In my first week at the new company, I decided to meet with key stakeholders to gauge what vendors I should focus on first, and what projects to start with. There was one company EVERY single person kept mentioning. For privacy purposes in our story, let’s call this company, Company X. They were our biggest service provider, and also our worst vendor. Any and all performance was abysmal, they constantly violated contract obligations, and the relationship between our companies was non-existent at best, and borderline hostile at worst.
“If they’re so terrible, and this has lasted for years, why don’t we start looking for a new vendor for these services?” I asked, completely perplexed why this has been ongoing for so long. The person I was talking to shook their head, “We can’t. They have a monopoly on this. There is no other vendor we can work with. The problem is, they refuse to work with us, and there’s nothing that can be done. No one has been able to change that.”
I knew that I had to try.
I started to try to educate myself about what was going on. I sat in on any meetings that we had with Company X. I quickly realized that even though the vendor was rude and stubborn, the company I was working for, wasn’t being cooperative either. There was one particular conversation…or should I say shouting match (?) that stood out above the rest:
“We hired you to do this work, and you’re not delivering!” my co-worker shouted at Company X.
“We haven’t been receiving any responses from you. We need your team to be onsite” the company X employee responded turning red in the face.
“That’s not our problem. You just need to figure out how to do this on your own” my co-worker responded.
I realized something at that moment. The company that I was working for didn’t realize working with vendors is a two-way street. That it’s just as important for us to do our part to help our vendor. If we don’t help the vendor out (either by responding to calls or emails, sending in documents, or providing clarity and support) there is no way the vendor can do their job well – even if they wanted to (and quite honestly, after attending those meetings I wasn’t sure they did). But, can you blame them here? If someone is yelling at you and rolling their eyes, do you really want to do your best?
If we wanted to see good results from Company X, first we needed to create an environment for them where they wanted to work with us and do their best work.
Even if Company X is a monopoly, at the end of the day, our team was working with people. People who had feelings, interests, dreams, and ambitions. Maybe they realized that our company wasn’t going to terminate our contract because of Company X’s power. But I can bet they didn’t enjoy working on an account where they weren’t respected and where they couldn’t show their company’s leadership that they were succeeding.
The first thing I decided to do was to re-train our team’s thinking. I took a 2 step approach to this.
- During every meeting with our vendor, I started asking the question, “what do you need from us to succeed in this?”
- Almost every single time this question came up, someone from the vendor side had a request. Every time a request was made, I took a note and worked internally to make sure we deliver on our side. Our team started getting used to the fact that we were doing our part regularly.
- During quarterly business reviews, I would send out a survey to our team, with one of the questions asking what we need to do internally to improve as a partner to that vendor. This question wasn’t optional, and it wasn’t a question asking IF there’s anything to improve. Every individual had to think and come up with at least one thing that they would improve in this self-assessment.
- This approach made our internal team think about our communication style, our responsiveness, and what we deliver on our side. This reflectiveness caused many people to admit that we weren’t always open to communication, that we didn’t always share documents in a timely manner, etc…
After these realizations occurred, people’s reactions started to change. Our team stopped screaming at Company X during meetings. They tried to be more cooperative and started to share information more openly. I could see things starting to improve.
But, I knew that was just the tip of the iceberg. Just like we started to do our part in working with the vendor, I knew the vendor had to meet us halfway, and do their part. We still needed to see their performance scores and delivery times improve. Communication was also still a bit spotty.
Meetings were held with Company X only if there were any issues to discuss. That was something I realized needed to be changed. We needed to get ahead of an issue before it became a problem. I suggested every team have monthly meetings with their counterparts at Company X. In addition, I also started meeting with our Company X account manager one on one on a monthly basis. We would go over any open tasks, anything that’s come up, and anything either one of us needed to escalate.
At the beginning of this process (in the first few months when I joined the company), meetings were tense from all sides. But as we started solving issues together, and getting to know one another – casually talking about life or family for the first 5 minutes, discussing a new movie that someone saw, or a new puppy, the tension slowly melted.
Conversations started shifting from pointing fingers to “how can we partner together on this?” We started looking for solutions TOGETHER.
We all realized that we share similar goals. We want the projects done well and we want them done on time. The friendships that started to develop? Well, that was just a bonus!
After a year of the above methods, Company X went from being our worst vendor to being one of our best. Communication was flawless, requirements were being met well and on time. Soon enough, we started partnering with them more (even on products where they didn’t have a monopoly.) Everyone ended up a winner and everyone was happy.
The partnership between our companies was so successful, that the Company X account team was promoted, given more responsibility, and given the opportunity to work with even larger clients.
A relationship between a company and a vendor is a partnership. You’re in it together, and it takes both sides to make this work. If something isn’t working, it’s a step by step process to see improvement. Start internally to see what can be improved, and continue onto processes and procedures with the vendor as time goes on. Before you know it, you will see the success you’re hoping for. Just don’t give up!
Musings of a Vendor Manager 