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Tips for Property Managers to Find Great Vendors

November 11th, 2011 No comments

For many years ahead of launching TheBiddingSpace.com, we\’d listened to concerns from property and facility managers around the inability to come across good vendors, or perhaps not having the ability to locate unbiased reviews about the vendors they had selected. Because of all the different challenges that property managers are required to face daily, including conducting inspections, submitting agreements, and taking on tenant related issues, locating a good vendor really should not be among them.

Once we started speaking to property managers about the procedure for identifying and using the services of vendors like security guard, landscaping, or trash collection vendors, we noticed a number of things. One of these was that although a lot of property managers felt that identifying good vendors was important, many property managers actually believed that one vendor was the same as the next. On the other hand when talking to property managers which had come across vendors giving them GREAT service, they thought completely the contrary. The fact is, although vendors in almost any particular field might possibly deliver matching solutions, the manner in which they set about executing against those services is the place where the distinctions lie.

In case you are focused on identifying GREAT vendors to provide service at your facility, there are 2 actions that will usually help in your buying process. The first is finding verifiable and unbiased reviews from previous customers for vendors that are seeking to provide service at your property or facility. second is creating a quick and cost-effective approach to make an apples to apples assessment of vendor proposals.

Typically, the most common method of getting reviews from any vendor\’s most recent clientele is requesting business references. When requesting business references, we advise you explicitly ask for business references for businesses which may have properties or facilities much like yours as far as industry and general size. So, as a gm of a Fifty room hotel in need of security guards, then your security guard vendor must be able to supply references from clients which are similar to yours. What our company has noticed is that often vendors who usually are experts in serving big organizations might not often be ready to supply you with the expected quality or quantity of client care for smaller sized accountsand viceversa.

Additionally, we typically advise that you get information on a contract or client in which the vendor had fairly recently lost for an issue aside from price and precisely what the vendor has done to make sure that that instance does not happen again. We make this suggestion for two main reasons. The first is to try to judge the integrity of the vendor. Is that company willing to inform you of an occasion that they were unable to deliver on their service; and second is generally to find out how they deal with customer discontent. If their were deficits in their service did they work to rectify them with the buyer and in what ways are they guaranteeing it won\’t happen again?

Lastly, as a potential buyer you should attempt to make certain each supplier is replying to your RFP in a manner that enables you to allow an apples-to-apples comparison. Develop a list of detailed questions that every vendor should provide answers to. For instance: Years in operation, Annual Revenue, Cost/square foot, Hourly rate, Coverage liability, etc. If time allows, we might even advise you create a spreadsheet for every and every vendor to fill out that will make the side-by-side review easier.

It is obligatory of you to get the most that you can working with, a generally stretched, spending plan. So when you are seeking a brand new vendor to provide solutions at your property or facility, ensure that you get the best possible service possible for one\’s dollar. Obtain references from established clients and prior buyers which might be like you and make apples to apples comparisons amongst your vendors. If you follow these tips you will find yourself much closer to getting the service you should have.

If you are a property manager looking for a vendor to provide service at your property or have a GREAT vendor that you\’d tell other property managers to use visit TheBiddingSpace.com. This article, Tips for Property Managers to Find Great Vendors has free reprint rights.