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Check Vendor References!
OK, the vendor is in your office. The Price is right. The Technology is right. The Terms are right. You are ready to sign the contract, right?
STOP!!!
Did you check references? Don’t sign 'till you do or you will be sorry.
Hiring a vendor is no different than hiring an employee but a bad vendor can be far more damaging to your business and reputation. In essence a vendor is a 1099 employee. You are hiring vendors to do a specific job or function that you cannot do or don’t want to do. There are many budget busting cost overruns that can be attributed to a bad vendor like; poor quality, long lead times or compliance issues.
So always check references. Keep in mind that if you get a negative review from a reference then I would suggest not using the vendor. When you ask for references the vendor has the opportunity to give you anybody so of course they would want to only give you the absolute best references they can.
So negative references are deal killers.
Here are a few questions to ask your vendor’s references:
- What was your overall experience with X company?
- What are three things you really liked about the vendor?
- What are three things you disliked about the vendor?
- What problems did you have with the vendor?
- What was the vendor’s system to handle issues? We all know there are going to be vendor issues from time to time but how the vendor handles the issue is what’s important.
- How was the quality of the final product?
- Would you hire them again?
Who we are:
This blog is dedicated to help businesses increase productivity, decrease expenses and increase cash flow.
At ConnectionForce, we have created the very first online sales filter to allow you to pre-screen potential vendors before you agree to a meet with them.
Our goal is to totally eradicate Cold Calling as a sales technique within the next 5 years. (2015)
We are committed to making office managers and purchasers jobs easier by making sales people better.
