How to Actually Work With Vendors (a Practical Guide)

I just can't quit you, babe. Like let's make this work. Is that going to be the first call? Yeah, I'm feeling, I'm going to put on some Kenny Loggins or something and maybe just, you know,

Welcome to the marketing team of one podcast, where we have conversations about the issues one person marketing teams face when trying to meet their goals with limited time and budgets. Now here's your hosts, Eric and Mike. Eric, you're coming in hot today. What is going on? I know. So many of these start this way, and I, uh, it must seem like I'm completely mental, but, you know, there's just a lot of difficult things that happen.

I, I'm, we're under a lot of pressure, and sometimes these vendors that we work with Like, can we just be professional? Like, just do your job. Like, I have to babysit them sometimes, and I have to go through all these motions and the rigmarole. Come on, man, like, just do it. You know, like, I, that's the sign on the front of your building.

It says you do this. Do this. Do I need, I know guys, yeah, do we need some legs broken? Yeah, I think we're, we're ready to make that call. So you're just like, you're done. I, I, well, I mean, yeah, on the day that things happen, I'm done. I am like out the door, like throwing this in the garbage. We are done never talking to this person again.

You have done me wrong on so many levels. I just, I'm, I'm, I'm giving up. I'm spiritually done. So, time to, time to fire him. Well, you know, maybe I'm impatient. I don't know. That, that doesn't sound like me. I, I'm, you know, I'm a saint. Mm hmm. You know that. You work with me every day. Yep. Perfection embodied.

Yep. Pretty much, right? Yep. Never really make a wrong step. Never. Thank you. That's on camera, by the way. You know, maybe it's one of those things where I just assume that you say you do this and we order that and then what I get is not really this. It's that. And that doesn't Make us happy and the clients mad, you know, so we got to like twist it around and go back and redo and spend more money or resources or time or things like that.

So it's just frustrating, you know, but you know, you make a good point. I mean, it is. This was a new vendor. Maybe I need to have a little bit more grace. Person's messing up like we should. I mean. Do, do we just cut them loose? Do we, should we be patient? Let it go? Like, where are you at? I mean, uh, nerves are right on the edge.

Right on the top, top layer. Yeah. So, this is a rough time. Yeah, they're done. I'm fired. They're fired. I'm done. Never working with them again. But My soul reaches out and says, you know, slow down a little bit. You're a little emotional over this because this is now a live thing going on. That's disturbing, hard to be involved in, but you've, this isn't the first time that's happened with other vendors.

And so I guess thinking back to it, it's like, well, why don't throw it all away? Maybe there's some value in here and I need to look for that. And maybe when I wake up tomorrow and. Though, if, you know, I meditate, maybe I'll find grace. Right now, I'm not. But, yeah. I think there will be a time when I go back and revisit, maybe with less emotion, and just kind of analyze it.

Because in the past, we've, we've had Vendors, and I have to say, it can be fairly common at the beginning of those relationships, you know, learning how to work with other people is challenging and there are steps that you need to take to maybe optimize that. There's, uh, you have to allow room for the, what do you mean you don't know what was in my head and maybe I didn't communicate as perfectly as possible to you in the beginning.

First instinct, you, you've done me dirty. I'm not working with you ever again, but you're, but you, there, you could see a scenario where it might be worth the work right now with the patients and the work to work with this vendor, because you know that with some of our more successful ones, right? There's, we've had a lot of success because, uh, because the long term.

relationship over multiple projects ends up having a lot of benefits, right? Yeah. And maybe it's part of that, the, that specific vendor makes that mistake consistently all the time on those first engagements. And then once you get into those relationships and you've worked through that process, this has happened where it's like all of a sudden now they're your best friend because they can actually deliver and, and, They've, you or they have turned it around.

And by no means is this some sort of a testament that everybody's wrong and I'm always right. I may, I am, I have to keep on myself all the time to learn this stuff and keep communicating and clarifying and give context to things every time we hand stuff over to a vendor. So that it's getting to the point where you just have to do that every time.

And it's a habit. I make a lot of assumptions all the time. Anybody who works with me probably. Knows that, right, Mike? I don't know what you're talking about.

I, come on, you know. I think, to be fair, everyone does that. Yeah. Like, and I think it's your approach to, like, seeing outside of yourself a little bit, when, in those vendor relationships, to think that, you know what, that, wow, based on my memory of all this stuff, that's what you do. They really messed up, but memory can sometimes be a faulty kind of narrator, right?

