The 7 Laws For Buying B2B

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  Richard Kennedy

  11/24/09 | Report as spam

  RE: The 7 Laws For Buying B2B

  Geoffrey,
  While I agree in general with the Seven Laws listed above, especially numbers 3, 5 and 7, the fact is that many of the other reasons ARE good broad indications that should go into a vendor selection decision. Vendors that have helped in the past are likely to help in the present as well. After all, what is a better performance indicator than track record?
  
  Vendors that have worked with your competitors have, at a minimum, some credibility. There has to be some good reason why your competitors hired them. I have, in the past, called Fortune 100 competitors to get a read on what a potential new vendor for me has also done for them.
  
  In any large corporate new vendor acquisition decision there is one criteria that I have always found helpful: How well does this vendor understand the dual track importance of being able to satisfy the requirements of both the operational end user of the service in question AND the internal purchasing department policies and regulations.
  
  Any potential vendor that can not do both is not worth having on your short list. One last point: In a major purchasing decision, it is important to set up a quantifiable selection matrix before vendor candidates are even invited to bid.
  Richard J. Kennedy
  www.NewClientsNow.com
  

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  2

  russ@...

  11/24/09 | Report as spam

  RE: The 7 Laws For Buying B2B

  You should hire a vendor because they have demonstrated that they understand your business and your challenges and can demonstrate that they have a way to solve a problem or two for you.
  
  That said, re number 4, my tech company works with a lot of clients where we have learned a great deal about their industry but the customer is risk-averse, has corporate policies that prevent certain changes from being implemented, or where they treat vendors more as order takers than advisors. In those pretty common scenarios, we have a lot to bring to the table for competitors where we can improve a similar business willing to try different things. To be clear, we aren't talking about disclosing proprietary information, this is simply understanding an industry and applying our skills to problems shared across competitors in a space. And copying a market leader isn't inspiring, but if the enemy is using tanks and you are using spears, sometimes adopting their tactics can keep you from getting crushed.
  
  Recommendations, track record, reputation/brand and presentation skills are taken as proxies for the quality of work to be done, due to the problem of asymmetric information. The seller typically knows more than the buyer in any transaction, so the buyer has to act on whatever scraps they have. To truly take this out of the equation, we always recommend prospects try the products out before they commit, submit questions and requests, and see how well a vendor acts when they are on their best behavior prior to a sale. If they can't deliver white glove service then, you most likely aren't going to get it after the contract is signed.