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Email template for respectfully declining unsolicited requests to meet from vendors

In my career I have came across two types of vendors. Type A: Vendors who were recommendations from friends, family, co-workers and executives or they obtained your contacts from conference meet ups or well established public companies looking to add your company to their partner list. Type B: everyone else.

Its usually best just to ignore type B, as majority of these emails are from bulk account and your response is no different then responding to spam. For type A however, its best to respond politely, as you may run into them in future. Below is the email template taken from Rajiv Pant.

<unsolicited-vendor-reply-template>

Dear Vendor Name ,

Thank you for your interest in doing business with us.

At present we are satisfied with the solutions, products and/or vendors we already have in place in the areas relating to your potential services and products.

Meeting or discussing further at this time would not be of beneficial to either party since we are not looking to purchase products or services that you offer in the near future.

We respectfully suggest that if you continue to be interested in our business, you feel welcome to check back with us after six months .

If anything changes on our end in the meantime, please be assured that we have your information and we will reach out to you. Also, if I find that there are other parts of our organization that may have interest in your products or services, I will share your information with them.

We appreciate your reaching out to us and we wish you the best.

Sincerely,
Name, Title & Company

</unsolicited-vendor-reply-template>

Using this template to reply instead of simply ignoring the vendor’s email or worse, meeting with them because of not being able to say no has the following benefits:

It is polite yet firm… better to treat others respectfully and not set false hope and expectations.
It gives the vendor a next step and timeframe to contact you again in case you do have a need for their services then.
Six months is a good default, since it gives you an opportunity to reevaluate after six months. However, for certain long-term type contracts, you could use longer periods.
If you are convinced you will never need this vendors’ services, politely tell them that instead of giving a time frame.
It is likely to discourage the vendor from persisting in trying to meet with you or others in your organization.
Sending this one email may save you from getting repeated emails and phone calls from the vendor.
It keeps the door open for you to reach out to the vendor if your organization’s needs change.

Source: plus.google.com