September 23, 2008
The Most Important Question to Ask Any Vendor
Posted by Kevin | Print This Article
The most important question to ask any vendor is not, “How much do you charge?” It’s not, “How do you compare with your competitors?” It’s not, “How do you handle client relationships?” It’s not even, “What do you offer?”
Oh, those are all good questions, and they should be asked. But in my opinion the most important question to ask any vendor is:
“Are you profitable?”
I’m not talking about someone you buy one thing from or hire for some quick, short-term project. But to me, if I’m going to enter any sort of a long-term relationship, I need to feel comfortable that the vendor (no matter if it’s a big company or a one-man band) is making money and doing well and is not likely to vanish at 11:59pm tonight.
I wrote a couple years ago about how I can be a demanding customer, but I hope no one took that to mean that I’m a cheap customer. Quite the opposite. I’m perfectly willing to pay more for quality work and the comfort of knowing that a vendor is more likely than not to be here tomorrow.
There are never any guarantees, of course, and no one really knows what tomorrow will bring. (Imagine if you had a vendor you relied on that was based in downtown Houston and the impact that Ike would have had on that vendor, for example.) But it’s one thing to accept the random nature of our universe, and quite another to encourage it.
Many of the vendors we work with in the association community are private companies, and most of those don’t feel any great need to share the intricacies of their balance sheets. I don’t expect them to. (And of course, we’ve all learned by now that it’s difficult to gauge the soundness of big public companies, as well.) But while I understand the unwillingness of private firms to share their financial specifics (I would feel the same way), I hope they understand that providing some sense of their financial well-being (beyond a vague “we’re doing very well”) can be a way to secure a client who is more interested in long-term success than short-term savings.
I work with a few vendors that I worry about, because they do a fantastic job and I dread having to replace them. When I talk with them, I usually ask something like, “How’s business?” I’m not engaging in idle chitchat when I do; I want them to succeed. I want them to make money. I want them to be there tomorrow if at all possible.
Oh, and I would be very careful and very cautious before making a “big” vendor decision that involves a company that is still dependent on angel investing or that hasn’t quite yet figured out its business model. You can hire them, but assume that they could go away at any time. Like 11:59pm tonight. And be ready if they do.
No comments yet.