Have you ever needed a vendor, in any walk of life, and know absolutely no one?
How frustrating is that?
Friends’ recommendations, Angie’s list…they all work but there comes a time in which you have to take a bungee cord leap into the abyss with that person or company.
Here are my top four things you should do before jumping:
1. Check references
It seems so simple, yet not enough people do it. While good references are a solid starting point, the references can be too good too. I have had the pleasure of choosing many vendors in my life and I like to make the calls to former clients. The problem is that sometimes the recommendations are too glowing. I checked the references on this one vendor and everything was simply too good. Like mother-adored son too good. Never trust this kind of good. If everything seems too squeaky clean, I get nervous and run the other way.
2. Check the work product
This is a good way to see what the vendor has done. If at all possible, I would not get this from the vendor themselves. This should come from the client with an explanation of what they asked for and what they received. The discussion should include deadlines, corrections, and workflow. By seeing what the vendor created and what a former client’s expectations were, you can have a better understanding of what they might produce for you.
3. Tour their workplace
I like to do this a lot. You can tell a great deal from someone’s workplace. How do the people seem? Are they smiling and conversing? Do they look happy? Stressed? Do they smell? (I just threw that in) Are their workspaces clean? You can tell a lot about a vendor by the way their workplace looks, feels, and how their coworkers behave. I check their kitchen, make sure they have snacks, see what kind of snacks, healthy or unhealthy, all these things go into the performance of the team. Nosy, yes, but helpful.
4. Ask for a scope of work
This is essentially a contract detailing what they will do and not do for you. This is the tricky part of choosing a vendor and it is truly where the rubber meets the road. Invariably, as you get deeper and deeper into your project, there are things that either couldn’t be anticipated or things that go sideways through no fault of one of the parties. It is how these situations are handled that is the true test of the vendor with whom you are dealing. And here is where there needs to be a give and take. A vendor worth his salt will understand he needs to impress this first time customer. If he gives a little sugar now, he will, most likely, get some on the back end. The problem is generally there are two parties to this equation and generally one is more reasonable than the other.
Perfect anecdote was my partner and I were contractually under a deadline with a “provider” to get our project to the market. As we went down the road, it became clear what they told us and what was actually going to happen were months apart. Either they had not properly planned or they underestimated the amount of work they were going to do for us.
Do we fight it?
Do we risk our relationship with the people who are building our work product?
No, you suck it up and make the best of a bad situation.
And to their credit, our vendor made it right with other things.
With a little bit of preparedness and reasonableness, choosing a vendor does not have to be like real world Russian roulette.
This article also appears on The Huffington Post.