Turning Vendors Into Partners
Almost everyone is gunning for your business. But will your vendors treat you the way you treat your customers—like a true partner? Here are some questions to ask before making a commitment.
It's one of the most enduring myths in American business: the lone entrepreneur, struggling against the odds to transform vision into reality. But is it really accurate? There's no question that small companies are almost always driven, at least at the outset, by the passion of a single risk-taking individual. But the myth of the solo flier, however romantic, obscures something crucial: Business success depends on collaboration.
That's especially the case today. Business is more collaborative than ever. New developments in technology—file-sharing, social networking services, open-source development schemes, weblogs—are bringing a new collective spirit to the way almost all companies operate. So is the ability to outsource nearly any noncore function. Increasingly, a successful company is less a standalone entity than a seamless network of alliances and partnerships—with customers, vendors, even competitors.
This also applies to the purchasing of business services. Entrepreneurial companies are long on energy and ideas but are often short on infrastructure. They need contractors—for financial services, tech support, marketing expertise, real estate savvy, and the like—that can function as true partners.
Inc. recently interviewed dozens of entrepreneurs, seeking examples of vendors who had become partners by providing outstanding, grand-slam service. While some praise went to the big players of corporate America, the most enthusiastic anecdotes were about companies run by other entrepreneurs. It makes sense. After all, who is best positioned to serve the needs of business owners? Other business owners. They can be more flexible, dedicated, and creative. They understand what you're going through because they're going through it too. They're smaller, which makes it easier to form partnerships. And, best of all, they actually need your business.
The best service providers, we learned, pull it off by consistently having the correct answers to the questions that every business owner needs to ask before even thinking of signing a service contract. Those questions are below, along with the stories of five happy business owners who got terrific service—and built stronger companies—by putting their faith in companies that understand what it means to be entrepreneurial.
Can large companies pull off the same thing? Sure they can. But most big providers can learn from the service fanatics described below. Perhaps you can too.
1. How focused will your company be on my company?
Sepaton, a data protection company based in Marlborough, Mass., was about to take off, and COO and CFO Bob Iacono needed a new headquarters. The new space had to be about three times larger than his current one, furnished, and move-in ready, with all of the special electrical and air-conditioning facilities that high-tech firms require. And he wanted his rent to remain more or less the same. Who would help him find it?
He began meeting with brokers from some large corporate real estate firms. But in meeting after meeting, Iacono came away feeling as if they were reading from a script, one in which his role—the scrappy little fellow thrilled that the big-shot real estate execs could remember his name—had been plotted out ahead of time. Every office they showed him was wrong. "I was looking for 20,000 square feet, and they were used to renting in 100,000-square-foot increments,” Iacono says. After two months and eight brokers, Iacono began to wonder if he'd ever find what he was looking for.
Then, his banker and lawyer recommended he talk to an outfit called T3 Realty Advisors. Iacono had never heard of T3. But he liked what he saw. For one thing, T3 worked only as a buyer's broker—so it had no built-in incentives to fill its own buildings and no need to scratch the back of financing and construction partners. What's more, it sent at least two brokers to meetings, ensuring that more than one person was on the case.
Assigning multiple brokers to each client is part self-defense, says Roy Hirshland, T3's CEO and co-founder. "Early-stage clients tend to be very frenetic and require a ton of handholding,” he says. Having more than one person assigned to each account means more hands to do the holding. Entrepreneurs also need more support than larger companies
because they often have no one working on facilities management and may not even have an office manager.
In fact, Hirshland created T3 to function like a real estate department for technology start-ups. It handles interior and exterior architectural issues, finds and manages contractors, advises on lease negotiations, and even manages the leases for clients—it purchased a document-management system specifically for that purpose. "If we can't make the smallest three-person company happy about T3, we've failed,” Hirshland says. The logic, he adds, is simple: Successful small companies don't stay small for long.
In Sepaton's case, T3's brokers found six spaces that met Iacono's criteria. He picked the top two and told Hirshland to get a deal done. Days later, Sepaton signed a three-year lease on a new 21,000-square-foot home. Hirshland also managed to get some new office furniture thrown in free of charge. Following the frustration of dealing with the large corporate brokers, Iacono found the experience satisfying—as well as comfortably familiar. "It was the kind of service we hope we give our customers,” he says.
2. Who will be working for me?
Project managers with stricken looks aren't a happy sight, especially when they run your most important account. But when Scott Fischer found out why his project manager seemed so anxious one Thursday last March, he saw a huge opportunity to take his business to a new level.
Fischer is president of the Center for Systems Management, a Vienna, Va., company that offers consulting and training for government entities and corporations. One of its key clients is NASA, which had hired CSM to develop course work for the agency's newly created Independent Technical Authority, mandated by Congress in the wake of the Challenger shuttle disaster. NASA wanted CSM to create an internal marketing campaign, including a slick video. And that's what accounted for the project manager's anxiety. "It was well beyond what our marketing department could do,” Fischer says. If CSM botched the job, it would damage its relationship with NASA. But if CSM succeeded, the firm would prove itself capable of handling a whole new category of work.
