What Makes Our ”Other” Customers (the Vendors) Happy?
DLT provides value in many different ways, not only to our customers, but to our vendor partners as well. I’ve been working with one key DLT vendor for several years and a variety of others for a few years. The one thing I can tell you from my experience is that there isn’t one answer to the question, ‘what does it take to keep our great vendor relationships?’
First of all, DLT works with many vendors. There are several groups that we provide value to in each of those vendor partners. You have to keep all of them happy – the VP’s, managers, account reps, outside reps, inside reps, marketing reps, accounting, legal, operations and the renewal team. This is not an easy thing to do. It’s a balancing act and we have to do our best to make sure nothing falls.
Secondly, we have to play the perception game. There are so many different levels of value that it’s perceived differently by every vendor and every person within the vendor. You can find a lead that one vendor reps thinks is great and the same type of lead, another rep will absolutely hate. It is our job to make sure we are creating value no matter what the situation may be.
The other thing that fascinates me, the differences between how each vendor weighs the reactive and proactive value model. Is one more important than the other and which makes the vendor more excited? Again, I don’t think we could ever really answer. It’s amazing to see because I manage multiple vendors. I have one vendor that only cares about the reactive machine (helping our fulfill orders and keep the government customers happy) and another that only cares about our proactive accomplishments (generating value for customers and driving demand in the government marketplace). Is either way, the right way? No. It is just important for my team to understand that we need to provide value, no matter what the situation may be, or which customer we are serving.
At the end of the day, the staff at DLT has to wear multiple hats, cater to different customers with different personalities bending our value proposition many different ways to meet their specific needs. We have become very good at this over the years and a major reason why our current vendors love us. We may never be able to tell someone what really makes our number our customers happy in a single statement, but when all the dust settles, DLT is extremely talented and does find a way to make our vendors happy and provide value.
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