Of course, it is good to have relations with the vendor and build a relation, but again, that is step 2. If I really believe a vendor has a product that solves the issue, I am happy to pick up the phone or fire up Outlook and contact them, but I see no reason to contact a vendor if I only guess that maybe they have something.

Business is a two-way relation, but the vendor has to make the first step always, unless the customer is really desperate. Vendors that do not present their pricing and technical details properly are just a waste of my time. Not showing pricing is actually the biggest one, because it shows either unprofessionalism ("We don't really know what our product is worth, so we'll just make something up every time") or is a sign of scamming ("We will charge you 10 times more just because you are bigger than the small company we sold our software to yesterday, but it's still the same product, the same service, only the price is different").

But then again, in the past I was always in the good situation that I made the recommendations. So as a Programmer I may not actually buy anything, but I can recommend what gets bought, and those above are my criteria for putting forward a recommendation.

Yea Ok, you like the software, great! Chances are you may have to implement it. But guess what, the software your recommending is borderline Freeware that was cobbled together from Two-Cows along software from 8 acquisitions and a bunch of disgruntled programmers over the the last year!

The vendor is over-valued and swimming in debt. They are facing 4 huge copyright lawsuits not to mention customer lawsuits. They dumped everything into development (nice features, the best!), but in this economy they can't make payroll and all their leadership and development team is about to bail. They die on the vine 6 months after you make your purchase.

The truth is you've missed an opportunity. There is so much you get from starting a conversation and KNOWING A REAL PERSON from the get-go. Relationship building with a real person helps YOU. You might get a few more features moved up in the development schedule, bugs fixed faster, better access to support, no to mention better price negotiation positions, free lunch and a million more that you will never understand living behind your fackey world. I guess the lesson here is Give a little - Get a lot. Stop living in fear, buying IS a two-way transaction and all for the better for BOTH parties.

About a year back I was tasked with creating a contract management system internally and my first step was to check the existing products out there to see if any of them would fit the needs and be in our budget. Out of the 7 places I found that had the functions I needed, only 1 had the price listed. All the rest I had to sign up for a quote and then get hounded with spam/phone calls asking if we were going to buy their stuff. Frustrating to no end!!!