What is the biggest challenge for Suppliers in multifamily today?

 

Timely payments.
A general lack of willingness from on sites to have real conversations, rather than just waving us out the door. For any product/service.

Steffany Esnaola 'Ohhh timely payments is a great one! These stack up fast and create a nightmare cash flow problem for many suppliers.

Not just timely payments but actually not paying at all…then having parties, awards and club trips instead of paying vendors (Tides and those who managed them). Several others too. Don’t use a service if you cannot pay for it.

Saturation - and not necessarily product or service saturation but just “noise”. Operators are overwhelmed with messaging from suppliers and while suppliers have a job to do (sell/market their product), it’s become increasingly difficult to cut through the noise, stand out and get through to the right decision makers.
Operators and their IT departments have such strict email filters now that almost all email from suppliers goes to spam - even for suppliers they’re already doing business with. We’ve had to ask to be white listed at the beginning of a partnership to ensure relevant messages get through to the right people…it’s frustrating for both sides.
And the big elephant in the room - the pay to play models. Conferences, sponsorships…the amount of money suppliers have to spend in order to get an “at bat” is insane. Especially for small orgs and start ups, even though they may have the superior product or tech on the market.
I am, however, thankful for those who see us and treat us as partners and not just salespeople who are pushing a product. And of course also thankful for those who don’t expect bougie swag or lavish gifts in order to do business with us, but instead choose partnerships because the people and product are the best fit…not the swag (though it’s a nice bonus when we can make it happen). 😉
Suppliers tend to move faster and have strong insight into tech and what’s coming down the pike and that can be incredibly valuable for our industry as a whole.

Lack of understanding / clarity / transparency into the decisioning process. Some of the biggest pain points is the time to commit to a pilot and then the time to full portfolio rollout. Lots of hurdles there and sometimes a lot of cooks in that kitchen. Rightfully so too though - when products like CRMs or Data Management come into play it touches a lot of departments.
Payment Management - From being able to pay invoices on time to even having a clear route for submitting invoices to having to pay 3rd parties for accounts just to submit an invoice. Definitely a lot of mess and inconsistency here. Outside of the industry - ACH/CC that’s it. Inside the industry - it’s a whole medley.

Weeding out and avoiding the bad owners and/or operators.

From what I hear getting bills paid.

Lack of Loyalty, Switching to another vendor for couple of dollars less, seriousness about business, delay of payments, cheating, asking for kick backs, beating us up on pricing to then not pay their invoices, not paying late fees. Just a few to mention.