As I’ve mentioned in this post, the vendor selection for the multichannel marketing/ #sales enablement platform was a ‘little bit’ complicated.
#1st round: Pre-RFI was sent to the pre-selected 17 vendors (total analysis paralysis)
2nd round: demo and solution description from 10 companies
3rd round: request for proposal to 7 (+1, after we closed the selection, just on my boss request)
4th round: top 3 solution introduced to top management
5th round: final decision – we had a winner
It was quite interesting to see how the situation escalated as we were going further and further with the selection. In the first 2 rounds the response time from salespeople were days (quite often more than a week), and not surprisingly in the last rounds when we dealt with only 7, then 3 vendors the response time reduced dramatically.
What I was looking for during the selection procedure? The answer cannot be simpler: partnership. Of course there were differences between the features of the different platforms, but in the final rounds, despite of the differences all the solutions fulfilled the criteria in the RFI. And here became the attitude of the sales team a 1 influencing factor.
Practically I served on a silver plate 2 elements of the change story: why now and why change, the “only” task was to listen to me, shape the served ingredients and ad the why me part. I met excellent sales executives, who applied very nicely the threat the #status quo selling technique. Continuously asking information about the status of the decision making process, the best of them provided a consistent product value proposition adopting the viewpoint and focuses. Honestly, I enjoyed the conversations.
However 2 of them decided to threat the prospect (me)… The product focus gone, and I was given a speech about financial rumors of the competing company/companies, capacity issues, other clients complaints with the other vendors. The most fabulous chapter was the closing, a nice list of the negative consequences if we chose the other vendor(s) – consequences personally on me. Did I lose the trust in this threatening vendors: yes, completely. It’s definitely not the partnership what I needed.
On the other hand 4 out of the 7 won the fair play grand prix. Their salespeople showed respect towards the others (and me), offered support even after the unfavorable support. Good indicator of the company culture. And what’s their prize? I refer them within and outside of my company, share their contents and I’m ready to recommend them. I know who to call, if I need a solution like theirs.