Some Thoughts on IT Vendor Management
Sure, it looks super cool - but do you have any idea how much of my flesh was torn off in one of these?
Like many in IT, I got my start working in desktop support roles. I have always been proud of my up-through-the-ranks story and I still proudly show off the scars on my hands from sheet metal cuts trying to get RAM in and out of old NEC systems. No joke: the toolless cases that business desktop PCs are housed in today with their fancy rounded corners are a ridiculous step up from what I was working on in the 90s. My version of walking uphill to school both ways is talking about how hard it used to be to change hard drives: we needed multiple screwdrivers and had to deal with ribbon cables!
When I got promoted my first real systems engineering job, we were looking into a new storage platform and I was invited to head to the reseller’s office to get a demonstration and talk about the product. I was excited because I’d never been “off site” to talk about roadmaps and opportunities; until then, my job was to simply make whatever we had work – I didn’t get a say in what we should add to the mix or replace. I had been excited for this for a few days by the time the day arrived. I had never been to one of these kind of meetings before and I didn’t know what to expect. I saw it was an all-day meeting, so I packed a cooler bag with a sandwich and an apple and hit the road bright and early as to not be late.
As we got into the agenda, I tried to pay attention to what everyone was doing to learn how to navigate the meeting. I focused first on the folks my company had brought. My manager was watching the presentation, but not saying much and was often leaned back in his chair. This was before the ubiquity of smartphones, or he probably would have been checking it a lot. My technical colleagues were finding lulls in the conversation and asking questions about the product and individual settings they were seeing. The questions could very much have been distilled down to “what does that button do?” I was the new guy on the team and didn’t want to overstep my bounds, so I mostly took notes at first. We also had someone from finance or purchasing with us, and they were looking like they wanted to leave the entire time. If they had a Stephen King novel, they probably would have busted it out at some point.
On the other side of the table, the friendly guy who greeted us was mostly taking notes in a nice bound journal. Can you spot the account executive? I knew you could! The younger, hipper person he introduced me to when we first got in the room was occasionally interjecting his thoughts into the presentation, usually talking about features and asking what we thought of something presented. He also talked occasionally about how this product would integrate into a few other things we already had. We’ve found our partner SE.
The person presenting was from the manufacturer and seemed to know the product inside and out. He came off as if he had logged a lot of actual hours on the array, but yielded the floor whenever there was a question about how we might use something or its compatibility with the rest of our environment. His desire to keep talking about cool features of the storage array made him seem a bit like Billy Mays talking about OxiClean - almost a little too excited. I don’t want to appear like I’m throwing shade here; I have since befriended many vendor or manufacturer SE’s and have an appreciation for the difficult position they find themselves in occasionally needing to appear enthusiastic about a product they may not be particularly excited about.
Finally, there were two other people who said nothing the entire meeting. One was sitting at the table just taking notes and occasionally glancing at his clearly new Palm Treo. I was jealous of the Treo and was certain he was simply showing off. Looking back, he was likely the vendor sales manager or VP of customer something-or-other at the vendor. The last attendee was sitting in the chairs around the edge of the room and not sitting at the table. He seemed thoroughly disinterested. I honestly don’t know who this person was. I think he was introduced at the beginning of the meeting during introductions, but I can’t recall; he had no real place as far as I could tell. These days I get a chuckle out of the “no reason to be here” attendee, but back then it was an oddity.
Look, they’re good. Even real good. But don’t base your infrastructure decisions on cookies. That’s really all I’m saying.
I was taking it all in. Just as I felt I was getting the lay of the land and thought I might ask a question, the Account Exec who seemed to be running the agenda declared that we would break for lunch. On queue, a whole wall opened up and there were sandwiches behind the wall! With bags of chips! And cookies! I had never seen such an ostentatious display of business catering. My mind was blown. I thought these were the most generous people that had ever lived. Clearly, we should purchase this array because they have given us sandwiches. Not just any sandwiches – roast beef sandwiches.
That was a long setup, but I wanted to paint the picture that I had no idea how to relate to folks in the channel such as the vendors, the resellers – any of it at all – when I first started. It was a totally new and foreign experience. You can laugh at me all you want, but vendor management is something that I’ve had to learn the hard way – sometimes more than once. Accordingly, I wanted to give you some thoughts I’ve developed over the years. If this is something that you are just starting out in, as you progress you will at some point almost certainly need to manage partners and relationships outside of your own company. That’s the nature of IT.
First and foremost, I want to implore you to treat folks in sales roles with dignity and respect. We can all commiserate about the deluge of sales calls and emails we get every day – I measure mine in the hundreds and no longer answer my phone for outside lines I don’t recognize because of them (don’t get me started on when they ping you over LinkedIn.) But these folks have a hard job – I am frankly impressed with their ability to reach out, make a connection, and ultimately drive a sale. It’s not something I think I would be inherently good at and I view it as an art – seriously. I think you should, too.
