Vendor selection is mostly a filtering exercise. Most of the shortlist usually removes itself in the first ten minutes of a real conversation — not on price, but on how the questions get answered.

These fifteen are grouped by what each answer reveals. Ask them in this order; the later groups are only worth having once the earlier ones pass.

A. Understanding the work (questions 1–3)

1. “Here is the task. What would you need from me to do it?”

A good supplier asks about inputs, formats, edge cases and volume before discussing money. A supplier who quotes immediately without questions is guessing, and you will pay for the guess later.

2. “Which parts of this do you think should stay with me?”

This is the most useful question on the list. Anyone willing to take every part of a customer-facing process without qualification is optimising for their revenue, not your outcome.

3. “What usually goes wrong on work like this, and how do you catch it?”

Specific failure modes mean lived experience. “We have a strong quality focus” means nothing; a named check at a named point in the process does.

B. Scope, pricing and change (questions 4–7)

4. “What exactly is included in this price, and what is not?”

Get the exclusions in writing. Ranges, revisions, rework, reporting and rush work are where an attractive quote quietly grows.

5. “What triggers a change to the price, and how would you tell me?”

Volume drift, scope creep and tool changes all happen. You want a defined notification path, not a surprise invoice.

6. “Can we start with one bounded piece before I commit?”

Reluctance here is an answer. A supplier confident in the process will usually prefer a small, defined first job too.

7. “If the volume halves next month, what happens?”

Small businesses fluctuate. A model that only works at a fixed volume will hurt you exactly when your own business is under pressure.

C. People, communication and control (questions 8–11)

8. “Who will actually do the work, and who covers them when they are away?”

Named continuity is what you are buying; a rotating anonymous queue is not a service. Ask what happens during leave and turnover.

9. “Which timezone will you be in when I need something escalated?”

Overlap matters more than location. Work out the hours a day when both sides can talk, and check that your deadlines fall inside them.

10. “What is the escalation path, and how quickly does someone with authority respond?”

Test it before signing by asking a real question through the normal channel and timing the reply.

11. “How do I see what is in progress today?”

Visibility is the difference between a managed service and a black box. A shared board, a weekly summary or a defined report all work. “Just ask us” does not.

D. Data, security and legal (questions 12–13)

12. “What access do you need, and how is it removed when we stop?”

Least privilege, named accounts, no shared logins, and a documented removal step. Ask when access gets revoked, and get it in writing.

13. “Where is my data held, who can see it, and what happens to it afterwards?”

For UK businesses this includes any onward transfer to another country. A supplier who cannot describe where work physically happens cannot describe their data protection either. Get confidentiality and return-or-delete terms into the agreement rather than the sales call.

E. Ending the relationship (questions 14–15)

14. “What notice period applies, and to whom?”

Check that it is not asymmetric. If the supplier can exit in a week and you are tied for a quarter, that is a negotiation point.

15. “What do I own when we finish — files, documentation, templates, work in progress?”

Everything you paid for, and anything built from your data or your brief, should come back to you in a usable format. Agree the handover before you need it, because after the relationship ends it becomes a bargaining chip.

How to use the answers

Do not score this out of fifteen. Four of the answers disqualify outright: no willingness to run a bounded trial (6), no defined way to see in-progress work (11), no clear account of where your data sits and how access is removed (12–13), and an exit you cannot execute cleanly (14–15). Everything else is comparison, not veto.

On our side of that conversation, these questions are answered on the how we work page, and the commercial terms including notice and data handling are set out in our terms of business and privacy notice. If you want a bounded first piece of work before committing, the quote form is the right place to start.