POLL What causes more frustration in vendor relationships?

[Alex Snyder]

From the ones you work with to the ones who want to sell you something, what are your highest frustion points?

 

[craigh]

Having just done a roadtrip across Canada with an OEM partner to showcase our product, I got to have roundtable discussions with around 400 dealership representatives across 3 weeks of travel. As far as this question goes (at least here in Canada), the resounding questions we got were:

1. Bad Reporting - many dealers just expect that reports provided by the same vendor providing the product or service are tainted, especially if they have to be "prepared" and aren't available immediately

2. Poor integrations - many vendors say "yes" to every integration question and only after signing the contract do you realize that their idea of an integration is that you manually export the data and send it to them or you call the vendor yourself and tell them to make the integration work. Dealers want a much cleaner idea of what is and is not actually integrated.

Bad support also came up alot, but typically in the context of a few key vendors who have been acquired and downsized their support teams to the point where you can't get any support at all.

 

[Rob]

I will quietly put up with all sorts of BS if the results are strong.

Nothing else matters if the results are bad. I don’t care how nice my rep is.

 

[Tallcool1]

Having just done a roadtrip across Canada with an OEM partner to showcase our product, I got to have roundtable discussions with around 400 dealership representatives across 3 weeks of travel. As far as this question goes (at least here in Canada), the resounding questions we got were:

1. Bad Reporting - many dealers just expect that reports provided by the same vendor providing the product or service are tainted, especially if they have to be "prepared" and aren't available immediately

2. Poor integrations - many vendors say "yes" to every integration question and only after signing the contract do you realize that their idea of an integration is that you manually export the data and send it to them or you call the vendor yourself and tell them to make the integration work. Dealers want a much cleaner idea of what is and is not actually integrated.

Bad support also came up alot, but typically in the context of a few key vendors who have been acquired and downsized their support teams to the point where you can't get any support at all.

Wow you got a fantastic opportunity to sit with that many dealership employees over a short period of time. You of course earned that. You had to be ready to be home when that 3 weeks was over.

I admire that level of commitment Craig. Great job.

 

[Tallcool1]

I voted for Overpromising because it was the closest fit.

I don't like being pitched all of the features only to find out that the Subscription Level I am signing up for doesn't include the features that I was really wanting.

I called that overpromising which if believe fits pretty well.

 

[Chris Apostalides]

Too many people overpromise and underdeliver. As a vendor, it makes me nauseous. I have always been of the mindset that you must manage expectations and underpromise and do your best to overdeliver.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

IMO - Overall support has gone down the drain since 2000 - COVID. Several larger vendors that our dealer has been with for YEARS has seriously gotten so freaking bad I want to pull my hair out some days. These are vendors that at one point had solid support but ALSO most of these vendors have also been recently (over the last few years) acquired by larger companies.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Bad support also came up alot, but typically in the context of a few key vendors who have been acquired and downsized their support teams to the point where you can't get any support at all.

IMO - Overall support has gone down the drain since 2000 - COVID. Several larger vendors that our dealer has been with for YEARS has seriously gotten so freaking bad I want to pull my hair out some days. These are vendors that at one point had solid support but ALSO most of these vendors have also been recently (over the last few years) acquired by larger companies.

 

[EDventure Outdoors]

IMO - Overall support has gone down the drain since 2000 - COVID. Several larger vendors that our dealer has been with for YEARS has seriously gotten so freaking bad I want to pull my hair out some days. These are vendors that at one point had solid support but ALSO most of these vendors have also been recently (over the last few years) acquired by larger companies.

I wonder if it's because everyone went remote and vendors didn't have proper accountability measurements. The old "walkaround" management style didn't necessarily work but it really fell apart when employees were sitting at home.

Plus, companies are asking their client success teams to onboard, support, upsell, collect and retain 100+ dealerships. It really has become the dumping ground for companies without clear role definitions.