Vendor Management
There are two primary elements of Vendor Management with regards to your various marketing service providers.
Lack of Time
Do you have the time to sit through the repetitive meetings with your various vendors listening to them tell you how great of a job they are doing? Do you have the time to listen to what new vendors have to say? Most likely the answer is no – which is too bad because you’re missing out.
In the first instance, as your rep drones on and on about nothing, you probably get to the point where you tune them out and miss the finer details of what they are saying and that might be where there is some value to latch onto. In the second instance, you may be too busy to listen to lengthy pitches on various marketing products or services that may, or may not impact your business. I’m sure that you receive several calls and emails each and every week offering you this or that to help your sales/marketing efforts. After awhile, they all just become white noise.
In both cases, businesses tend to stick with the status quo because it’s already “working” so why go through the hassle of changing? Unfortunately, relying on status quo is always the first step to going nowhere fast.
Lack of Knowledge
One problem the typical business owner has is that they are really knowledgeable about the products/services they sell but aren’t nearly as well versed on the ever-changing world of digital marketing. In my experience, having a snippet of knowledge generally opens the door to buying new marketing products or services thinking that they must be headed in the right direction. The reality of the situation is that, the limited knowledge that was relied upon to make that purchasing decision, generally wasn’t backed up with being able to ask all of the right questions in order to determine if investing in product/service X was a good value, either short or long-term.
I’ve lived it. I obviously own Smarter Business Solutions, but I’ve also owned a couple small businesses through my 30 years in the work world. Fortunately, I have the marketing experience to determine what works, what doesn’t and am able to ask the questions that cut through the typical marketing B.S. that is given during a presentation.
A bonus of offering the experience I have in this way is that my expertise allows me to cut through the white noise quite often before even having to listen to a pitch!
Deciphering ‘Shiny New’ from Proven Marketing Strategies
Way too often businesses get hustled on the the latest shiny new marketing gadget, phrase, idea or tool. I actually got a job that way once. A VP in the B2B arm of a national Telco created a job called CRM Co-ordinator. He proceeded to hire me and my first duty was to define the role – mostly because he read something about client relationship management (which now means something slightly different than it did in 2000) and needed to justify my role for the long-term.
I see it every time I speak with an NPV dealer too. They read somewhere, or were told during an OEM meeting that X was something they needed to be involved in to take their dealership to the next level. A lot of the talk surrounds peripheral things. Things that are new and ‘shiny’ because the foundational work should’ve been done years ago and it isn’t cool to talk about them anymore.
Think about it. If you started off playing hockey for the first time when you were 15, you probably want to get going and learn how to score. That’s all fine and dandy, but if you haven’t learned how to properly skate, your impact will be significantly limited – even if you do score some goals. Think about how many you could’ve scored if you learned the foundational skill of skating first?!?