Even though they don’t always do so with their slimy sales and misleading marketing practices, be sure to keep it above the waist as you repeatedly hit them as hard and fast as you can. (You don’t want to dance around with a vendor unless you know they can take a few hits and are in it to win it, because once you start to dance they’ll duck and dodge until the end of time).

This post was inspired by THE REVELATOR who asked us What are the most important questions to ask a potential solution provider partner?

1) Can, and will, you show me (not tell me) live … preferably on use cases or data I give you on the spot?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Dear Procurement Practitioner, when it comes to solution selection from today’s vendor, your mantra is Show Me, Don’t Tell Me! There’s too much hogwash out there today, buzzwords don’t solve problems, and when you dive into the marketing madness, you see there’s absolutely no value, or even core capability, in what’s being sold by many vendors.

You need solid solutions with substance, not glitzy fake-take UX, broken Gen-AI, or slack-like conversations that don’t do anything. You also need solutions that digitize and automate the 80% of Procurement / Sourcing / Supplier (Data) Management / etc. that you do day-in and day-out, week-in and week-out, month-in and month-out, and year-in and year-out and not the odd special case that comes up once a week, month, or year. And you definitely don’t need solutions that don’t fit your domain.

Moreover, you want relevant demos. If you’re buying janitorial and building maintenance supplies, you don’t want a demo on how the catalog makes it easy to buy sneakers and shoes. (FYI: I’m not being unnecessarily ridiculous here. I have been in demos where a primarily MRO buyer was demoing the top three platforms, and one showed them how to buy sneakers and shoes!) If you get such a ridiculous demo, you want to show that vendor the door as fast as possible because you have one of two situations: they didn’t do their homework on you (and don’t have a clue if their solution is appropriate), or their solution was built, and over customized, for one niche industry and will not easily support yours.

2) Once you show me the core use cases, can, and will, you explain the breadth of use cases you developed your solution for and how they are specific to my business?

You want someone who both understands what they are selling and how it might help your business. Any less and you might as well just roll the bones to select your solution provider. At the end of the day you need to understand the following:

• there may be 666 logos on the mega map but there is no perfect solution; and nothing that will meet all of the requirements in your RFP
• the best solution will meet the majority, and, more specifically, the requirements related to the tasks you do all the time, not the ones that you do once a quarter or once a year
• the best solution for you will be one that comes close and comes from a vendor who both understands this and makes an effort to customize their solution for you in a manner that will achieve maximum results … from the first demo
• the best solution provider will take the time to explain that which they don’t have time to demo, or can’t demo without your data; even the sales person will attempt it at a high level, and then bring in a product specialist for where more depth is needed

3) Once we tell you the extent of your solution we feel is appropriate, can you talk us through what the implementation and integration to our environment would require without bringing in a paid third party “expert” consultant? And how long will that take?

A great solution provider for you will be one that understands your needs, their platform, and what will need to be done in order to implement it for you, integrate it into your stack, and prepare it for you to extract the value they promise. They won’t need third party help to figure all this out and walk you through it. If a lot of integrations or data migrations are required, they, or you, may need to partner to get it done, but they should still know what’s required.

And, as we said in the introduction, while you should keep your rapid, one-two-three punch, above the belt until the vendor sales rep goes below in their tactics, you should also endeavour to hit ’em as hard as you can with that 1-2-3 combo. If they can’t take it, you want them knocked out before you waste any time on them, because any good vendor will be able to take them and come back with the best damn demo, details, and arguments as to why they are sure their solution will work for your problems, with concrete examples, in a very short timeframe. (And yes, odds are you could be unlucky and have to knock out the first 6 before you find that first 1/7 that is still there so solve problems. But the wait will be worth it.)