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Being called a vendor has always felt insulting to me. I’m talking with what I believe to be one of my great clients, and there it is; they refer to me as a vendor! I feel like someone has punched me in the gut. I start to get defensive in my mind, then I ask myself why they refer to me as that awful name? What I wanted from them is to call me “partner.” What am I missing? What are we doing wrong?
To me, vendors are those that supply the cleaning supplies for the office building. That’s a necessary service, but I think of a partner as so much more. I want to be your strategic copilot in your organization. The one who handles your most complex IT challenges. And most certainly one that is so necessary to you that if I go away, you will struggle to function. That’s a partner, not a vendor.
To settle the debate of partner versus vendor, I’ve been asking my clients what the difference is to them. One of my top clients is the CIO of a 400-employee medical practice. He has 30 years of experience in the industry and shared valuable insights with me. We found his perspective valuable and insightful, so we invited him to speak at this year’s Sales Kick-off. Here is what he had to say.
In his opinion, Partner versus Vendor falls into three main categories. To be a partner, one must do right in the areas of partnership, strategic focus, and management of efforts.
Partnership
The difference between a partner and a vendor is trust.
Partners align closely with the goals of the business and not with their own.
Partners help you navigate your greatest challenges.
Relationships are real and true. These are not transactional.
Strategic Focus
Partners must understand the business of the organization. How does it make money? What key expenses must it control? How does it attract clients? What matters most to its clients?
Partners must understand the culture of the organization. How do they decide things? What values do they hold? Are there any internal politics that could create hidden dynamics?
Partners need to know the industry to which the organization belongs. They should also understand the regulatory guidelines that might affect them.
Lastly, partners must understand technology. What tools, processes, people, roles, etc., and how technology plays a part there. What do they prefer in-house versus outsourced. Core versus chore.
Management of Efforts
For partners, communication is key. Don’t ever make them wonder what is going on. Over communicate on everything.
Listen. Please just listen. Don’t worry about being smart or saying the next thought on your mind, just listen to what we tell you. Please, suspend your thoughts and let us talk. Vendors talk too much and don’t listen enough.
Partners set expectations correctly.
Satisfaction = delivery exceeds expectations.
Disappointment = expectations exceed delivery.
He then showed the graphic below.
Source: http://www.businessballs.com/treeswing.htm
My client often discusses the time, quality, and cost triangle. This is also called the triple constraint illustration.
You want fast and cheap; you don’t get quality.
You want cheap and high quality; it’s not fast.
You want fast and high quality; it’s not cheap.
The right expectations matter. He wants his partner to set them right with him. This way, he can also set them right with his internal stakeholders.
His summary to us was, our relationship is everything. Listen to us and keep a strategic focus when suggesting and offering advice. Don’t stop short at the sale or win, but make sure we achieve the outcome we are so desperately craving. We see you as the experts and we are putting our trust with you. Don’t erode that trust by having an agenda that doesn’t align with ours.
While many parts of the conversation were not surprising, others were. The voice of the client is valuable to all of us in the professional services business. There are many ways to get this. While I don’t think all relationships can be partnerships, we certainly desire most of them to be.
When we built our Ideal Client Profile, one characteristic we look for is the need for a long term partner. As my client was speaking, I thought back to why I feel so offended when a client calls us a vendor. Now I know. Either we are doing something wrong and we need to fix it, or we have picked the wrong client. Either way, this is a challenge that needs attention.