How to keep a vendor evaluation tracker from your demo calls

A vendor evaluation tracker is a table that compares the suppliers you are considering on the same terms: the price each quoted, whether each meets your requirements, and what still worries you. This guide is for consultants, fractional CTOs and IT contractors who choose tools and vendors on a client's behalf, through demo calls, technical deep dives and reference calls on Google Meet or Microsoft Teams. It covers the columns, how to word the requirements, and how TrackHeros keeps the table current from the calls themselves.

What is a vendor evaluation tracker?

One table per evaluation, with a row per vendor and a column for each thing you compare. It replaces the spreadsheet you mean to fill after every demo and the notes you re-read the night before the recommendation is due.

An evaluation is spread over many calls with different people: a sales rep on the demo, an engineer on the technical call, a customer on the reference call, and the client's own team in the debrief. The facts that decide it are said in those calls. A tracker reads each one and puts what it learned in the vendor's row.

Which columns should a vendor evaluation tracker have?

Enough to rule vendors in or out, and no more. There is no template for this one; describe it in a sentence ("compare the vendors we evaluate for this client: price, requirements met, concerns") and edit the draft, or start blank. A workable set:

Column	Type	What belongs in it
Vendor	Text, names the row	The vendor or product being evaluated
Price quoted	Money	A price the vendor states, with its currency
Pricing basis	Text	What the price covers, as said: per seat per month, annual, minimum term
Single sign-on	Yes / no / unclear	Yes only when the vendor confirms SSO is available today, not planned
EU data storage	Yes / no / unclear	Whether all customer data, backups included, can stay in the EU, as stated
Documented API	Yes / no / unclear	Whether a documented API is available now
Concerns	List	Risks or gaps anyone on the call raises, one item each
Stage	Status	Shortlisted, Demo done, Trial, Chosen, Rejected
Last discussed	Automatic	The last call that mentioned the vendor

Mark Chosen and Rejected as final options. Before saving, preview the definition on one recent demo to see what it would have taken; nothing is saved by a preview. Whether your plan lets you design your own columns is on pricing.

Why make each requirement a yes, no or unclear column?

Because a requirement is usually a yes or no question, and the honest answer is often "unclear". "Single sign-on is on our roadmap for next quarter" is not a yes. A yes / no / unclear column says so, and its description can say exactly what counts.

Keep these columns to the handful of requirements that would rule a vendor out, and leave the nice-to-haves to the concerns list. A table with twelve requirement columns is a table nobody reads.

One rule is worth setting on requirement columns: keep the first value. On the demo, the sales rep says data stays in the EU. On the technical call, their engineer mentions that backups are kept in the US. With the first value kept, the second answer shows as a conflict for you to settle, with both quotes, rather than quietly replacing the first. That kind of disagreement is often the most useful thing an evaluation turns up. The cost is that an early "unclear" also turns a later firm answer into a conflict, which you settle by choosing the new value.

How do you record the price a vendor quoted?

In a money column, one amount and one currency, filled only when the vendor states a figure. Prices move during an evaluation, from list price on the demo to a discount on the follow-up, and the cell's history keeps each quote with the call it came from and the words used.

Put what the price covers in its own text column. 18 EUR per seat per month on annual billing and 2,000 EUR a month flat cannot be compared without it. A figure nobody stated never enters the table: every value must point at the transcript lines it came from, and a value with no line is dropped. If you want the opening quote kept for negotiation, add a "First price quoted" column with the keep-the-first-value rule beside the current one.

How are concerns tracked across calls?

As a list: an item is added when someone raises it and removed when someone says it is resolved. "No audit log" raised on the demo stays on the vendor's row until a later call says the audit log has shipped, and even then the removal waits for you, because taking an item off a list always does.

The concerns list is often the deciding column. A vendor with the better price and three open concerns is a different recommendation from one with a higher price and none.

Which calls should feed the tracker?

Every call about the evaluation, and nothing else. A tracker reads one client's meetings, and you choose which:

• Meetings whose title contains certain words, such as "demo" or "vendor".
• Specific meetings chosen before they happen: attach the tracker to an upcoming demo from its meeting page, as described in attach a tracker before the meeting.
• By hand: send any finished call to the tracker from its meeting page.
• Every meeting of the client, in which case meetings plainly unrelated to the evaluation are skipped.

Include the client's internal debriefs. What the client's own team thought of a demo is as much part of the evaluation as what the vendor said.

How do you turn the table into a recommendation?

Read across each row, check the cells you will rely on, and write the recommendation yourself. Each cell's history shows who said it and when, with a link to that moment in the transcript and the recording, so every claim in the recommendation can be traced to a call.

The assistant reads the table, so "which vendors meet all three requirements, and what did each quote?" is answered from the tracker, with the call each value came from. When the client chooses, record the decision and its reasons; track decisions across meetings shows how.

How does TrackHeros keep each client's evaluation separate?

TrackHeros is an AI meeting notetaker that connects every Google and Microsoft calendar you hold, recognises close to 100 spoken languages on its own, writes the notes in nine of them, and keeps every client's notes in a sealed workspace of its own. A tracker belongs to one client's workspace, so evaluating the same vendor for two clients gives two rows in two tables, and the price a vendor quoted one client never appears in the other's.

A tracker is private to the person who made it, and to admins on a company account, until they share it with colleagues already assigned to that client. It reads each call after the notes are ready, not during it, and a demo held in German or Hindi is read through the same transcript as the notes, with text values written in the notes' language (languages). The fractional CTOs and IT contractors pages cover the rest of the work, and client isolation explains the walls.