Vendor Olympics

The summer Olympics are just around the corner and I thought I would pay tribute to the 'Games' by sharing my perspectives on activities that involve technology vendors and buyers during the buying and selling process.  I do not believe that I invented the term 'Vendor Olympics' but I use that phrase often with both technology vendors and consumers.  'Vendor Olympics' involve the activities and obstacles that both of the parties go through to finalize an agreement to do business.  Here are some of the events that are part of the 'Vendor Olympics':

From buyer's standpoint:

• Meeting Marathon.  Managing time when your product vendor wants to do lunch, dinner, and spend hours on end 'educating' you on their ROI.  The toughest part is not gaining weight from the meals.
• Liar's poker.  Vendor salespeople tend to 'bend' the truth (I just experienced this with a customer I was advising) making it hard to distinguish what features are real and generally available versus which are promised.  This event is getting harder as vendors blur the lines between what products are shipping and what is limited availability.
• Decathlon dialing.  You are ready to make a purchase and you want to do your homework so you call a few other customers that are already using a similar product.  You really want to believe them, but no two IT shops are the same.  The thing that makes this event tough is there are no set rules on what to do if a reference says 'OK' things about a product (as opposed to raving about it).  And, would you really expect a reference to say bad things about a product that they recently bought and are using?
• Price ping pong.  Presuming you want to buy a product, you usually can negotiate and this can actually be fun.  I equate it to buying a new car when you are in the showroom and the salesperson keeps going back to the boss to get 'approval' for a discount or a better finance program.  I believe you actually wear down the salesperson with all that walking back and forth, and vendors tend to follow a similar pattern.  You just need to have more stamina.

From the vendor's standpoint:

• Budget gymnastics.  Customers set aside money for a project but there are delays, reductions, and shifts that make allocating resources a nightmare. 
• Testing cycles.  This is the waiting game that no one likes, but customers have to / should do 'proof of concept' testing.  This is when you hope the engineers have done their job and the product actually does what everyone has been promising.  If it doesn't, you don't have to worry about playing the next event.
• Finance hurdles.  Your product is selected and the budget is solid.  Now, you get the paperwork, but you have to go through the customer's purchasing department which is paid to hate vendors.  Sometimes this event is much worse than the two before it, but then again, it is the last one and carries the best reward.

Keep in mind that the 'Vendor Olympics' are just the like the real Olympics, any good athlete (vendor or customer) wants to sucessfully participate in as many events as possible.