How to build a relationship with your tech vendor

You’ve worked out how best to upgrade your martech, you’ve gained buy-in and budget to purchase new platforms and you’re finally getting to grips with integration. Then your vendor goes cold. 

This frustrating journey is likely to sound familiar. A lack of vendor support was cited as one of the key challenges in our Martech Audit report this year.

While 56% of B2B marketers are satisfied with their tech, only 21% rate it above the level of ‘okay’. Most of those are hampered by a lack of support from their vendor on how to fully understand, deploy and integrate their tech, with many feeling that once they’ve signed the purchase order, the rest is left to them. 

You might believe it’s the vendor’s responsibility to support you as a client, and while that’s true, there’s plenty you can do to build a better support network from your suppliers’ side. 

How important are you to the vendor?

The more important a platform is to you, the more time you should invest in building a relationship with its supplier. 

“My starting point in a senior leadership position would be looking at the size, shape and structure of your team to determine how important external vendors are in executing your strategy,” recommends Andy Johnston, Stericycle’s marketing and PR director for the EMEAA.

For example, if you have a small team of generalists and rely heavily on outsourcing to specialised vendors, forming a strong relationship with them is likely to be more important than for a large company that is less dependent on outsourcing.

There will also be differences in which vendors you should prioritise, as Andy explains. “If you have multiple vendors it’s unlikely they’ll have equal importance. The most important ones are those that can have the biggest impact on strategy, implementation and growth.”

Becoming a vendor’s financial priority

Securing attention from your vendor means positioning yourself as its financial priority – although that doesn’t necessarily mean spending more money.

Stericycle became a financial priority by looking at the martech agencies it used and those that used martech on its behalf. It then swapped the multiple agencies and vendors it had been using for a few key players. Andy identified agencies where the amount he was willing to spend would make him a key source of that vendor’s revenue, meaning he had more sway with them. 

“I was able to match an agency of a certain size with our budget, which made me important to that vendor. That’s been a real benefit. They bend over backwards for you, they communicate with you, and give you everything you need but perhaps didn’t get before because you weren’t deemed a significant spender.”

Finding the right match needed detailed research. Andy hired an external consultant – investment that paid off when he gained closer collaboration with his vendors. “I hired an external adviser to assess the market for the right potential partners for us, and then manage the selection process.”

Following the change, Andy has been able to form relationships with more senior members of the agencies and vendors he uses. “We’ve gone for a smaller agency where we’re very important to them and all our dealings are with the managing partner.”

Create engrained collaboration

It takes time to develop strong relationships – a lot of time if, like most marketers, you deal with multiple vendors. This is especially difficult for smaller marketing teams juggling a plethora of priorities.

Brandon Stec, director of marketing at event fundraising platform GiveSmart (a subsidiary of Community Brands) tackled this challenge by encouraging his vendors to collaborate. His marketing team was rolling out a content project that required software creation, messaging and SEO, for which it used three separate vendors, whom Brandon decided would need to work together.

“We brought each group on to team calls to talk through the strategy and what we were trying to get out of it. We wanted to use all of their points of expertise,” explains Brandon.

The benefit was that Brandon could consolidate the time he would have spent working with each individual vendor. Those vendors were also able to keep each other on track and ensure they were all aligned to the company objectives. “It was beneficial because although they were working on different aspects of the project they were essentially heading toward the same goal,” he explains.

The collaboration between vendors worked so well that Brandon was able to rely on them to carry out aspects of the project with little involvement from him. “They were able to do their own email collaboration and follow up, then just loop me in on it,” he says.

If you want to replicate this approach within your own business, you need to ensure your vendors can work together. GiveSmart had prior experience of the vendor’s work as individual companies. They were also vetted to ensure they had the same values as the organisation and that the vendors were all on the same page when it came to the company’s objectives for the project. It was their similar viewpoints that united the vendors. “I’d prepped all the vendors on what we were trying to accomplish and really scoped out what they thought of our intentions and values,” says Brandon.

Focus on communication

A vendor can’t deliver your needs if you don’t tell them what they are. This seems obvious but some clients fall short in communicating beyond the initial briefing.

Jamie Clifton, co-founder and chief customer officer at marketing agency Bolt, says many companies’ communication with agencies and vendors tends to be the bare minimum.

“Communication only happens at key milestones because something bad or great has happened. Picking up the phone and sending emails regularly can add value to the relationship,” he says.

The value that Jamie refers to is clearer ongoing objectives and expectations (some organisations formalise this through a Service Level Agreement or Statement of Work). This means that you and your vendor are likely to achieve what you’d envisioned in a way that’s suitable for your company – and a lot quicker.

“You’ll get fewer questions from the vendor, you’ll see first drafts of projects and get much better results with less revisions because everything would have been covered in the first place,” explains Jamie.

Establishing a single point of contact with your vendor can strengthen the relationship, but that doesn’t mean excluding the rest of the team from contacting them. “As long as there’s one channel of communication, it’s still good to have the team involved,” Jamie adds.

Going beyond emails to face-to-face interaction is also imperative. Jamie suggests meeting your vendor in person, even if they’re oversees. “You’ve got to go and spend time with them”, he advises.

One of the team

Andy Johnston tries to treat outsourced partners as part of the internal team,  encouraging honesty and openness. “I tell our agency virtually everything my team knows – unless it’s extremely sensitive,” he says.

He also eradicates any uncertainty over sharing information by signing non-disclosure agreements, which he says doesn’t have to be lengthy. “It gives me legally binding client-side protection on our intellectual property, confidential information and data,” Andy explains.

In this open environment, challenges are more likely to been seen and tackled in a realistic way. “I’m no marriage counsellor but in any relationship it’s all about communication. The more you communicate openly the more chance of success that relationship has,” says Andy.

Brandon agrees about giving vendors access to the information they need on an ongoing basis. “You’re not advancing your relationship if vendors have to constantly ask questions because you’re not presenting them with the intel,” he says.

Brandon’s a big believer in weekly or bi-weekly meetings, which he says closes gap between the vendor selling you something, and that same vendor being a valuable partner. On the day of our interview, he was meeting one of his vendors in just this way. “We’re going to spend the morning together. We’re going to talk about the challenges on our end to see if there’s a solution. They’re an SEO consultant and they should know everything in our organic traffic activity.”