Anna Shipman : JFDI

How to make the most out of meetings with vendors

22 March 2019 / Leadership / Technology

Building relationships with vendors is an important part of my role as Tech Director and when I joined the Financial Times, the excellent Rob Shilston gave me his five top top tips on how to make the most of those meetings. He has kindly agreed to share them here.

1. Use it as an opportunity to learn about how others are doing things

2. Reiterate that we aren’t special

3. Do push for industry wide solutions and collaboration

4. Avoid talking absolute price, but instead try pursuing the pricing model itself. Is it a fair model?

5. Talk about table stakes. The absolute basics that they should be achieving without charging extra.

He also had some other tips

These were Rob’s five top tips, but he did have some suggestions for other things the meetings could be useful for:

And one to avoid:

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