The Tale of Blind Vendor Allegiance
A number of years ago when I was a young sales rep fresh in the world of telecom, I was determined to get into “that” account. You know, the prize account all sales reps dream of landing. The company that has the name on the outside of the building, the one that is in the local Business Journal each week and executives quoted in nationally published business magazines. If you’re in sales, you know what I’m talking about, and if you work at one of those companies you probably have a great deal of pride working for your company.
This particular company that I was hoping to make my way in was also known as not being very “vendor friendly”. They were a great account if you managed to get, but that was the entire battle – just getting in. For about a year and half I managed to pester a particular individual about getting in until one day, the contact I had was GONE! No longer employed at the company. Scrambling, I somehow managed to find the name of his replacement and after some persistence, I finally managed to secure a meeting with the new manager in charge of telecommunications for the firm.
I was excited the day I met with him. He was a very cordial and pleasant person, I learned that he had just moved from the West coast and it turned out we has some similar interests. After some time discussing what we might be able to do for them, he decided it might be a good idea to see what we might be able to come up with as far as providing them some new services and perhaps even reducing costs.
We were given the opportunity to work on a portion of their existing telecom business and if our solution had merit, we would be able to implement it. I was elated.
When it came time to review their existing services, what I managed to see absolutely left me speechless. What our team discovered was a mishmash of convoluted and redundant services that was scattered with non-functioning services that, from a cursory view may have made sense but as we started peeling back layers of the “onion” we discovered what was pretty obvious to us was a sales rep who was looking to pad his own wallet.
I kept hearing conversations I had with the previous manager telling me how his sales team at the telecommunications company was “taking care of them”, in reality it was a mess. In the end, we provided a proposal that lopped nearly 70% from the monthly costs of their prior account and reduced the number of bills significantly. The lesson here is to make sure you’re aware of what you’re getting is what you need or at a competitive rate. You have to stay diligent and on top of your vendor, while it doesn’t happen frequently your sales team may not be looking out for your best interests.
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Benny Carreon is the President and CEO of GrayBear Resources Group. GBR is a next-generation telecommunications consulting firm. We aren't a telephone company's vendor disguising itself as a consultant. We don't sell carrier products that would conflict with out mission - our goal is to work for our clients by reducing costs, streamlining services, eliminating waste and fraud while providing the least disruption to your business.
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