Vendor Calls

It is always interesting when we receive vendor calls because they quite often think they are calling a large business and not a two person consulting company. Vendors need to do just a little bit of research before they start making calls because they they wouldn't be wasting their time or my time.

One thing that vendors really need to realize is that there are good times to call people and times that just aren't so good. For me, the not good time is before 9 am as I am trying to get my day organized. Like a lot of business people the time before 9 am is normally spent trying to get as much done as you can before everything else starts piling up for the day. Vendors that make calls to see if you are aware of their products before 9 am will not get very good answers from me.

When a vendor calls me before 9 am I try my best to give them the quick answers hoping that they will get what they want and then I can get back to doing what I was doing. One vendor when they called, I was giving them the quick answers how we knew about them, our clients use the product and the caller started to snicker. Now maybe something funny was happening near them but it isn't a good business practice to start laughing when someone is telling you the answers to the questions you have asked. The person that started and wouldn't explain their snicker, ended up getting a lecture from me about that wasn't very professional behaviour and then I hung up.

Vendors need to remember that their calls can do one of two things, not just what they intend. One they can make a person (potential customer) not want to deal with you or maybe open a door. Normally a vendor has got a potential customer contact information at a conference which means the person may have already acquired the information they wanted.

The result of vendor calls can have such a different result depending on how you are calling and when. If you understand that first thing in the morning is very important to people you would call a little later in the day. Also if you do a little bit of research about the client or potential client that you are calling, you may find that no matter when you call them, they might be a little friendlier as they can see you have taken a bit of time to do some homework about who they are and what they do.