Start Me Up! - Part 6

At this point, we plan to delve deeper into the development of your vendor network.  Come the New Year, I will begin to tackle the specific “must have” info to gather from your vendors. However, before we can get to that point, you must have an organized system to input your vendor data. I am a HUGE fan of Excel for many things, as you will realize further down the road.

Traditional contact management software can be very efficient – Microsoft Outlook and similar programs can be very useful for keeping track of your vendors and other contacts. On the other hand, if you do not own this type of software or choose to go a different route,  you can create your own contact database with Excel. For me the biggest draw is that I can “take it” from one computer to another and I am not bound to whatever computer on which I have installed the software - plus, I can customize the data fields to suit my needs. Another cool feature is that you can set up filters & drop-down menus so if you need to recall all the caterers in a certain town, you can do so literally with a click or two of the mouse. Here is a screen shot of one of my vendor contact lists:

In one column I have listed the type of vendor/service, then to the right of the Description I have allocated space for the Company Name, Website, Phone, Address, Contact & their Title, Contact’s Email, and a Reference column so you can note how you came to know them or where you found them. I have also included a column all the way to the right called Notes. I love to use the notes column to keep track of any important or interesting info specific to the vendor. For example, with the sample entry of Cake Magic, my notes read: “Known for their special carrot cake. Will give my clients a 10% discount.”

There are of course many columns you can add as you progress and evaluate your specific needs. At the very least, I think this format includes some great basic info that you should be able to access about your vendors when you need to. If all goes well, you will be meeting tons of vendors and it is nearly impossible to keep track of all their information. The tricky thing with this however, is that you cannot easily recall the info on your PDA or mobile device. While it is possible, the data may be hard to read. My solution? I only input those vendors I most often contract or with whom I have a special relationship – my “Preferred” vendors. For example, I have 45 caterers on my Excel Master Contact List; I have 15 in my blackberry. The point is, you may not need to regularly use and recall all the vendor data you collect, but you should at least know who they are and have a head start if a client asks.

No matter which form of contact management you prefer, just please be sure you have something to keep yourself organized. Great things may lay ahead my friends…

“Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” – Seneca

xx,
Belle

Comments

[Rhonda]

Hi Belle, another good thing about excel is you can have multiple sheets/tabs. You can have separate tabs for each type of vendor, bakers on one sheet and bands on one sheet etc, rather than having every contact on one large master sheet.