you're an hour and 2 knees deep into a presentation. And it doesn't seems to have an end. At least not until you sign the dotted line.

You know what I mean. If you don't, take a moment to read Joe Webb's latest article over on the blog.

Joe offers up some SOLID advise on how to manage your current and possible future vendor presentations and/or up-sells.

It's called a Vendor List Protocol. Check it out then come back here. Because we want to know if you currently have a Vendor Visit Protocol and If you do, what is it and how has it helped?

Don’t have a Vendor Visit Protocol, but you like the idea.. what would you include?

 

[Rdpatrick]

I'm usually a good sport as long as two requirements are met:

1. Don't bother me at the end of the month (the last 5 days)
2. Don't cold call me and not allow me to speak for the first 45 seconds to let you know I'm in the middle of something.

Other than that, I usually learn something useful even when I don't buy their product/service.

 

[WillMcG32]

As a vendor, I truly support this as I do Joe Webb, Bill Playford and the DealerKnows team. Also as a vendor, I'm curious if we can get this thread going. As someone, who is responsible for training our sellers in the field, I want to set them up with the tools to be successful and that includes respecting dealers time and boundaries.

 

[ryan.gerardi]

As a dealership consultant, I am fascinated to see how each different dealership and its personnel handle "vendors". In my experience, the owners and operators that have a process for handling vendor inquiries and treat new vendors respectfully and empirically tend to have better performing operations. Dealers that shoo folks away, brush you off, and never have time to talk are almost always running around like a chicken with no head and they probably always will be until they take better control of their day and processes like this.

 

[Chris Leslie]

I've been on the vendor side before and can relate to how tough it is to deal with dealers in a lot of cases. So something I always like to do is bulk schedule my new vendor calls for Friday. It helps to allocate a single day for these types of things and helps keep the weekly interruptions and stress down to a minimum.

Because my work requires a lot of attention to detail I have my phones forwarded to my Google Voice number. I do this because it transcribes the message for me. So leaving a message is always helpful.

For current partners we work with I learned after spending hours and hours not really getting anywhere that I needed to create a standard protocol for every monthly visit.

The 3 questions I always ask our partners to prepare before our monthly meeting are.

1. Whats working
2. Whats not working
3. What single thing outside of the above mentioned should we work on before the next meeting. It doesn't need to be big it just needs to be something we can measure.

This has made our meetings much more efficient and when I get asked about the efficacy of our vendors. I am able to talk about it more intelligently and with actions we are taking to make it better.

 

[sscall]

I'm usually a good sport as long as two requirements are met:

1. Don't bother me at the end of the month (the last 5 days)
2. Don't cold call me and not allow me to speak for the first 45 seconds to let you know I'm in the middle of something.

Other than that, I usually learn something useful even when I don't buy their product/service.

HA, I wish most dealers were as nice as you

 

[thunder8671]

My favorite thing is 1) drop in unannounced and 2) when you tell a vendor no and then you find out they try to pitch you higher ups who then tell you to look at it. How can you have a good working relationship after that?