Teach Your Vendors Well

Jumping from the corporate world into consulting can produce some interesting shifts of perspective. In the corporate world, we’ve all experienced those times when we’re under pressure from the boss and shift some of that pressure onto our vendors. If we’re good, we do it by saying, “I need your help!” If we’re not so good, we pretend we’re in control and focused even as we give vendors vague, confusing, or just plain impossible requirements and hope that they’ll either work magic, or we’ll get to blame them when we have to explain why things are not as they should be. Any competent professional knows that’s not an ideal way to work; when you experience it for the first time from a potential client, it’s quite an education.

I experienced one of those moments recently with a technology client. This client was not an experienced marketer, but did not know that. So along came the RFP with a confusing list of tactical requirements for marcomm and PR work. Important details were missing. The discussion had started with the idea that we’d provide strategic consulting services to help define the product set and lay out an overall marketing plan. Then a new deadline turned it into a three week fire drill to complete some simple communications work.

The RFP, with a deadline two business days ahead, was missing key information. We asked questions. We got more vague answers. We gave partial proposals for some of the items and scheduled a follow-up call to talk about others, at which we were told “I need this yesterday!”
This was a summary of the call that I provided to a colleague not in attendance.

1. I need it all today.
2. Why didn't you include printing for the piece even though I couldn’t give you a quantity?
3. You didn't quote a brochure. You told me that was the wrong approach. I agree! But it has to be a brochure.
4. You didn't quote the other printed piece - the one that wasn’t in the RFP. And I can’t explain to you what it actually is, but please quote it.
5. I need production costs for the graphics even though I've provided no detail on what the specifications. Oh, I guess I can send specs. I need it today though. Oh, and by the way, this is just to get a budget number approved, although everything must be produced in the next two weeks. So just give me something rough, that includes exact sizes and paper stock for the printed pieces.

After a brief kibbutz after that meeting, we reached a simple conclusion; we declined to quote on the project. Yes, we may have turned off a future revenue stream. However, I think we also eliminated a future headache stream. If we were hungrier, I guess we would have quoted. If we could have charged a lot - to cover the aggravation, rush, and the extra time we’d have to spend getting the client to focus and think things through - we would have quoted. But on top of all of the confusion and the looming deadline was constant push-back about our general rates, which we know are pretty competitive.

The client was in a crappy situation. But there are good and bad ways to handle those situations. A good one is to go to your vendors and consultants, be honest, and get their help. A bad one is to push the pressure down the line to them. Because for us, it’s not our job. We can work with other clients. If you’re going to push pressure down the line and try to cut costs too, at some point the vendor will decide that the profit isn’t worth it. There are other clients. There is time better spent finding those clients.

Interestly, the client told us that others had already provided quotes. Based on the RFP it’s very tough to imagine what they looked like. My guess is that this was a bluff, or others simply padded the quotes to cover the uncertainties. I’m not criticizing that; in fact, if there’s uncertainty than can add to your costs, you need to do that if you want to stay in business.

But the end result is the same: not optimal. The vendors are will either decide you’re a problem client to be ditched when someone better comes along, someone to make a lot of extra money from, or ideally both. Is that what you want?