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Vendor Management icon

Evaluate Your Vendor Account Team to Optimize Vendor Relations

Understand the value of knowing your account team’s influence in their organization, and yours, to drive results.

  • Understand how important your account is to the vendor and how it is classified.
  • Understand how informed the account team is about your company and your industry.
  • Understand how long the team has been with the vendor. Have they been around long enough to have developed a “brand” or trust within their organization?
  • Understand and manage the relationships and influence the account team has within your organization to maintain control of the relationship.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Conducting the appropriate due diligence on your vendor’s account team is as important as the due diligence you put into the vendor. Ongoing management of the account team should follow the lifecycle of the vendor relationship.

Impact and Result

Understanding your vendor team’s background, experience, and strategic approach to your account is key to the management of the relationship, the success of the vendor agreement, and, depending on the vendor, the success of your business.


Evaluate Your Vendor Account Team to Optimize Vendor Relations Research & Tools

1. Evaluate Your Vendor Account Team to Optimize Vendor Relations Deck – Understand the value of knowing your account team’s influence in their organization, and yours, to drive results.

Learn how to best qualify that you have the right team for your business needs, using the accompanying tools to measure and monitor success throughout the relationship.

2. Vendor Rules of Engagement Template – Use this template to create a vendor rules of engagement document for inclusion in your company website, RFPs, and contracts.

The Vendor Rules of Engagement template will help you develop your written expectations for the vendor for how they will interact with your business and stakeholders.

3. Evalu-Rate Your Account Team – Use this tool to develop criteria to evaluate your account team and gain feedback from your stakeholders.

Evaluate your vendor account teams using this template to gather stakeholder feedback on vendor performance.


Evaluate Your Vendor Account Team to Optimize Vendor Relations

Understand the value of knowing your account team’s influence in their organization, and yours, to drive results.

Analyst Perspective

Having the wrong account team has consequences for your business.

IT professionals interact with vendor account teams on a regular basis. You may not give it much thought, but do you have a good understanding of your rep’s ability to support/service your account, in the manner you expect, for the best possible outcome? The consequences to your business of an inappropriately assigned and poorly trained account team can have a disastrous impact on your relationship with the vendor, your business, and your budget. Doing the appropriate due diligence with your account team is as important as the due diligence you should put into the vendor. And, of course, ongoing management of the account team relationship is vital. Here we will share how best to qualify that you have the right team for your business needs as well as how to measure and monitor success throughout the relationship.

Photo of Donna Glidden, Research Director, Vendor Management, Info-Tech Research Group.

Donna Glidden
Research Director, Vendor Management
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge
  • Understand how important your account is to the vendor and how it is classified.
  • Understand how informed the account team is about your company and your industry.
  • Understand how long the team has been with the vendor. Have they been around long enough to have developed a “brand” or trust within their organization?
  • Understand and manage the relationships and influence the account team has within your organization to maintain control of the relationship.
Common Obstacles
  • The vendor account team “came with the deal.”
  • The vendor account team has limited training and experience.
  • The vendor account team has close relationships within your organization outside of Procurement.
  • Managing your organization’s vendors is ad hoc and there is no formalized process for vendors to follow.
  • Your market position with the vendor is not optimal.
Info-Tech’s Approach
  • Establish a repeatable, consistent vendor management process that focuses on the account team to maintain control of the relationship and drive the results you need.
  • Create a questionnaire for gaining stakeholder feedback to evaluate the account team on a regular basis.
  • Consider adding a vendor rules of engagement exhibit to your contracts and RFXs.

Info-Tech Insight

Understanding your vendor team’s background, their experience, and their strategic approach to your account is key to the management of the relationship, the success of the vendor agreement, and, depending on the vendor, the success of your business.

Blueprint benefits

IT Benefits

  • Clear lines of communication
  • Correct focus on the specific needs of IT
  • More accurate project scoping
  • Less time wasted

Mutual IT and
Business Benefits

  • Reduced time to implement
  • Improved alignment between IT & business
  • Improved vendor performance
  • Improved vendor relations

Business Benefits

  • Clear relationship guidelines based on mutual understanding
  • Improved communications between the parties
  • Mutual understanding of roles/goals
  • Measurable relationship criteria

Insight Summary

Overarching insight

Conducting the appropriate due diligence on your vendor’s account team is as important as the due diligence you put into the vendor. Ongoing management of the account team should follow the lifecycle of the vendor relationship.

Introductory/RFP phase
  • Track vendor contacts with your organization.
  • Qualify the account team as you would the vendor:
    • Background
    • Client experience
  • Consider including vendor rules of engagement as part of your RFP process.
  • How does the vendor team classify your potential account?
Contract phase
  • Set expectations with the account team for the ongoing relationship.
  • Include a vendor rules of engagement exhibit in the contract.
  • Depending on your classification of the vendor, establish appropriate account team deliverables, meetings, etc.
Vendor management phase
  • “Evalu-rate” your account team by using a stakeholder questionnaire to gain measurable feedback.
  • Identify the desired improvements in communications and service delivery.
  • Use positive reinforcements that result in positive behavior.
Tactical insight

Don’t forget to look at your organization’s role in how well the account team is able to perform to your expectations.

Tactical insight

Measure to manage – what are the predetermined criteria that you will measure the account team’s success against?

Lack of adequate sales training and experience can have a negative impact on the reps’ ability to support your needs adequately

  • According to Forbes (2012), 55% of salespeople lack basic sales skills.
  • 58% of buyers report that sales reps are unable to answer their questions effectively.
  • According to a recent survey, 84% of all sales training is lost after 90 days. This is due to the lack of information retention among sales personnel.
  • 82% of B2B decision-makers think sales reps are unprepared.
  • At least 50% of prospects are not a good fit for the product or service that vendors are selling (Sales Insights Lab).
  • It takes ten months or more for a new sales rep to be fully productive.

(Source: Spotio)

Info-Tech Insight

Remember to examine the inadequacies of vendor training as part of the root cause of why the account team may lack substance.

Why it matters

1.8 years

is the average tenure for top ten tech companies

2.6 years is the average experience required to hire.

2.4 years is the average account executive tenure.

44% of reps plan to leave their job within two years.

The higher the average contract value, the longer the tenure.

More-experienced account reps tend to stay longer.

(Source: Xactly, 2021)
Image of two lightbulbs labeled 'skill training' with multiple other buzzwords on the glass.

Info-Tech Insight

You are always going to be engaged in training your rep, so be prepared.

Evaluate Your Vendor Account Team to Optimize Vendor Relations preview picture

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

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A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

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Authors

Donna Glidden

Steve Jeffery

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