Ep. 89: Identifying Servant vs. Serpent Vendors

Episode Description

In this episode of Veteran Led, John S. Berry shares insights on distinguishing between “servant” and “serpent” vendors in business. John discusses how to identify vendors who genuinely contribute to your company’s growth versus those who may hinder progress.​

​Learn about the characteristics of servant vendors who go above and beyond, and the red flags to watch for with serpent vendors. He also delves into strategies for maintaining accountability, handling vendor relationships, and the importance of taking the high road in business interactions.​

​Whether you’re a veteran in business, an aspiring entrepreneur, or a professional looking to improve vendor relationships, this episode offers lessons in leadership and business management.

Episode Transcript

Welcome fellow veterans. From the tip of the spear to in the rear with the gear, I went from active-duty Infantry to reserve-component logistician. I’m your host, CEO, entrepreneur, trial lawyer, and Lieutenant Colonel Retired, John Berry. The military lessons that I learned helped me grow an eight-figure business that has maintained consistent annual double-digit growth, landing on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in America every year for the past seven years and has allowed me to continue to serve America’s heroes.

Are your vendors servants or servants? Some of the best growth happens from the mentorship of experts in your industry, and some of those experts are your vendors. However, some of your biggest problems will come from vendors. So how do you know if your vendors are servants or serpents?

One of the first servants I had is a vendor that just went above and beyond for us was a guy named Leif. Now, Leif not only told me I needed to know my data and he told me why, but he also told me which conferences to attend, and he would provide weekly suggestions. This vendor wasn’t just someone who was trying to get a check every month. This is someone who actually cared about the growth of our organization. And he knew that the more we grew, the more we could pay him. He understood the correlation and he really wanted us to be successful.

The second was a man named Harlan. Now, Harlan was well-respected in the industry, and when we had problems, he would jump into them even if they weren’t problems for him to solve. He just wanted to help us be successful. And he was wise in the area, he had more experience, and he was willing to share, and he always stepped in. He was kind of like a parent stepping in and saying, “John, are you sure you want to do that? Or John, let me help you here.” But it was one of those vendors where you develop a really strong relationship because you can tell that they want you to be successful because they believe in our mission. Now, that being said, Harlan was also a veteran, and that probably played a big role in why he cared so much about our success.

Another great servant was Mike. He introduced me to leaders in other industries. He got me into leadership programs. And even though he was building his own leadership program, he wanted us to succeed and so he made sure that he showed me what he knew. He was very open and honest with all of the information he was receiving, and he wanted to make sure that he passed it on so that we would have the same opportunity for success.

Now, let’s talk about the serpents. We’ve all had this salesperson who over promises, and we’ve learned that as we build our organizations, the way to defeat that is to start building a lot of those capabilities internally. And we’ve seen this happen so many times. We get the vendor on board and that vendor is on fire for 90 days. They’re doing absolutely everything. We have their A-Team. And then once the project is off the ground, they just kind of coast. And I don’t know whether we now have the C-Team or the A-Team is focused somewhere else, but it’s after those first 90 days where we get all pumped up and we get some results, but then the results start falling off and we try to hold them accountable and it doesn’t happen.

Another serpent I ran into had the best of intentions. This was during COVID, and this team had a great strategy. Their problem is they couldn’t really execute. The vendor brought me this amazing proposal, and probably because they were bleeding cash at the time. But the strategy was great, and their sales pitch made sense. Now, this was a newer company and the lack of maturity in the leadership resulted in some of the team members panicking because of COVID and the company fell apart and failed to deliver. Now the strategy was there, but the execution was flawed. And sometimes when these serpents bite you, it’s not intentional. It’s just the nature of the business that they are in. It was simply a leadership failure. And as leaders, we all fail from time to time, but the difference was when this team failed, they blamed us for pushing too hard.

So how do you know if you’re dealing with a serpent? It’s when they resist accountability. If you are a vendor and you have standards and they’re not meeting the standards, you need to have that heart to heart conversation that they won’t have that and won’t really talk about why they’re not getting results or trying to give you solutions, but instead act offended, that’s a problem. And I can remember I had one of my team members ask them, is that the best you can do? And the vendor was offended by that question. And the vendor where on to explain, “well, culture is really important to us. And I thought, but if winning isn’t important, then you have a culture of losers, right?”

If winning and accountability is important, then you will do the things that need to be done to get the results. And it wasn’t that. But the culture was a soft culture. It was a culture of we want everybody to feel like they’re accomplishing something. It was a participation trophy culture. It wasn’t a culture of results. And the difference was I was paying their bills to get the results, but their culture was, “Well, we just want to keep everybody happy and, you know, we don’t want to push too hard.” That’s great. But that’s the underbelly of the serpent is the lack of accountability.

I want to stress that when you buy these services, you as the buyer must maintain the high ground or get out of the relationship. But when you get out of the relationship, keep the high ground. Don’t make excuses for them, but don’t blame. Don’t overpromise. The most important lesson we can learn from these serpents is to not be one. So when you’re providing services or goods to someone else, maintain the high ground or get out of the relationship. Don’t lie. Don’t make excuses. Don’t overpromise and never blame the customer. Take responsibility. Take accountability and be the leader that sets things right. Have those brutally honest conversations and figure out how to fix the problem.

Now, if you’re the customer, don’t call out the leader publicly. I did this one time, and it was it was horrible because what I did was, I sent out an email firing back saying, No, there’s a lack of accountability in your team. And I copied in the whole team. And while this leader did not take this opportunity to fix the situation with our organization, instead he saw that as his hero moment to stand up for his incompetent team and fire back and attack us. And in that situation, everybody lost.

Now, everybody also loses if you continue to tolerate substandard performance. And sometimes you can look like a jerk unless you finesse it the right way. Look, being a warrior in a garden is not always easy, but we must always play the long game. Not all of your vendors will be around forever. Some will intentionally rip you off. Some will. Just unintentionally fail. And many you will outgrow. But keep those relationships.

I’ve maintained some great relationships over the years with vendors that we don’t work with anymore, but we still talk and they still provide us great information about what’s going on in the industry.

After Action Review

1. Always maintain the moral high ground. Take the high road.
2. Vendors who invest in your success may provide value beyond their services, and you may want to consider the value of that relationship when negotiating the price of goods or services. In other words, you don’t have to get the lowest price from them if they are providing value above and beyond. And that’s one mistake we make sometimes as leaders, we listen to the bean counters, we listen to the accountants, and it’s not about the cost of the service, but the value of the relationship.
3. If your vendors are industry veterans and you trust them, don’t be afraid to lean on them for advice outside of their area of expertise or outside of that contract. That’s exactly what happened with Harlan. He was happy to provide us that advice when we asked for it.

Three down:

1. That first person you talk with is always the salesperson. Know that they will probably not be the same person delivering the service. Go deeper. Talk to the person who will be servicing your account when possible.
2. When a vendor fails, let them save face in front of their team or you will create a lifelong enemy.
3. If the vendor does not meet or exceed expectations in the first 90 days, prepare to dump them as soon as reasonable or as soon as the contract allows. Because if they don’t get it done in the first 90 days, they never will.

Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led, where we pursue our mission of promoting veteran leadership in business, strengthening the veteran community, and getting veterans all of the benefits that they earned. If you know a leader who should be on the Veteran Led podcast, report to our online community by searching @veteranled on your favorite social channels and posting in the comments. We want to hear how your military challenges prepared you to lead your industry or community, and we will let the world know. And of course, hit subscribe and join me next time on Veteran Led.