CMOs Can Steer A Vendor Search By Scoping The Problem Long Before The First Demo

Replacing the platform that runs a brand's email and SMS is one of the most expensive and easily botched moves on a marketing roadmap. As Director of Digital Marketing at Elite Sportswear, L.P., J.R. Tomaszewski has run two separate vendor searches in four years, the most recent an 11-month process, and came away convinced that what a team brings to the search matters more than the software it picks.

Elite Sportswear, L.P., based in Reading, Pennsylvania, makes performance apparel for gymnastics, swimming, and cheerleading, with a portfolio that runs from the gymnastics brand GK Elite, worn by the most well-known athletes in the sport, to Dolfin Swimwear and the cheerleading brand Omni Cheer.

"You know your needs best. They don't. But once you spell out the need clearly, they can tell you whether it's a fit," Tomaszewski says. That clarity is what a platform search turns on, and it has to happen before the first demo. A team that knows exactly what it is solving for can move fast and weigh any option against that. Shopping first, before the problem is clear, tends to leave a team reacting to whatever a vendor puts in front of it.

Symptom then software

The search starts at home, by getting clear on the exact problem worth fixing before any vendor enters the picture. "Every conversation when you explore a new vendor starts from what problem you're trying to solve," Tomaszewski says. The aim is a platform that makes an existing workflow better and is mature enough to deliver, because some tools reach the market before they are ready. Naming the problem first gives a team a test for everything that follows, since each feature a vendor pitches can be judged on whether it fixes the problem the team named.

For Tomaszewski, one of those problems meant fixing a disconnect plenty of brands know well. Email and SMS ran in separate systems, so the team coordinated the two by hand, down to matching a two-hour wait step in an email journey with the text meant to follow. "It's getting it all underneath one hood and being able to see the customer's channel affinity, where they engage with our brand most, and then using that to build personalized experiences," Tomaszewski says. With the two channels working together, a team can meet each customer on the channel they use most and run the whole day from one tool.

Past the pitch deck

With the problem named, the next job is to do the homework before trying out any software. A team should write down what it needs and where it wants to go, then go into the trial looking for a long-term partner, since the software is something it will live with for years. "Ask as many questions as you possibly can before you start your trial. Scope is the priority, and you cannot over-communicate," Tomaszewski says. The right partner has to keep up as your needs and programs grows, and the trial is where a team finds out if it can.

Who runs the trial matters, too. A leader responsible for channel performance and the person building campaigns every day look for different things, so a five-person team should let all five try the tool. They tend to catch useful details a checklist would miss, like a built-in way to drop a video into an email. Tomaszewski's team also worked off a scorecard, narrowing nine vendors to four and rating each on 15 things that mattered most, with compliance weighted at the top.

"Vendors will pair you with current customers they know are going to give you the good, but do your due diligence and find customers out there on your own that might give you the bad," he says. Hearing the bad parts firsthand helps a team tell a dealbreaker from a one-off bad experience.

Same fruit, different flavor

Pricing rarely lines up cleanly, since every vendor builds its model a little differently. The way through is to refuse to treat those models as impossible to compare. "This is apples to apples. You're just all a different flavor. You have a Fuji, you have a McIntosh. You all do the same thing, charging me for the same service," Tomaszewski says. He knows his own pricing first, then asks each vendor to provide the data needed to fit its offer into that same shape, so the numbers sit side by side.

The other thing to watch is the sticker price. A lower number can leave out costs that surface later, like platform charges or other fees that don't show up on the sticker, which can make the cheaper option the pricier one in the end. Reading the fine print up front is what keeps a low quote from holding a surprise. Even a clean comparison runs into the hardest part of any switch, which is deciding to leave a vendor at all.

Knowing when to walk

The hardest part is admitting a long-time vendor no longer fits. A team can stay too long out of loyalty and habit, the way people hang onto a job they have already outgrown. "We reached a point where our organization's needs had evolved beyond what our previous vendor was built to support. While we genuinely value the years of successful collaboration and support they provided, the decision to part ways was strictly about aligning with our requirements for future growth," Tomaszewski says. Seeing that moment clearly, before inertia wins, is what frees a team to look for a better fit.

Timing matters just as much. His team had looked at switching once before and decided the risk was too high, since a migration could have gone wrong right as a major summer event on its athletes' calendar arrived. So they waited. When they picked the search back up later, they knew the questions to ask that they had missed the first time. A no from leadership early on does not have to be the final word, and the pause can make the next attempt sharper.

Not a light switch

Once the new platform is live, the payoff rarely shows up the way teams expect. "This is not a light switch scenario. You're not going to switch vendors, turn on your new vendor, turn off your old vendor, and it's raining revenue. It's going to take time," Tomaszewski says. The first wins appear in the day-to-day work, well before the numbers in the dashboard move, since the platform needs time to learn. The earliest signs are small. The team stops burning half a day on hold with support just to get a one-day flash sale out the door.

From there, the work itself starts to change. "You're shifting from plugging holes in the boat to building a sail," Tomaszewski says. With the leaks patched, a team can finally chase ideas it never had time for, like re-engaging the customer who shops at one in the morning or catching the early riser who buys before 7 a.m. The team starts looking for new plays it could never run before.

The surest sign a switch worked, though, is the partnership itself. "When your CSM is not an extension of your team, but part of it. You feel like this person truly wants to see you win, that's when you'll know," Tomaszewski says.

The views and opinions expressed are those of J.R. Tomaszewski and do not represent the official policy or position of any organization.