Like maybe there's some parts of the equation that missed, you know, like, and if you can, I think if you can look back, I almost always take the other approach was like, I think I messed that up. Like, I must not have told them this, this or this, you know, and I think if you go into those things and kind of realize that it could be both, you know.

I'm not immediately drive digging through my drawer looking for receipts to say like I sent you this I sent you this I sent You this like how did you mess this up? You know, like, you know, there's a time and place for that, of course But not right away. Yeah dollar bills are involved. Yes start to go look for that stuff.

Yeah. Yeah there's a lot of benefits in it ride a little bit and putting up with some of the short term pain and working through that with the vendor. But like, what do you think some of those benefits are? Well, again, these are, we're all people and nobody's perfect and everybody has their flaws and they hear things and remember things very differently than you do.

So I think what's important is just to kind of hit the foundation, the fundamentals right out box, you know, just share with them as much as you can about the project, the outlines, the deadlines, the, you know, the theme, the idea, you know, sometimes you got to draw pictures, show pictures. We do that all the time or make things many versions of things and show them like, this is what I want, you know, 50 of these, right?

Uh, especially if you're working with visual people, graphic designers, or, you know, people building webpages, right. alone are not going to do that. No. Oh, you're going to run into some big problems. Scribble on a napkin is going to be way better than words. Yeah. And sometimes that's part of the project is sitting and explaining and clarifying for everybody exactly what it is.

But having those kinds of fundamental things, obviously upfront, you know, record as many of those meetings as you possibly can. Check out Fathom. It's a wonderful product. So this is, I mean, the situation is really annoying. Right? Like, man, like, just, like you said, it's on the door, do what's on the door. Do what you're, what you say you do.

But, so, like, While it's really frustrating right now, like what are the benefits of like working on this and seeing this more as a speed bump and not the end of a relationship? Well yeah, that's really good because we have some awesome vendors that we've worked with for decades. They're just awesome people and have bent over backwards for us all the time and they're our go to.

You know, that's eventually what you hope and maybe that's my frustration sometimes is we have all these great vendors and then when we. Go out to get new vendors for different services or new services. Why isn't it like that? You know, you know, there's like it's you should be like that person. Come on, just do it like they do it, you know, but that's the problem is like you can't get to that point just with one project or two projects sometimes.

So the benefit is that you really do have these. You enjoy working with those people, so you love picking up the phone and calling them and talking to them because they make you laugh or. Yeah. It's just a, you know, you have that kind of camaraderie involved in it because sometimes some of these vendors that we work with, we've been in the trenches with them, you know, like grinding it out late nights, the whole thing, picking it up, delivering, you know, So is this situation right now, do you see this as one of those grind it out type things that will build?

To a stronger thing? It could be, yeah. I think so. Because it's frustrating because at the beginning you get frustrated over what you perceive as the simplest things that shouldn't be. Why is this a challenge? This shouldn't be a challenge. Like, just, you know. There's that just word again. I know, I love it.

You've worked through some battles with people, but I think there's What there's some repetition there, right? Like what you're implying is some repetition with the you've worked on multiple things with those vendors Yeah, you build like a pattern. Yeah of behavior with that client or with that vendor because you Develop a shorthand in a sense like you can just say two words And it fills their head with all these details and your head with all these details that you then don't have to describe again You can remember like that X, that thing we did.

Oh, yeah. Okay. He's starting to schedule it. She's starting to plan for it. Whatever, you know, there's just this Operation that automatically starts to take place where you're not starting from scratch like day one. We want this Day two you need to do this, you know, like that's all taken care of in a sense.

It's kind of In my mind, I'm thinking it's similar to, um, an inside joke you might have with some old, like friends, right? Like where you could meet them 15 years later and you could mention that inside joke and they're right back where they were. They knew exactly what it was. You don't have to explain anything and they can just take off and run with it.

Whereas maybe the, the spouse or whatever of the person you're talking to, you try and tell them that they're like, I need more, I need more details, you know. Yeah, and it's like at the beginning of when you first did that thing with that vendor, it may take hours to send. No, no, we need it like this. No, try it.

If you could, can I give you a different file? Like, what's going to help for your system? Because every vendor probably has Slightly different system, you know, is there a way we can help optimize, you know, you're working out a lot of those things that you need to take care of before you prep them for success in a sense.

