Vendor Interview Playbook: Small Business Edition
A repeatable framework for interviewing and vetting outside vendors.
Every small business eventually hires vendors it cannot fully evaluate in advance: an accountant, an attorney, a contractor, a web designer, a bookkeeper. Each of those decisions carries financial, legal, or operational risk, and most are made after a single conversation and limited information.
The Vendor Interview Guide for Small Businesses provides a structured process for making these decisions well. It is a 35-page toolkit built for direct use: a risk framework for determining how much scrutiny each hire warrants, a step-by-step vendor lifecycle from first contact through signed contract, a fillable RFP template, and ten complete, role-specific interview worksheets covering the vendors small businesses hire most often, accountants, attorneys, bookkeepers, builders and contractors, continuing education trainers, event planners, grant writers, graphic designers, marketing consultants, and web designers.
Each worksheet is built around the questions that matter most and are most often overlooked under time pressure. Every question is written to be asked exactly as printed, with space to record vendor names, interview dates, and notes, so that candidates can be compared consistently rather than assessed from memory.
Who it's for:
Small business owners, office managers, and anyone responsible for hiring outside vendors and service providers who wants a repeatable process instead of a one-off scramble every time.
