
Ask HN: How Do You Deal With/Manage Vendors Politely? - grepthisab
I go to&#x2F;speak at a lot of conferences and constantly get vendors aggressively pursuing me immediately after I step off stage, like a line of them, trying to sell me their xyz security&#x2F;endpoint&#x2F;infrastructure&#x2F;devops&#x2F;AI&#x2F;blockchain product. It&#x27;s really a time suck. And that&#x27;s before the emails and calls start coming with vendors continuing to pitch their product and trying to set up meetings with me. Some of them get really sneaky and passive aggressive when I don&#x27;t respond, like &quot;Well you haven&#x27;t answered any of my emails so I guess you <i>DON&#x27;T</i> care about the security of your product&quot;, or &quot;Your boss XYZ recommended we connect&quot;, and when I talk to my boss, they have no idea who the vendor is.<p>I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;ve ever bought a product from a vendor as a result of interactions like this, like perhaps many of you. If I hear about something that solves a problem I have and I would rather use a managed service than roll my own solution, I will engage a managed service to do that, but never as a result of pushy vendors. So maybe I need a CI&#x2F;CD managed service, so I take the ones I know, and search for others that may be new, find one that fits my needs, and start using&#x2F;paying for their service.<p>So the question is: How do you deal with pushy vendors, or vendors in general? In my position&#x2F;business I can&#x27;t be a straight up jerk to them (and also that&#x27;s not my personality), but also don&#x27;t want the time suck. Advice? Anecdotes?
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startupdiscuss
I generally give contact info and ask them to get in touch. Then I browse
their product and say we're not looking for that product at the moment if we
are not. If we are looking, I put them in touch with someone.

However, I do think the most annoying thing people do is to ask for a call or
meeting without a clear idea of what it is about. In that case, I just point
blank ask them what it is about. "We could certainly schedule something next
week, but could you tell me a little more about what you had in mind?"

And then if it doesn't look like a good fit, I just say its not what we are
looking for.

The passive aggressive stuff doesn't bother me. On the contrary, it makes me
feel like I didn't miss anything.

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sharemywin
At one point, I totally wanted to create a viral product around it.

Post4bid.com

you create an account, which is a glorified spam folder(with sub-folders). you
create a post 4 bid id/name and when people come at you (or call or email)
etc. refer them to your free post4bid account name. and say we use post4bid to
manage our vendor relationships.

And when you are ready it's all organized.