I am generally of the mindset that you will achieve better outcomes if you have fewer partners that you deal with. It will allow you to build deeper relationships, and I think building a stronger relationship with folks that are serving you is the way to go. I have found that building a longer-term relationship with vendors and partners I can trust allows for more flexibility and transparency in our dealings, and that usually results in win/win environments where we’re both happy.
Strive to find partners that listen to your needs. If every time you talk to a partner or vendor it’s all about what they have and what they’re offering, you probably need to look elsewhere. The best partners that I’ve worked with were intentional about listening to our challenges and then offered solutions only where they felt they could actually provide value to my company. I can’t stress this enough – the best partners know when they can’t help you and don’t try to push something on you anyways. One of the best conversations I ever had with a partner ended with “I understand where your challenges are and I don’t have any solutions, but I know someone at a competitor who has something in that space. Can I make an introduction for you?” If any partner of mine is willing to do that, I believe they’re more interested in my success than just hitting a quarterly number.
That kind of relationship can be hugely beneficial for both the vendor and the customer, but it requires both parties to look beyond the immediate future. You really want to be looking for how to secure long-term value from a partner. This means that sometimes you’re simply keeping in touch and making sure that you both know what products or services are being offered and what your needs are. Nothing bothers me more than when I only hear from a partner when they’re looking to take advantage of a commission accelerator. I do not want to be “sold” something – and neither should you. You should expect that everyone who wants a PO from you to deliver demonstrable value that you can show your management chain. Remember that value has nothing to do with what lunch the partner can provide you. Ignore that kind of distraction. If you nail the project at work you can get a promotion and have whatever you want for lunch.
A great test of a vendor is if they can spell “partnership.”
This also means that you need to never forget that you are the customer. While we want to have good relationships and mutual trust with our partners, their purpose is to serve you and your organization. When they aren’t doing that - fire them. That may sound harsh, but if you’re doing them more favors than they’re doing you on top of you paying their margin – it’s not a mutually beneficial arrangement. They should be making your life easier and solving problems. You should only deal with vendors and VARs that actually add value. One of my favorite VARs sends a nice document quarterly with everything we have purchased from them, the current support agreements in place, any issues documented over the quarter, and any important information like renewal dates and end-of-support dates. It’s a simple thing, but having that document saves me headaches and reduces friction. I’ve actively dismissed other vendors who have made doing business difficult with them – I don’t have time to fight to get a PO out the door.
On the other hand, you shouldn’t put too much focus on commodity purchases. In other words, you don’t need a strong relationship with your PC vendor if you don’t view PCs as an important purchase. Instead, focus your time on building relationships with the vendors who have technologies that can differentiate your organization. An easy tip here is to build relationships with companies that are on the cutting edge in areas that you think are significant or valuable for your company. For instance: if you manage infrastructure for a hospital, you probably want to have a strong relationship with a vendor who offers highly reliable WiFi solutions if you think that WiFi heart monitors are going to be important because it will allow patients to move freely about the hospital. That same infrastructure director probably doesn’t need to put much effort into building relationships with datacenter rack manufacturers – no patient cares about the racks in the server room.
I’ll finish by talking about a sensitive topic. When you’re building a relationship with a new partner, try to meet – or at least be aware of – a few successive levels of management. Occasionally, you may find yourself interfacing with a disagreeable, dishonest, unhelpful, or otherwise incompetent account team for a company that you absolutely have to do business with. I’ve been in this situation a few times, and when I know it’s not working out I escalate to the sales management team at that company and ask for a new account team. I fire the account team, but not the company itself. Most of the time the account owner doesn’t lose their job, they just juggle customers – so you shouldn’t worry about requesting this for fear that you’ll put someone on the street. That said, if they aren’t benefitting you as a customer they likely aren’t benefitting other customers, and you may be doing the sales manager a real favor by bringing it to their attention.
Here’s the bottom line: If you’re looking to transition to management from a technical role, this can be an area that doesn’t come naturally to you. I’ve talked to thousands of IT professionals who deride sales professionals as “sales weasels,” and so for better or worse (and I think it’s worse) there is widespread reluctance to wade into these waters. I’m here to tell you from experience that the intuition you have is valuable. If you can tell if someone is just feeding you a line of BS, you can be really good at working through vendor relationships and managing them - so lean into it instead of shying away from it. Vendor relationship management is a skill that can differentiate you from other IT professionals.
Can I sell you on that idea?
Questions for reflection:
Have you ever had to work with a terrible partner? Was it the company or the account executive that made it tough?
Do you have a favorite vendor or partner to work with? What about that relationship makes it the best?
If you haven’t had much (or any) interaction with partners, can you talk to your management about wanting more exposure to that facet of IT?
