Take your childhood self to a toy store, and tell yourself you can only choose one toy — that is torture. The fear is that whatever you select is the wrong option. An amazing study by Sheena Iyengar on The Art of Choosing showed that the more choice a person has, the harder it is to choose.

Now try buying software as a small business — it is as if you walked into that toy store for the first time ever. So many options, and the fear of choosing wrong.

We hate buying software because:

• We wear many hats and our projects go over time and budget.
• We lack the resources to make sure the technology is customized and adopted.
• We outgrow our solutions because we scale rapidly, have too many Apps and the solutions don’t work well together.

We hate buying software not because we don’t believe in the benefits, but because there is always frustrating friction when replacing, starting, or upgrading our processes with technology.

At Salesforce, we have had the opportunity to learn from thousands and thousands of small businesses. Here are four tips to help you determine if you are working with someone you should partner with, no matter who you’re buying from.

1) A vendor shoves a demo down your throat, rather than asking meaningful questions about your business.

When you are looking to partner with a company on a project, it’s clear you have to like their product. What is just as important, but is often forgotten, is the need to understand how a company will support, consult, and engage with you. Look at their website and customer community, and understand that company’s vision. What’s their track record of successful on-time rollouts? What have they learned about driving adoption of their solutions beyond the functionality?

Try: On the first call, are they curious about your business, or are they just trying to get you to a demo?

2) A vendor wastes your time by not helping you manage the evaluation as a project.

When you engage with software companies, you are choosing a partner to help drive your growth. That begins with your first conversation, not after you buy. It’s a project, not an evaluation. In your first calls, build a plan together that includes budgets, timelines, who should be involved, next steps, and training. This plan should be collaborative, and allow you to continually iterate. Most importantly — as with any project — what are the measures of success? This will help ensure you are able to create the accountability toward delivering your projects on time and on budget.

Try: Collaboratively keep track of your project with your vendor, be it over email, in a Word doc, with a presentation, etc.

3) Who cares about your growth? Small businesses scale quickly, but your vendor proposes a solution for today without thinking about tomorrow.

When “people solve problems on behalf of others, they produce faster and more creative solutions.” (Check out Dan Pink). Allow this insight to work in your favor. Socialize the business challenges you’re trying to solve, and ask the company you’re partnering with to help solve them. It is easy to say, “I want X solution,” but you might be missing out on a better way of solving that problem — and, more importantly, a solution you don’t outgrow.

Try: Ask yourself whether the solution your vendor proposes just solves your problems today, or whether it also helps shape your future.

4) Vendors treat adopting and using the software as an afterthought, rather than helping you plan a rollout.

Don’t let your project fail before you have even started. You are talking to someone who has worked with hundreds — hopefully thousands — of small businesses. It is in their best interest to get you started, so ask them what they suggest. Depending on the complexity of the solution you create together, the options typically vary between trainings and implementation partners. Think about setup and adoption needs before you sign the dotted line.

Try: Discussing post-investment execution at the beginning of your evaluation.

The more and more choice a person has, the harder it is to choose, so consider building a mutual partnership with whomever you choose to buy from.