When dealing with vendors, you’re probably your own worst enemy.
In a recent Peer-to-Peer, I wrote about unscrupulous sales tactics. From the flood of responses it seems many of you have had experiences that make you cry, “Foul!”
Some sales professionals do stretch an ethical point past its reasonable limits. Many get tarred with that brush unfairly. Whenever someone pushes every button available trying to make a sale, the button-owner may feel put-upon.
Nobody subordinates their own best interests to mine when our goals don’t match perfectly. Not my employer, not my wife, not my kids. Maybe our dog, Mrfe (I’ll explain that sometime), an airdale with a nice temperament and the IQ of burnt toast.
But I digress.
Don’t you make the mistake of confusing conflicting goals with a breach of ethics. People in sales don’t have your best interests at heart. That’s not their responsibility. They get paid to make the cash register ring. Helping their customers succeed should be an excellent way to make that happen, but it’s a tactic – a means to an end – not the end itself.
When achieving your goals doesn’t also benefit the vendor – when it’s not a win-win – guess whose fault it is. Hint: it isn’t the salesperson.
That leads us to the First Rule of Vendor Relations: The Responsibility for Creating a Win-Win Situation Belongs to the Customer.
You thought that was the vendor’s responsibility? Maybe from some notion of idealized, non-capitalist ethics. Not in any realistic business sense.
B.F. Skinner described the reality more than a century ago in his theory of behaviorism. Translated to sales it goes like this: sales professionals try a bunch of stuff. When something works, they do it again. When something doesn’t work, they stop doing it and try something different.
Over time, it’s the stuff that works that covers the landscape like behavioral kudzu.
Who’s responsible for deciding what works? You are! If you want salespeople to only sell you what actually helps move your business forward, then you have to buy only from the ones who exhibit that behavior, proudly showing the others the outside of your door.
Like pigeons in Skinner boxes, salespeople do what they’re rewarded for doing, and you get to play Skinner.
In interacting with sales people you have all the advantages. You define what you’re looking for – they have to find out. You define what you’re willing to spend to get it – they have to guess. You create the rules of interaction (and if you’re smart, you’ll enforce them) – they have to persuade you within those rules. Most importantly, you write the check and they want it, probably more than you want their merchandise.
Salespeople have to be polite to you. Your good manners are a matter of choice (and believe me, many customers see little need for exhibiting good manners to salespeople). Salespeople have to return every phone call and run down information as you ask for it. Most prospective customers put salespeople at the end of their return-phone-messages list.
And so on.
When you’re selling, your goal is to sell. When you’re buying, your goal is to obtain maximum value. These goals may conflict. Don’t take it personally. Recognize the situation and turn it to your advantage.
As a business tactic, sellers routinely create the appearance of a win-win situation. The vendor’s goal is to describe its products and services so as to create the perception of value in your mind, and to then deliver the specified products and services.
Do those products and services create real, as opposed to perceived value? That’s up to you.
Your vendor has to make sure its products and services do what they’re supposed to do. You (and your end-users) are responsible for defining clear business goals, attaching a dollar value to achieving them, and making sure the vendor’s products and services will actually change your business for the better.
And, it’s up to you to choose the right vendors and products. We’ll cover that subject next week.