So there's work that I need to do. There's work that they need to do. And all that stuff probably takes a lot of hashing out over time, but that's, that's right. It's like an inside joke. Then you go back to them and you're like, we're going to do that thing again. Okay. Ready to go. Like right now. It's all about like, let's just cut them loose.

This is ridiculous. Right. But like meditate, sleep on it. Patience may prevail. Right. And in some cases that patience would be rewarded. Yes. Right. It sounds like we, your, your approach is softening. What are some things we could do to make this better? Build that long term relationship with this vendor.

Clarify as much as you can upfront with all the project details with them. You probably want to have a meeting, I'm sure, uh, to outline things. It's hard to write it all down, probably in an, in an email, and then they're going to have questions. So they're going to want to come back and ask you those questions.

So I would recommend just going into a meeting with them and then sharing stuff before the meeting so they can review it. If you need to record the meeting, that's even great. So they've got something extra to go on with their questions involved in that as well. Uh, so timelines, schedules, budgets, obviously all that stuff needs to be clarified right up front.

But we also make visuals, like comps, and little models, and you know, drawings, and sketch it out, or draw with our fingers, or The idea, I think, is that you need to communicate it in about three different ways sometimes, I feel. Especially if it's a complex I find myself Explaining something and trying to explain it from three different Perspectives maybe maybe from their perspective or my perspective, but then maybe the client's perspective as well and drill You know like pull back on the whole project and say at the end of the day They want to walk into this room and see X or have this to hand over or look at this on screen or whatever It is so, you know just starting with sometimes it's funny I you know Talking with vendors sometimes, if I pull back to that most basic level of what are we doing here, you know, it's like the whole thing when you go in for surgery and you're having your leg amputated.

The doctor comes in and he draws a big sharpie on your leg, like, this is the, remove this leg. Over communicate everything and like, leave no stone unturned. As you're looking at where we're at today with this vendor, do you think like maybe there's some stuff we could do? Could have done to over communicate a little bit better.

I think the mistake I make all the time is that assumption thing where I assume that, you know what I mean when I say X. And then they're like, yeah, I do. Perfect. No problem. I know exactly what that is. And their version is over here and your version is over here. Cause yeah, you're coming at it. Like they're coming in cold from something else.

Yeah. Yep. You've been immersed in it for a little bit longer. Yeah, that recency bias thing plays way into this, you know, like, come on, we just did this. Do you have any other tips or kind of frameworks that you lean on for some of these things? I try to do my best to provide as much context to the project.

So that's that kind of pull back, look, here's the big picture of everything. So you give it that context. Be very clarifying, clarify. So context, clarify. That's a back and forth, questions. You know, that's where I also get into that like say it three times kind of a thing where It may take a little extra time and it may take a little extra work to get them to understand it those But sometimes people need to hear things like I know for me like, you know, you work with me all the time Mike You need to tell me what seven times before I remember anything pretty much, right?

Yeah, I think if we peel back the data on that it would be pretty close to that Yeah might be nine might be eleven You But yeah, it's more than just once sometimes. Oh gosh, yeah, yeah. Once is never enough. My head's a sieve, basically. Well, and I'm saying that for myself, too. Like, you tell me once. But then confirm, and by confirm you just ask people like, Okay, explain to me back what I just said.

There's probably, yeah, there's a, there's a number of different ways to kind of like, were you even listening to me? What did I say? Just tell me right now. What did I say? All right. We're leaving this meeting. What's our action items? Okay. Who's working on what? You know, that's another way of doing the same confirmation, right?

Yeah. There's communication, but then there's also the doing like, do you have any pearls of wisdom? Yeah. Well, I think that, you know, timeframes come into play. Okay. And that's, you know, that's the hard part is like getting things scheduled and making sure that everybody has enough time to do what they want to do.

I always try to under promise a little bit, and then over deliver. What that means is, I promise you that I'll get you those files on Wednesday, and then I deliver Tuesday morning or Tuesday afternoon. I think there's, there is a challenge there, right? If you're spinning. a bunch of plates, right? Like your instinct might be to tell the vendor what you want them to hear, like, Hey, I'll get this stuff to you.

But I think what you're saying is like, you have to plan for that. There's things that you don't know. So it's better to communicate to that vendor that, Hey, all I might have this to you by next week. And if you can finish it by the end of this week, but like give yourself the time to deliver on time You need to build the foundation of a positive relationship as much as possible and i'm doing it at the beginning of that project Just goes a lot further and getting more goodwill around the whole experience.

