VRM stands for Vendor Relationship Management. It’s being stick handled through the universe by my friend Doc Searls over at the Project VRM corner of cyberspace.
Why you should care
Looking for stuff sucks. All the computer power in the world and the process is actually more a pain in the butt then the Yellow Pages.
Doc and the gang propose to turn this customer relationship stuff on its head and do what a) makes total sense and b) what should have been done 60 seconds after the first piece of SPAM email went out.
From the manifesto:
The primary theory behind ProjectVRM is that many market problems (including the widespread belief that customer lock-in is a "best practice") can only be solved from the customer side: by making the customer a fully-empowered actor in the marketplace, rather than one whose power in many cases is dependent on exclusive relationships with vendors, by coerced agreement provided entirely by those vendors.
Consider this simple example:
Let’s say you want to rent a house in Florida. There are about a billion websites to pick from. There are lots of sites with great listings, calendars with availability, rate cards, etc. Before I (or you)ever get on that web site, we know generally what we want. I’d like a nice one bedroom (no kids, whoo hooo! Sorry, girls) on the gulf side, on the beach, with an internet connection, parking, and I want it for the month of December. Oh, and I’m willing to pay up to $3500 for the month, all in.
Does it not make sense that I should be able to put this information in one place and have this information go out to the property owners who have the above? And it goes out anonymously. Why do I have to fill out a stupid form for each inquiry (go to this site and wander around to see what I mean. Most are no better.) and give my information each time. Nonsense.
What should happen:
I verify myself. I have a LinkedIn profile as well as my Facebook page. On LinkedIn, I’ve actually paid for the service so those folks have, for the most part, verified I exist. Or PayPal. The point is that I have verified credentials out there so this notion of the property owner having to put up with nonsensical requests can be mitigated by using some trusted source to ‘prove’ an inquiry is coming from a real person. Not a guaranteed sale, mind you, by a real person. I then fill out the request. If I need an unlocked BlackBerry or a rental home in Florida, I have the need, want to buy and somebody out there can make a sale. This is a big database project and one that can change the face of commerce.
An automatic concierge of sorts that takes your request, puts it out there, and gets you what you need. There’s a trillion dollar opportunity in here. If you're an entrepreneur interested in these types of things, you should get over to ProjectVRM’s website, dive in and go make something.
Oh, if anybody knows where I can get a used Elmo (this one, not this one), I’m good for $300 bucks.
People already share their purchase intent via status updates on twitter and facebook, so it would make sense to capture it there - building on existing behavior - rather than educating everybody about yet another site.
There's a startup called DemandSpot (of which I'm the proud founder) that does just that, and lets vendors connect with interested buyers directly on twitter.
For instance, here are people looking to rent in Florida: http://bit.ly/2Wv2QA
Posted by: Elad Kehat | October 13, 2009 at 08:12
I am an entrepreneur who is interested in these types of things. Have a look at our VRM demo at http://www.mysortingoffice.com/mysortingoffice/Login.aspx which meets your desire to post an invitation to accept relevant email marketing pitches. In addition, it allows you to charge vendors for your 'intention' and to remain anonymous until such time as you want to engage with a supplier.
I would be very interested in your feedback.
Posted by: Graham Sadd | October 13, 2009 at 09:01
My wife and I recently moved from Southern California to the Dallas, Texas area. We have 2 cars and wanted to pay to ship them instead of driving both of them plus the rental truck. Our web search only led us to sites that took our information and sent it out to tons of companies who each called us on the phone! Every one of these "trucking" companies was just a broker. They were all using the same proprietary industry database system that allows drivers to bid on jobs. The only difference between quotes was how much the broker would add to what the driver charged.
Not sure if this is solved by VRM, but there has to be a better way for customers to get direct access to the drivers doing the work without being called by dozens of brokers!
Posted by: Dennis | October 22, 2009 at 09:35