The readers of our blog are desperate to read new latest blogs on our website. People come asking us as when we would release new blog for them to read. It is good to see that people are fond of reading our blogs on regular basis and we are pleased to know that our blog excites them as we believe these are not just limited to serving knowledge or service offers but instead these provide the way on dealing with their business effectively which further help them take wise decisions and approaches pertaining to their business. After having had received so many responses and attention to our blogs, we have decided to release minimum 1-2 informative blogs a month for our valued and esteemed readers.

We would feel pleasure and be glad if any of our blogs have helped our readers in making their lives easy to do business effectively and prominently.

Today we will emphasize our focus on client-vendor relationship to improve perception of client for evaluating and selecting vendor correctly for their business. We will highlight few perspectives under which client can qualify the vendor. We are just making an attempt here to enlighten this topic of selecting a vendor, through our practical observation, real-life experiences and feedback that we have received from our clients.

Let’s throw some light on the Facts and Parameters to evaluate and determine correct vendors:

Vendors try to impress clients most of the time through out of context speech

Communication and good command over the language is vital when finalizing a vendor but when you ask something to your vendor and if you get an unsolicited response which is not purely centric anywhere near to the subject matter or question you raised and instead your vendor is just trying to impress you playing with the words then you will end up wasting your time with such vendors. Don’t get impressed with their words or speech instead concentrate to get your question answered properly and in an apt manner no matter if it is detailed or short.
In the other words avoid unsolicited responses on your questions/queries, from your vendors: Have you received such unsolicited email or phone call from your vendors in response to your query/question/concern? It is fine till the person on phone/wire talks about something relevant to your business or on core problem or subject matter but if not then cease investing your time with them.

Understand Your Vendor first

Understanding your vendor means to know about their services, location or experience but this is not sufficient as all this information is already available on their websites and further try to know vendor on moral and ethical scale. In a way, vendors ask questions to qualify their clients in the same way you as a client should ask questions to vendors in order to qualify them. Raise question that should be returned with negative annotation.
For example:
I have a tight budget and want to copy and use the code of someone into my website. Would you help?
So you might find people most of them saying yes and it the vendor saying ‘no’ that you should select.

Know if your vendor really cares about you and speaking truth?

Now a day, clients feel cheated when they come across words like best services, best price, best value for your money, work in reasonable price, discount etc. Every company on this earth is giving their best price to their customers as nobody wants to remain out of competition so find out whether vendor is making truthful statement or it is just fake commitments to attract clients. Try to find out relation between output result/quality with that of its best price. You can do that in the following way
Try to raise questions whose answer comes out to be ‘no’ or ‘negative’.
Question Example:
Would you be able to build a website for us in low price? (You know that nobody on this earth would do that for you)
So you might get people saying ‘yes we can do that, what is your budget’ or ‘We will work out best price for you’ or “Yes we are ready to work in low price “or ‘We will provide you with cost effective solution’ or ‘Our rates are market competitive’ etc. The only answer you should be looking for to qualify vendor is “we would charge based on the real time efforts and can’t compromise price over quality’ this is the genuine answer in comparison to other false approaches and please note that nobody is here for making loss and give away work or efforts free of cost. In the case, if anyone doing it then they do lack proper skills hence they are doing it.
You can also ask them another question like: “I want to meet strict delivery timeline of 3 weeks” If they agree with you without any reasoning then it’s a dubious case. In order to better understand you, if they/vendor asks you to extend timeline or try to understand as why the timelines are as such strict that means they are willing to understand the core aspect/matter on delivery time.
We will be releasing such vendor evaluation questionnaire soon in our upcoming blogs.

Vendors sometimes enforce their opinion and decision on you

You’re empowered and have right to take your decision on your own. People will push you hard and sometimes it is really annoying. If someone tries to force your decision then don’t get entangled or entwined with such vendors who are luring to procure business by making false promises without bothering or respecting the emotion, position and situation of clients. If any vendor can’t give you space and time to come up with your final decision then don’t pursue them. But it’s important that you make your plan clear in front of them.

What actually matters at the end of the day in selecting a vendor?

Is it price, quality, turnaround time, security/safety or morality/morale/ethics? Most of us would say, “I want all of them in low price” but based on the real-life observation the fact is that you would not get all 5 things under one umbrella. Price, Quality, Delivery Time, Ethics and Security all things don’t go together. For low price you cannot get ethically same quality of work output and security in less time.
Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten so instead of taking conversation with vendors on price it’s better to take conversation on output quality and solution. Ethics, Quality and Security should be your priority in ordinance over other things. If vendor is ethically sound then price would automatically be pondered justifiable, valid and correct.

How you build trust on vendors?

Try to find out way to the remedy to fix and solve the problem with vendors through consultation. When you go to doctor he/she examines you and prescribes treatment based on the observation so you consult and trust the doctor on the prescribed medicine with the degree and market reputation he/she has so with other situation when you go to a doctor who is novice you take proper consultation and knowledge on the illness if that satisfies you, only then you would build trust on them. So present and put forth your illness/problem pertaining to your business clearly in front of your vendors if they scrutinize and understand your problem/requirement clearly and provide you proper solutions/alternatives then they posses knowledge as well as strength to deal with your problem/requirement. Through consultation you can probe the level of your vendors and build trust on them based on their inputs.

Consult Vendor on suitable technology for your requirement

People who don’t have knowledge on technology hence most of the time they leave it to the vendors to decide it. You will have to change your approach as it is your right to know everything about the work that is carried out by vendors. Try to take knowledge from vendors on website technology and what difference it would create if you decide to select any technology over the other. You should understand the best and suitable technology for your requirement and if some technology is selected then find out why that technology is best against the other technologies. If vendor do not provide you proper solution, guidance, knowledge or direction then should not opt to prefer them. We deal in advance technologies like PHP, WordPress, Magento, Drupal, Joomla, .net, HTML 5 so find out best suitable technology for your customized requirement.

Please note that all of the above points to be considered together in a whole to qualify any vendor and should not be separately treated to judge any vendor.

Thank you to all of our readers for reading this blog and you can share your inputs/feedback/questions on this blog at sales@webelephants.com. We will get back to you soon with vendor evaluation questionnaire and many other ideas to make your business experiences better and brighter.