It's setting expectations and hitting expectations, right? We have vendors that do that a lot. And that's why we have those relationships with them because they've practiced that all the time. So there's, like I said, it's two way. We have to deliver things to the vendor that the vendor works on to get back to us or to the client.

And so it's important for everybody to kind of practice that so that, um, Nobody's surprised as much as possible. You know, most projects we have are not that cutthroat in their deadlines and budgets. And, you know, we do high quality work. We expect our vendors to do high quality work and that takes a little bit of time.

So we have that built into our process and our timeline and the expectations. So, you know, it does work well. We're committed to trying to make this work. There's going to be benefits to trying to make this work, but there's a shining, a pinprick of shining light. If I squint, I can see it, and What's your mindset of, what are you asking them?

What are, what are you trying to get them to do? Well, it's first thing is to identify it as quickly as possible. And ideally that, you know, before a deadline or right. As soon as something happens, maybe a piece of equipment breaks, you know, nobody's in charge of that. Like, you know, I mean, some of these things that we work on have a lot of people involved in them and they need to plan and schedule and get things set right.

So that their team is, you know, On board with it and understands it too. So identifying it As soon as possible and get everybody in the room so that we can discuss There's probably going to have to be a sacrifice or some sort of compromise going into this and that's where you need to Work with your vendor to try to figure that out first to see if there's a way to still meet What are the expectations are right away, but then if they can't, what's the compromise, you know, there needs to be a compromise that's established as quickly as possible.

And the reason that we work with the great vendors that we do now is when there has been problems and there's always problems, they come to us right away and they usually have a solution for it right away too. So that's a huge thing. If there's just hands up in the air, like, I don't know, it's broke, you know.

how a vendor responds when things go wrong is a good testament to whether it is working with them and pushing through this, right? Like you going to this vendor right now and trying to figure out how we're going to make this right and how things are going to get fixed. The response to that is going to be huge.

Yeah. Right. For sure. Like if they're going to deflect And, and everything. That's, that's a good sign that maybe that, that light at the end of the tunnel that you're striving for maybe isn't as achievable as you thought. Snuffed out, yeah, exactly. And I think some of that may be mitigated at the front end of the tunnel.

Conversation, when we first start talking to that vendor. Levels of communication, how often do we talk? How often do you tell me things? You know, there's a pretty standard set. Here's the deadlines, here's all the milestones, let me know when things are going. Now it's going to the bindery, or now it's, you know, going to production.

Okay, great, thank you for the update. Those are really great. There's, there's also, though, on the other side of that, where there's too many updates or too many questions. We tend to run into those kind of issues when maybe we haven't done a good job of clarifying with that vendor, Okay, we would like this pace of, of, uh, communication.

There's ways to kind of establish things like what is that pace of communication that doesn't work. Cause I mean, all those cycles just take, take time away from doing other things and we're busy people. How this vendor response to problems and how they is, is a big indicator of how you would work with them.

When do you work through that? When's it time to move on? Like do you have any feel for when there's like they'll, We're done. I think it's a pretty complicated matrix of things that you need to consider. It's not just maybe one thing. It's looking at the full, you know, how, what's the final product? Does, did it, was everybody happy and satisfied?

Okay, so that's a big part of it. We need to kind of calculate that into the equation. That weights pretty heavily. Is it something it can be resolved? Or is this something that can never be resolved? And that gets into that decision making of well if I just do this x y and z at the beginning Maybe that will help mitigate all these things that happen later on in the project.

Do you like working with them? Are they happy are they? Helpful, are they proactive? um all that goes into it as well then and you need to kind of develop your own level of You know, what are you going to put up with kind of stuff? What are, what are some asks that you could make of this person that are, that you feel are good, like good concessions.

What are some things that you wouldn't ask that maybe we've been asked, you know, like, are there some things that you could, um, in trying to make this right? So you feel satisfied. Yeah, and some of this probably comes down to, you know, there's financial incentives. Yeah. Give me that for free or this part of it for free or maybe a free delivery or something could be something that Would help, you know, we're if we're talking project specific stuff Um, oftentimes it is around those things.

