chorn

Buying products or services for your business

This is the time of year where implementing my 2009 budget is in high gear.  That means I’ve been making lots of calls to produce and/or service vendors, talking about solutions and asking for quotes.  This time around I’ve also implemented a new rule:

A sales organization that does not return your call within 24 hours does not deserve your business.

I’m not a salesperson by trade, but I would argue that in an agressive market that time frame should be closer to 2 hours.  I am more than a little amazed at how often this rule is factoring into the early rounds of weeding out vendors.  If their sales organzation isn’t responsive, imagine how the support will be!

How to ask your vendor to do something.

I’ve worked directly with more than my share of commercial vendors, and the majority of the time things did not go well.  I’ve made foolish assumptions such as:

1. They care.
2. They know what they are doing.
3. They tell the truth.
4. What they’ve said they’re going to do is really what they’ve done.
5. They realize that I’m the paying customer.

It’s not too difficult to imagine any or all of your ISP/Telephony/Hosting providers in that list.  Residential vendors probably fall into this list, more or less every time.  I’ve tried to define a process, and follow it.  It’s my goal to minimize the time I spend doing other people’s jobs, and increase success overall.

How to make the request:

1. First and foremost, talk to your rep, your tech contact and make sure they can actually deliver on your request.  Hopefully they have request forms and/or a process of their own.
2. Document the complete detail of the request as if you had to do it yourself.
   • Don’t assume that any standards or jargon you use is defined the same way by the vendor. Culture trumps facts.
3. Include all technical details.
   • Assume that the work will be done by someone who could care less whether or not it is done correctly, and is not qualified to to the work.
4. Include any necessary timing.
   • Unfortunately you really can’t make anyone work faster than they want to, but setting timing sets expectations.
5. Include the tests required to verify correctness.
   • If you don’t define success, the vendor will define it for you, to their advantage.
6. E-Mail the request to the account rep, CC: liberally.
   • Include any and every previous e-mail thread even distantly related to the request.
   • Assume that the person doing the work is not privy to any conversations you’ve had with the rep.
7. Ask for an update every 2-5 days as appropriate.
8. Once you are notified the request is complete:

When you are notified the request is complete:

1. Run the tests yourself and verify that it is correct.
2. If any tests fail:
   • Let the account rep know immediately.
   • Ask for a new, appropriate time line.
   • Ask for an escalation path, including names, phone #s if you don’t already have a list.
   • Escalate early and nicely.
   • Failed tests put you back to the beginning of the process.
   • Escalate higher and a little less nicely each time you iterate because of failure.