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Change Partners and Dance: Getting Customers to Reconsider Existing Vendor Relationships

Written by: Paul Cherry

Article Overview: Winning over a prospective customer is a lot like wooing a potential sweetheart away from a mediocre relationship. Why does she stick with that guy when you could treat her so much better? To make your customer reconsider her existing vendor relationships, you need to understand her true needs and desires in order to position yourself and your product as better solutions to her business problems.

Change Partners and Dance: Getting Customers to Reconsider Existing Vendor Relationships

Winning over a prospective customer is a lot like wooing a potential sweetheart away from a mediocre relationship. Why does she stick with that guy when you could treat her so much better? You need to know what your prospect likes about her current supplier, but without making her decide she’s already so happy with the current vendor (assuming she is) that she won’t give you a chance.

Even if your prospect has had second thoughts about her current choice over time, she may not consider that vague sense of dissatisfaction to be sufficient motivation to leave her comfort zone and try someone new. She may be one of those people for whom the devil she knows is preferable to taking a chance with the devil she doesn’t know. But you know her vendor really isn’t so hot, so how do you get the info you need to uncover the weaknesses in their customer/vendor relationship without coming across as either pushy or condescending?

Phrase your questions in ways that won’t end up undermining your efforts to win her business. For example, don’t just ask your customer, “What do you like about your current supplier?” If she’s fairly content with the status quo, she just might start talking about all the positive qualities of that relationship…and if things are going just dandy between them, what does she need you for?

Instead, focus your questions on the criteria your prospect uses when she chooses a vendor. What’s important to her: service, delivery, quality, turnaround, pricing, a nice personality? Seriously, once you uncover what qualities your prospect is looking for in a supplier, you can explore how well he’s meeting her expectations, based on those criteria. Don’t specifically point out her current vendor’s shortcomings, but rather, ask your questions in a way that will open her mind and let her discover the problem herself.

QUESTIONS TO DISRUPT EXISTING VENDOR RELATIONSHIPS

• “Would you share with me the ideal qualities you look for in a vendor?”
• “When you originally chose your current vendor, what were your selection criteria? In what ways have your criteria changed as you evaluate your needs today? How will your criteria change a year from now?”
• “How would you rate your current vendor relationship, on a scale from 1 to 10? (Then, based on the response, ask, “What would have to happen for it to move from a ____ to a 10?”)
• “If your vendor could improve in one area, what would that be?”
• “In what ways can your vendor better align itself with your goals?”

In business as in courtship, focusing on the other person is crucial. You can only position yourself and your product as better solutions to your customer’s problems when you understand your customer’s true needs and desires. Once you know that, you will be able to help her achieve them better than her current supplier. If you can do this, it will be the beginning of a beautiful business relationship.


Excerpted from QUESTIONS THAT SELL by Paul Cherry, published by AMACOM Books. Paul is President of Performance Based Results, an international sales and leadership training organization serving 1,200 organizations to date. For more information, contact Paul at 302-478-4443 or e-mail him at cherry@pbresults.com. Get 5 free e-booklets (a $40 value!) on how to close more sales when you subscribe to our quarterly newsletter at www.pbresults.com.

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