Can I get a discount or something? Yeah, it's like going to a restaurant, you know, if you don't like the food is this an investment you want to make in a relationship? That if you feel really really good about it, sometimes i'll eat some of the problems I'll eat Maybe a schedule or I may, you know, eat some of the financial parts of it as well But understanding that it's an investment in i've got the confidence that this is a vendor that I want to work with over and over And over again, and if we were to just fix these two or three things that were probably my fault We wouldn't have these issues.

So i'll take i'll take the blame or i'll take the bullet on that one a little bit so would you ever um Ask for the final delivery. Um Free of charge, that's the nuclear option. That seems really I can't even imagine doing that Like maybe it's because we are on the vendor side on things no matter what happened.

There was effort put in Yeah, there are do some Gross negligence. Yeah. And at that point, whatever you'd get out of it is probably unusable anyways, right? In the past, we've had, we've approved a proof, colors, everything looks great. They start running it, it starts looking, it looks great off the press, the first hundred sheets.

And then we leave. We're like, okay, we trust, it's good. You know, your equipment's up to snuff. And then the printer, you know, prints out 30, 000 more on that 29, 000 thing looks terrible because something went haywire in the equipment you know they went through bindery and it got delivered and the client got it and then of course the first one they pick up the client looks at is like what the heck happened to this thing it looks terrible and you're like what are you talking about it was proven so in that sense we've had to have printers go back and reprint the whole job.

Or a majority of it. So we've still paid for the printing. Yeah. But they have eaten the cost of all of the reprints. The problem there is that then we lose time. And if it's time critical, then there's a problem. Of course, all those things work into it. So that, I guess in that sense, that's, that's the nuclear option when it comes to printing.

Um, but it's, yeah, it's, you can't, you can't, you have to be realistic and understand that, you know, There's probably a chance that maybe you're part of why things went wrong, and that's that's where I Give a lot of grace. Is that where you're landing today that that you came in hot and why can't you just do your job?

Well, is that where you're landing today? Are you gonna give you you've done a good job of being my therapist Mike I'm starting to see the light Spiritually, I think, you know, I'm open to considering that, um. Still, still a little hot under the collar. Still, yeah. Come on. But like, there's enough good. I think there's enough good in the end product, you know, if everything works out, it's going to be amazing.

And everybody will be happy. Yeah. And, and everybody will forget it. That's the other thing. It's like, just move on. I mean, if you come to a compromise, things are fixed. Have a bad memory and just move on. You know, like, if things are all good, and everybody's happy, you don't need to keep dwelling on it, or keep it, remember it, for sure.

You know, don't hold grudges, but learn from it. And that's where you also have to, if I'm going to work with this vendor, do I have to keep reminding them of these things every time we do a project together? And if that's the case, then I would argue that you might want to just That's when you start going through the pain with another vendor for the long term.

Right, they don't need to be babysat as much yes, hopefully yeah Yeah, so I can see you leaving this meeting just kind of picking up your phone going. I just can't quit you, babe Like let's make this work Is that gonna be the first call yeah, I'm feeling I'm gonna put on some Kenny Loggins or something and maybe just you know I think that's healing Yeah, yeah, good Kenny Loggins playlist to do a lot of people write.

Yeah, just kind of get into the peace mode, you know, a little bit. Yeah, maybe I need to make right with um, you know, I get emotional about stuff and it's hard. I think, I don't tend to yell often, do I Mike? Not as much as me. Okay, so. I just think I have some choice words that are said at loud volumes every once in a while.

It's never directed at any one person directly. As he points to me. I was not, I did not mean it that way, but, right. Yeah. Right. No, I didn't take it personally at all. That's good. That's the good point. Yes. Yeah. I'm moving on, Mike. I'm moving on. Moving on. Building that bridge. Yes. For a long, happy relationship.

I can't wait.

Whew. We've moved, we've, we've moved mountains here today. , look at me. I'm smiling. I'm happy. I'm jovial. Just think, yeah. Not that was not the case when we started. No, I was on the edge of tears. I was ready to pounce, ready to go. Success!

Appreciate you talking me off the ledge, Mike. I feel a lot better. Good, good. I'm here anytime. Oh, our hour's up. Okay. Thanks, Mike. See ya.

Thanks for tuning in. For more information and other episodes, subscribe to the Marketing Team of One podcast on YouTube, Apple, or Spotify Podcast Networks. You can also chat with us on the r slash Marketing Team of One subreddit or visit marketingteamofone. com to learn more.

‍