Here at theKit, we pride ourselves on our customer service. We see ourselves as a partner first and technology second. But even with all our efforts we find ourselves wanting to do more for our clients and sometimes that's just not that easy.

You see no matter who, or what, you are working with– a CMS, a creative, programmer, or whatever –you as a client are limited in the benefits you receive from these relationship by how much you give to the relationship. In today's age, you have unlimited access to knowledge and skills at your disposal, they just require for you to engage them, and they love it when you do as it makes them feel helpful and needed.

Most clients we work with have limited human resources, which requires them to wear a lot of different hats. This also requires them to thoroughly think out what they want to accomplish with their website before taking steps on execution. We find the ones that put this time in upfront are more successful than the ones that are just reacting with their website.

So in the interest of helping even more clients, we put together some points on how to take advantage of a vendor relationship.

1. Acquire Knowledge
Many clients build their relationships with vendors from a 1-to-1 standpoint; meaning that the client has a need for a service the vendor provides. But vendors are not 1 dimensional and could have skills that would be useful to a client in other areas of their needs. For example, some of theKit's clients signup for our service with only a few select features but as they get more aggressive with their strategy, they find that new needs arise. If they are engaged with us and consult with us about these new needs, we can point-out that their new needs can be solved by simply adding new features and since they are already familiar with theKit's processes, they can quickly start meeting their new needs.

2. Plan
There are many proverbs for planning, and most, if not all, are right. The time you spend planning will return to you a hundred fold. When companies are light on resources, they tend to react with their web strategy when the best they could do is plan their strategy and look for outside help to execute.

We've seen a few clients get so overwhelmed by the fact that they have so much to execute, and have spent no time planning, that they just shut down. Literally. They shut down most, or all, of their website. There is, of course, a time that justifies doing so but being overwhelmed is not one of them. It's a quick reaction to being overwhelmed.

If you feel this way, consider point 3:

3. Open Dialogue
Two brains are better than one and opinions from different perspectives help validate strategies. When you have vendor relationships, you should take advantage of them and bounce ideas back and fourth. Most vendors, if they care about your relationship, will happily have these talks with you, for no charge. Good vendors are there to solve problems for their clients and this is the process for doing so.

Here at theKit, we love having these talks with our clients. Anything from "I have a publisher file that I need to email to my mailing list, what's the best way for me to do that?" to "we are planning a blogging strategy and need to setup a blog for our key customer relations members, how do you recommend we do this?". We like solving problems.

The main point to take away is to be engaged with your vendors. Quality vendors don't mind and even prefer an engaged relationship. It's the way to get the most out of your time and money.