Vendors and some frustrations

Being a small business owner means that I am going to have my mobile device on most of the time. Off hours are when you can get the emergency calls from clients with issues or you are just trying to focus on getting some of your own tasks completed. Vendors seem to think that everyone should be available to read email or answer phone calls all the time.

We have been dealing with some vendors lately and they just don’t seem to understand that there is a limit of how many notifications and phone calls I want to get from you. So here is a list of some of our frustrations with vendors.

1. Send too many emails – there is a limit to how much I want to receive from a vendor. If you have something new to tell me great but don’t keep telling me the same information over and over again.
2. Too many reminders about event or webinars – send me an email about the event and one reminder closer to the date of the event. Do not send me constant reminders about registering for an event/webinar. If I am not interested or unable to go I will not be registering just to say I registered for the event. Also, ensure your system knows that I have already registered for the event and then stop reminding me to register for something that I have already registered for.
3. IT people have their work devices on all or most of the time – don’t send emails in the evenings or on weekends to ensure it is at the top of the email list in the morning or worst yet on Monday morning when I can be dealing with more IT emergencies than normal. If you email me on the weekend because you have a system that you can schedule when things are sent you just show that you don’t respect potential clients/resellers.
4. Don’t assume a domain will result in big business as it might be my personal email address that I registered with and not work – it is amazing how many vendors think because your email is an ISP email address you work for them. We have received calls from vendors assuming we worked for Rogers because our personal email account was with Rogers. Yes this could also happen with the telus.ca and bell.net subscribers as well. An email account with internet providers cannot guarantee that you work for them.
5. Know the holidays of where you are phoning – If you are a regional sales rep ensure that you understand all the statutory holidays in the areas that you are phoning. There are a number of American companies that seem to forget that our holidays in Canada are not the same as they have. We recently received a phone call on a statutory holiday and the person was amazed that I quickly could say they were from the States. Yes, once again showing that even with a title of sales rep for Eastern Region it doesn’t mean you know what the Eastern Region is other than it is Eastern North America. Please if you are going to be calling an area outside either your state or province ensure you know various holidays. Put the holidays in your calendar so that at the beginning of each day you can check to ensure you are not calling someone who isn’t at work but you are calling on their mobile device.
6. Call during normal business hours – preferably between 10 and 4 – this time is listed because the first hour of a day is trying to clean up emails and such that have landed after you walked away from work the last business day. Also, the first hour is when you are juggling the various emergencies that can land when clients discover issues when they start their day. The 4 pm is because by then most of the front facing work is done and it is now time for the small business owners to try and wrap up for the day themselves. We had one vendor that really enjoyed calling between 5:30 and 6 pm when he was driving home from work. Great for him as he was being productive but of course it meant it either interrupted us making dinner or interrupted the work that was getting accomplished for clients.
7. Know the size of the business you are calling – this means checking a website to get a little bit of an idea about the business before you call. Also a lot of small businesses go to conferences where the products are for bigger business because we are the trusted advisors. Don’t ask me “Why I went to conference x” because I would have gone for a reason not just because it was something to do.

These are some of the frustrations that we have encountered when dealing with various vendors. Some vendors are great and respect our schedule and some don’t. If you are a vendor and you really want to make a good impression on a potential client or reseller do a little bit of homework before you can. You will get a lot further ahead if you have. You will always find vendors that understand their regions and potential clients and value them. Also, when you get that call during a time that isn’t good let the vendor know and why you are upset as this might be the only way they learn.

Vendor emails after conferences

I think everyone that has gone to a business conference has received emails from vendors after the conference.

What is very interesting are the various types of emails you will get. Here are a couple of examples that I have received:

1. Thank you for dropping by our booth and it was great talking to you.
2. Sorry we didn't have the opportunity to talk at the conference.

As you can see both of these emails start out so differently and now to explain both of these emails. The first one is thanking me for dropping by a booth that I actually didn't even stop at. The second email is a lot better because they are identifying that I probably didn't stop by the booth at the conference. Like the first one I didn't stop by the second booth either.

What is nice about the second email was it went on and explained a bit about the service that they provide and attached a brochure that if I was interested I could look at. The other thing about the second email was it was short and to the point and gave me a bit of information. In this case I didn't stop at the booth as it wasn't of interest to our business but if I had of just missed it I would have got some information and could follow up with the company.

The first email thanked me for dropping by and immediately requested a time within the next week when I would be available to discuss things with them. Well, this isn't a good way to handle things because I didn't drop by the booth for a reason and when I see a request of my time that email quickly gets deleted.

The reason both of these vendors were able to email me was that as a vendor they can receive the email addresses of all attendees either they dropped by the booth or not. This is happening at more and more conferences and it isn't something that I really appreciate. I go to the conference and go to the booths that I want to gather information from. Normally as an attendee you also get a list of all the vendors that are going to there so you can always investigate vendors that you didn't stop at.

A lot of conferences are also giving vendors scanners so that they can scan your id badge to follow up if you want that. I don't mind someone scanning my id badge if I have said they could but I do mind the vendors that immediately scan everyone that is even walking by the booth. I have learned that I will turn my id badge over so that they cannot scan the bar code that gives them the information they need.

Now what I have found is a lot of these vendors continually email you about things so we now have email addresses that are used when signing up for conferences and such. These email accounts do not notify us when we get an email but we can still check them when we have the opportunity to do so. It is amazing how many emails you get after attending any conference and you then have to go and unsubscribe from their mailing lists.

The good vendors realize that everyone is getting tons and tons of emails now and if they want to really get your attention they need to respect your time. We did go to a conference not long ago and talked with a couple of vendors about things we were interested in. Both of these vendors did follow up but more just to check in with us and see if we had any additional questions. Both of these vendors will be getting our business because of how they handled themselves.

Remember your email is getting more and more messages now and a lot of them are due to attending various conferences. Understand you are the one in charge of how things continue with any vendors and the unsubscribe button is your friend.

Vendor emails

As an IT professional I have noticed something that I really need to write about. It has happened the last couple of weekends and it is frustrating. I have received vendor related emails on the weekend.

Why do vendors have to send out solicitation emails on a weekend. I thought a weekend was a time to relax and try to forget about work and not be bothered by vendors. The other thing about getting these emails are they are distracting. Yes, we have our mobile devices on during the weekend to receive emails from clients who are experiencing issues and need our assistance.

When these emails come in I end up marking them as read. No, I don't really even read the email because I just get frustrated that they have arrived on the weekend. In some cases I even delete them because of the mood I am in when I see them.

Now if you are a vendor and are trying to get my business you won't help yourself if I get emails from you on the weekend. I probably will never really focus on your email because of the timing of when it arrives. Ok, it will probably get onto my work account on Monday if I haven't deleted it but considering it is marked as read it means I won't really look at it again unless an issue comes up and I need to investigate something.

Remember if you really want to get an individuals attention on an IT issue send it during the week when they are in that state of mind. Sending emails to IT individual on a weekend means there is a good chance it will be totally ignored or even deleted. Please remember we all want some time off.