Make Corporate America Work for You

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Take Fischer Sports USA, a Concord, N.H., outfit that distributes and markets ski equipment. The company's sales have grown 50% over the past three years, overwhelming its outdated accounting system. So David Allely, comptroller and head of operations at the 25-employee outfit, got the green light to purchase a new system. What he thought would be a simple task stretched into a six-month ordeal. Allely contacted about a dozen different vendors, including the industry's leading players -- and met with little more than frustration. Sure, the salespeople were friendly and solicitous. But Allely consistently found himself treated like a novice.

"Anytime I asked a pointed question, they wouldn't answer it," he says. Fischer eventually decided on Icode's Everest accounting system. What prompted the decision? "They put together a CD-ROM with a five-hour demonstration that allowed us to really get into [the software], and see how it would work for us." Everest "was the only one," Allely says, who treated him like a grownup. Make it clear that if you're getting patronized, you won't be that vendor's patron. You're the customer, after all, and you know what that means.

Listen for "no"

"No" may be the most important syllable you can hear when negotiating a service contract. Be very afraid if a potential vendor never utters it. "The people who scare me are the people who just 'yes' you, who never say, 'No, our product can't do that," says Allely. He's forever on the lookout for honesty, for someone willing to say, "No, we can't do that. But here's a creative solution to get around the limits of our product." Adds Octagon CTO Kirk Gallion: "If they don't say 'no' at least once, I'll keep asking tough questions, even if it goes way beyond what I want or need." Think of it as a credibility litmus test.

Don't Be Pigeonholed

When you think about your business, you probably think in terms of what your company does: You're an IT service provider, say, or a marketing consultancy, or an interior design shop. Corporate America doesn't see things quite that way. In a bid to simplify the vast, fragmented world of small and medium-size businesses, many big corporations segment the market by number of employees or annual revenue a company has, then design their products and services accordingly. Gateway and SAP are just two companies that take this approach.

Whether or not you think of your own business and its needs in such quantitative terms, it's worth determining how you fit in your vendor's segmentation scheme. On the basis of your employee count, for example, you may be tracked into certain programs or services that you might not want or need, such as a less sophisticated accounting system or a larger inventory-management system. Ask to see all of their offerings for companies smaller and larger than you. If you see something you like that's available for a larger or smaller company, ask for it. Vendors that really "get" small companies are the ones that provide access to the same bells and whistles they offer to all their clients. Plus, they're willing to scale their products, so you're not forced to buy something designed for a multinational conglomerate.

Bear in mind that there's no industry standard here. Depending on who you happen to be dealing with, your company may land in different segments. If you have 150 employees, for example, one vendor might lump you with companies that are made up of 150 to 500 employees, while another would put you into a segment that's 200 and under. "If you're at the bottom end of the service line, you may not get as much attention as you would like," cautions Golub, of American Express. "You're no longer the big fish in the small pond." How does AmEx get around the problem? By treating every company as an individual, regardless of size, Golub says.

When Things Go Wrong

You'll know Corporate America is really working for you when your vendor comes through when things, as they inevitably do, go wrong. Octagon's Gallion says he issues the following warning to vendors while he's in the selection process: "How you manage issues is how we decide whether we want to continue to work with you." And he repeats it often throughout the relationship. Dell Computer won him as a repeat customer after an incident that almost had him walking away from the computer manufacturer. Octagon had recently purchased five laptops, only to discover that several did not function properly. Gallion called his account manager at Dell, who had a technician call him. Without even seeing the laptops, the technician figured out right away that the motherboard had to be replaced. Gallion asked them to replace the motherboards even on the laptops that weren't showing the problem, and Dell complied. "Dell provided service above and beyond what we would normally expect," he says.

In your interview process, lead prospective vendors through disaster scenarios, and ask them for specifics -- including statistics -- on how they've handled customer crises in the past. For example, if you ask software vendor Intuit about their troubleshooting for QuickBooks customers, they're able to tell you the average wait time for a phone conversation with a technical support engineer, by week, month, and year. (Between April 2002 and April 2003, for example, the average QuickBooks customer waited just 2.28 minutes to talk with a tech support person, the company says.) Find out whether you'll be in phone menu hell when things go wrong, or whether you'll have quick access to trained specialists. Hewlett-Packard, for example, recently beefed up its small and medium-size business expertise call center, where its reps get special training in the differences between large- and small-company tech issues, says Robyn M. West, vice president of SMB Americas at the Houston-based company.

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