Using an Introducer to get a First Meeting

The following is another excerpt from my work on how the vendor relationship looks from the buy-side.

Because direct approaches often fail to get a first meeting, some enterprising firms have spotted an opportunity. They establish themselves as “horizon scanners” or “futurists” and offer to give you free advice about the shape of the things to come. Their value proposition, they say, is to bring the latest and greatest organisations in front of you, providing a curation service that means you don’t have to invest much time in such things yourself. This is inherently attractive, of course, because on the buy side you are always wondering whether there is a a killer tool or service available that competitors have that you don’t.

The problem is that such firms are really fronts for getting the first meeting. Their business model is not to horizon scan for the buy-side, but to sell access to the first meeting to the sell-side.

Now, customers aren’t dumb. After the first session or two, they recognise what they’re getting is a set of meetings with vendors who have paid for the introductions. It is incredibly false, and incredibly time wasting. Almost immediately, the introducer firms get blacklisted.

But here’s the problem with such firms. The product they sell is first meetings, and their currency in any buy-side situation is incredibly tenuous, because customers always see through them very quickly.

Their response is they network throughout an organisation, usually getting a single meeting, but very few more. You often hear people complaining in serial fashion about how much time they waste, and how they are never left alone after agreeing to that first, deadly meetup.

When you sell meetings for a living, of course, you are highly motivated to get as many as possible to sell. Consequently, they take being a serial pest to a whole new level.

Advice to vendors trying to get in the door via an introducer: we will likely be so annoyed by the introducer and their octopus-like procession around our organisations that anything you have will seem insignificant by comparison. Undoing the damage they cause (and which you are associated with) will take ages, and likely render a major sale impossible in whatever timeframe you have available before you get fired.

Comments

[Stephen]

For those persistent sellers who won’t take no for an answer, even though you have fully explained why you or the organisation are not interested in the opportunity, perhaps find a way to rapidly burn their cost of sales budget, and then repeat again what you told them the first time.

[Neil Robinson]

Could this be a little too much of a generalisation, James?

Certainly, the global consultancies will doubtless pursue any avenue to get you to spend money, but true independent strategy consultancies - futurists if you prefer - are just there to do what we say on the tin.

I've done this for the last 10 years and pride myself on the value I've brought to my clients. Mine is a time sell.

I spend hours of my day reading endless product releases, scanning trends, reviewing technical news feeds and talking to suppliers. No employed techie could possibly devote the same degree of time to that. If he did, he'd never get the job done he was paid for.

Unlike your service partners, I'm not required to toe the party line to up-sell in-house offerings. To me, the shock of the new is business of usual.

Surely any manager with purchasing responsibility must accept that not every meeting they agree to will necessarily lead to Nirvana and that a flush-the-baby-with-the-bath-water approach is elitist and ultimately self defeating?

[James Gardner]

Well I completely agree with this point.

But an introducer firm is not the same as a futurist or anyone with a specific mission to help solve business problems or not. 

Their business model is selling meetings. 

They sell their access to people for money to vendors. 

That's the model that I rail against.

[Neil Robinson]

Thanks, James.

If you're talking about people who's existence is to sell meetings, I'm with you all the way. Trading on hard-won trust is a pretty loathsome vocation.

Forget pulling the plug with them still in the bath - flush the toilet on them!

But give it a new name. Sales pimping... that takes away any semblance of credibility they may be hiding behind...

[Ryan]

I have to agree with this blogger about the risks associated with getting too chummy with your vendors. They can keep your organization pinned into running your business in such a way that you are not able to be as competitive as you need to be.

http://bit.ly/b8Krzc