Depending on the magnitude of your project, or sometimes, just to get to know you, a vendor will be willing to travel to your location and make a presentation. Such presentations require the exchange of some essential information, but the most important exchange is trust. In the space of 30-60 minutes, you will get a feeling for how well you like the vendor's representative and how much you think you can trust his team to get the job done well, on time and on budget. At the same time, the vendor will be getting his feeling about you! Will you deliver the required elements on time, approve his submissions efficiently, make reasonable demands and, of course, pay your bill on time? Most first meetings start with a bit of small talk and then get down to the business at hand. If there is no project on the horizon, the best agenda for the meeting is for each party to review their current status. You can start out by telling the vendor what you do, what kind of media you use, how often you require a vendor, what you expect in a vendor and perhaps what size budgets you employ..

Your vendor should respond in kind, telling you what kind of media he produces, how long he's been in business, how many people he employs both full time and freelance, some examples of work that he's done in your category and what kinds of budgets he is most comfortable with.

Sometime during the meeting, you should expect to see some samples of work. Video samples will require you to have a VCR in your office. The vendor will usually bring a laptop to show CD-ROMs, DVDs and websites. Print and translation work is shown in a portfolio.

You can see Avekta's sample work right now, if you like, just Click here.

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Sample work

You visit vendor