ADVICE | SALES PROCESS
NET PROCURERS FIRST
DAVID FREEDMAN explains why helping corporate buyers will boost your deal-making success
W
hen I first started trying to win new business, in a company and industry far away from anything I’m doing today, an older and wiser colleague gave me some advice. “When anyone from procurement says they want a partnership,” he told me, “what they really mean is: cut your price or kiss the opportunity goodbye.” In 25 years of selling and bidding I have always thought that was an unfair characterisation – procurement people in my experience have always sought to bring value and advantage to their organisations. Those 25 years have also produced a good deal of research into procurement behaviour. And having worked with procurement teams to help with their negotiation skills, we know that sales and procurement people have more in common than we might realise. Neither group is exactly revered by their own corporate hierarchy. A recent Huthwaite International survey found that only 24% of business decision-makers considered salespeople to be heroes in their company. Procurement people have it worse: only 9% of business leaders give them the all-star rating. Earlier research underlined these findings. A survey we conducted of 124 procurement professionals discovered that 68% of them thought that dealing with people within their own company was the biggest problem they 18 WINNING EDGE
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faced (compared with single digit scores for issues like supplier management or technical challenges). And when, in collaboration with the Management Consultancies Association (MCA), we asked people in the UK’s top companies how powerful they thought their procurement colleagues were, over half saw them as no more than an administrative function. One indication of what a company really thought of its own procurement people cropped up when I was asked to sell to a leading IT services company. I found the principal buying category manager for training, and her team, in a windowless office in a basement, behind the post room. So, we’ve plenty of evidence that procurement isn’t appreciated as it should be. Out of this indifference, perhaps, we can fashion something of value for ourselves and the organisations we serve. The issue for the sales community is that procurement can be a very important gateway to our chief mission in life: selling things. How, then, can salespeople work better with procurement departments to improve both their own sales success and procurement’s standing and leverage in the business? INVOLVE THEM EARLY At the meeting that launched the MCA’s Consultancy Buyers’ Forum, two senior chief procurement officers – one from a leading healthcare company and one from a world leading telecoms provider – both said the same thing: “Why do you always leave us till last? Why do you try and avoid us? Are you surprised, after you have sold your ideas to your friends inside our business, that procurement then comes along and tries to take 15% off all your prices? If you don’t build the value for us, why wouldn’t we seek to destroy value for you? Let us in, and let us see your value.” Both of these executives told the forum that in many ways they should be the first people you call on, even when there is no sale in sight. And, of course, they are ISMM.CO.UK
28/10/2016 09:16
