Like most law librarians and KM’s, law librarian Elaine Billingslea Dockens a veteran of several decades of vendor negotiations for law firm online and print contracts has noticed that the quality of salesmanship and negotiating skills have decreased over the years and ..
She’s written an article about the issue and given some pointers as well…hopefully she’ll get a consulting gig to reward her for this great article.
Here’s the introduction .. read the full piece at the link below…
Vendor Pitfalls in Negotiating Large Multi-Year Contracts – or How to Lose a Million Dollar Contract
By Elaine Billingslea Dockens, Published on June 21, 2009
This article is dedicated to the many professional vendor representatives (VRs) that I’ve worked with over the years. These are the reps who showed up prepared to do business each time they visited. During contract negotiations they honored themselves, the companies they represented and me by "bringing their A game" and being totally prepared to fully negotiate.
Many of the products they represent are sold by multi-year contracts and are negotiated at annual intervals. During negotiations my goal is to control expenses and look for discounts (and still keep a quality product). The goal of the VRs include obtaining or retaining our business and making a reasonable profit. When we both – firm and vendor – come to the table prepared to get the very best deal for our side, then everybody wins. However, if one of the parties arrives at the table ill prepared – we both lose. The vendor will probably lose the business they could have obtained or retained and the firm loses the chance to seriously consider the vendor in comparison to other vendors.
Below are comments on selected VR behaviors that I’ve witnessed over the years that substantially decreased the success of the VRs to obtain or retain our business. Hopefully these comments will serve as a guide to reaching a satisfactory conclusion to multi-year contract negotiations.
http://www.llrx.com/features/vendornegotiating.htm
The following runs particularly true
One of the things that surprises me most is when a vendor loses the contract, there is little or no follow up from that company to find out why they lost. Frederick F. Reichheld, accurately describes the situation
"… most …(CEO’s) have little insight into the causes of the customer exodus, let alone the cures, because they do not measure customer defections, make little effort to prevent them , and fail to use defections as a guide to improvements. Yet customer defection is one of the most illuminating measures in business." 5
