Building strategic relationships with vendors is crucial to your success as an MSP. Although, each business relationship is unique and comes with its challenges, having a strong vendor relationship can assist you in building mutual success, help when you are in a pinch, and deliver competitive advantages. Harry Brelsford of The CannaTech Groups sits down with Dan Foote to discuss vendor relationships.
Video Transcription
Harry Brelsford
Hey everybody, we’re back at the Cannatech podcast with Dan Foote out of Alaska. So, dad are the days getting longer noticeably longer. We’re in the month of March.
Dan Foote
We are and yes, sunrise this morning is like right about eight straight up. So you know 22 minutes ago we had sunrise and sunset now is I think right? About 630 Little after 630 In the evening. So the days are getting not longer in the total number of hours but certainly longer in the amount of daylight we get love. Yeah, yeah, no
Harry Brelsford
kid, well, hey, this time we want to talk about in the cannabis sector, working closely with your vendors. And you you do a good job of that. So what’s what’s what’s that mean? What’s the motion? And what’s your philosophy?
Dan Foote
Well, we are a vendor centric service, we find vendors that work well for us and with us to provide services to our clients. It amuses and amaze me how every month, the the subscriptions that I subscribe to for our clients, it just you know, they just start rolling in, you know, invoice, invoice invoice. And some of them are there because they need to be there. Others are have been with us for quite some time. And we we have found that we have some really good working relationships with with some of our vendors, we’re looking at taking maybe a couple of those to more of a non regional non Alaska level looking to maybe penetrate some of the lower 48 market. And that’s pretty exciting. And so we’ll see where this goes. It’s very new for us. It’s a definitely a leap. As you know, Harry stepping outside of your your sandbox can be a little scary at times.
Harry Brelsford
No, absolutely. No, I just I know that both in the cannabis area in the traditional MSP area, you’ve you’ve been close to your vendors so that it shows that for example with data, right, don’t don’t mind that shout out to data. But you’re really good about going to their events, you have executive level contacts, and a lot of MSPs don’t, to your point, they don’t think outside the ranch and cultivate those relationships.
Dan Foote
They are they can be very helpful, especially when you run into something really sticky. But you also don’t want to be the you know, my apologies to any Karen’s that are listening. But you don’t want to be the Karen and the crowd that just whines for no real reason at all. You want to develop and maintain that good relationship that allows you to be comfortable with who you’re working with and what you’re doing with them. And hopefully you don’t run into the big problems, but occasionally you do and, and hopefully, hopefully you never have to go and ring the bell, so to speak for attention. We found some really good vendors out there. We’ve been working through this. The Microsoft NC new, what is it new commerce experience plan that they’ve got? And the vendor that we use? You know, those guys and gals must have been just really turning the last couple days because it’s been daunting. Yeah, you know, millions and millions and millions of licenses out there. And you know, when things slow down in a hurry, it affects everybody.
Harry Brelsford
Yep. All right. Well, thanks for your contribution. We’ll see you next time.
Dan Foote
You talk to y’all soon. Take care.
