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powersolution

Three Criteria Vendors Must Meet

Posted by powersolution on Nov 4, 2009 7:28:35 PM

I am sure most of you out there, like us, have a never-ending stream of vendors knocking on your door and calling you trying to show off their wares, and wanting you to join their partner programs.
With so many vendors competing for your partnership - some in overlapping product/solution spaces - how do you decide which vendors best fit your solution portfolio?
A simple but thorough vetting process is essential. For us to even consider a vendor, they must be willing to meet these three criteria.

1. A minimum 90 days demo unit/s for your engineers to test. (So have a testing process in place)
2. Provide access to senior product engineer/s.
3. Provide access to senior management for discussing partner plans, levels, pricing, etc. (Note: Everything is negotiable.

Time is money, and time is less costly when you can test vendor products in your own facility. The last thing you want is a product not performing to the specifications or promises you made to your client.

The client doesn't really care whose name is on the product. You were the provider who specified and sold it to them.  Also, no matter how good your vetting process or a product may be, at some point issues will arise (Hey, it’s the tech industry!) and the relationships you maintain with your vendor reps. and Sr. managers will make all the difference on how these issues get resolved.

 

 

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Nov 5, 2009 8:20 AM Brian Kraemer Brian Kraemer    says:

Good ideas for a vendor vetting process here. I'm sort of curious though. What are the best ways to negotiate for number 2?

 

I've spoken to some vendors who have been pretty up front about the fact that new solution provider partners will be the, shall we say, "less experienced" product engineers. Who has the leverage in this situation? The customer or the solution provider, or maybe it is more of a question of who came to whom with hat in hand?
Nov 5, 2009 12:08 PM David Dadian David Dadian    says in response to Brian Kraemer:

Hi Brian, Thanks for the response. The answer to your question is simple. You ask for it! It doesn't matter much who came to who. If the vendor knocked on your door and they want you to become a partner, then they need to pony up. The same goes for the other way around, if you believe you need to their product or service as a part of your solution portfolio, you need to vet it and they need to pony up! Ask for it, explain that it is a requirement in order to move forward and that they will spend less time with a senior engineer answering the questions, than they would with a "less experienced" one, since the one with less experience will most likely be chasing down the senior engineer for the answer anyway. If they want to provide on the job training for their engineers that is fine, but it should not come at your expense.

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