post by Stephanie Nelson
A few years ago, I posted about respecting the value of your vendors. At the time, I was seeing a lot of social media posts requesting recommendations for vendors of a variety of types, but they all included caveats of “must be affordable”, “decent prices”, etc. You can read the post to see how I weighed in.
This week, though, I’ve experienced a different type of devaluation. With it being the beginning of the year, many companies are launching into their marketing goals for the year (and the new year’s budget). I’ve gotten multiple requests for proposals just this week, which is amazing. However, several have come with the statement “we’ve decided we want…” Remember, this is coming with the REQUEST FOR A PROPOSAL, not after a proposal’s been submitted with options to choose from.
Let me put this into perspective for you. This type of statement coming before a proposal has even been submitted communicates to the vendor “I don’t trust you to know what you’re doing, so I’m going to tell you how to do it.” It’s either that or “I’m such a control freak that I’m going to make you want to commit harikari about 5 minutes in to working on my account.” Neither is what your vendor wants to hear from you.
Please respect the knowledge and skill your vendors bring to the table. If you felt you could perform the service yourself, you wouldn’t be looking for help. So don’t make it hard for potential vendors to WANT to work with you.
