Desperate to find a new vendor for a critical business process, a not-for-profit client and I shopped the market. Our selection had one problem…its pricing was almost double what we had been paying, so the client asked that they “sharpen their pencil.” They offered a reduction – but that still added over $35,000 to our costs. The CEO and President were ready to bite that huge bullet, but first asked my opinion.
I was clear…the vendor wanted us as much as we wanted them, and they had room to move. We should ask them to drop their price by 50%!
My client thought I was out of my mind, but I convinced them that the vendor would do one of three things: (1) Refuse to move from their offer; (2) Meet our request, or, and by far the most likely; (3) Offer a compromise.
The one thing I was confident they would NOT do was refuse to do business with us, simply because we asked.
So, we asked.
The result? The vendor offered to move more than half the way to our request.
Bottom line? The client’s cost will be LOWERED by about $5,000 rather than increased by $35,000 for the coming year.
Lesson to be learned? Unless the product or service is in much lower supply than the marketplace is demanding, it is never a bad idea to ask. Just be careful that you DON’T convince your supplier to agree to a deal that they will regret…You do not want them to regret that they are doing business with you!
