6 reasons why vendors keep calling you, and how to cut down on those calls.

If you are a decision maker, vendors understand that you are working hard to execute your “A Priority” tasks while putting out the ever-present fires, and they respect that. In this game of cat and mouse, decision makers are making a lot of mistakes and actually, implicitly asking for MORE phone calls. That’s right, how decision makers (or their assistants) handle the call is a direct cause of why they receive so many follow-up calls. So here’s a little help to cut down the number of calls you receive. Here are some things NOT to do as part of your process of talking to a vendor. 

1. DO NOT be rude and dismissive or speak in a condescending fashion. If you are not, the angered vendor may set a reminder to call you daily as their passive aggressive way to return the rudeness and help meet their personal metric. There are metrics in place that they have to meet including number of calls they have to make, number of connections with decision makers, number of contracts out, and number of contracts in. Their job heavily depends on meeting these daily metrics. If a sales person must make 100 calls a day, and you made them upset, they may call you 5 more times which will actually help them meet their dial goal. So, please be courteous and kind.
2. Do Not tell a vendor you are in a meeting if you are not. If you have your assistant tell a vendor you are in a meeting, the vendor is going to keep calling back hoping to catch you when you are not in a meeting. If you are not interested in the vendor’s calls, that’s OK; and, it’s OK to say so. Simply say, or ask you assistant to say, “We do (or do not) use your product/service from time-to-time but right now we don’t have a need so we are not taking calls or collecting contact information. It’s OK to check in a month (two months, once a quarter) from now.”
3. Do Not be wishy-washy about your level of interest. Vendors want clarity and will continue to call you ad infinitum until they have the information needed to close their file. If you engage in conversation and you are not interested in our product or service, please say so – kindly. If you are interested, you engage in the process, and you change your mind along the way – be professionally courteous call and let your vendor know. Otherwise, they will wonder if you went on vacation, were involved in an accident, or were otherwise pulled away from your office duties and keep calling.
4. Do not ask the vendor to send you a contract without having a thorough conversation about the service provided. This will just end up in more calls because he vendor reports to their boss that they sent a contact to you and now their boss will want updates about progress or regress. They will be instructed to continue to call until they are sure of what has happened. You may think this is a great way to get a sense of the current market, compare cost of service with your current vendor, or just get rid of the vendor altogether, but you are asking for a headache. The vendor will rightly consider this to be a signal of potential business and will continue to fill up your voicemail and email to see if you have any questions about the agreement. Remember those daily metrics?
5. Do Not say “Never.” When you say never you are really just trying to be definitive or even abrupt to get rid of the call. Instead, you are just going to anger the vendor and we already talked about how being rude will end up in more calls. Please, from now on say “I do not have any interest at this time or for the foreseeable future.” Every salesperson will tell you about a contract they “brought in” from a client that told them NEVER. In fact, I once had a perspective client who was very high up in his company tell me that he had never and will never use a service like mine at 9:00 AM and promptly hung up on me. 1.5 hours later he received a call with a directive he thought he would never have so he was forced to call me back at 10:30 AM that same morning requesting more information about our service. He became one of our biggest and best clients and a great friend of mine personally.
6. Do Not lump all vendors into the same category. Please understand that every sales person is different. You will find that some vendors are seasoned and others are green, some are kind and others are rude, some are honest while others are not, some walk the line while others vault over it with a pole. But, like it or not, we are all in sales. At some level, you have salespeople, or marketers who are making sure your potential consumers are aware of your services. Please treat the vendors calling you the same way you would want your vendors treated.

Vendors are paid to call the very same people who are screening calls specifically to avoid having to speak to them and they know that majority of the time, decision makers will choose not to call them back. If that is not a tough job, I don’t know what is, so please don’t make it harder on them or on yourself than it has to be.

Be yourself. Be kind. Be honest. Don’t over think it. Remember, if vendors like you it will be much more likely you are offered a great price on the service you need, when you decide you need it. Maybe more importantly to you, if you use these tools you will cut down on the number of calls you receive by cutting down on the number of daily follow-up calls vendors make to your facility.

Joe Nanez, Director of Business Development, The Inline Group