Empower Your Procurement Team with Strategies to Increase Sales for Procurement

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foreign the influencer procurement is increasing there's no doubt today that one of the greatest challenges facing salespeople and account managers is having to negotiate with procurement professionals amongst their customers building effective relationships with disinterested remote procurement people can be a nightmare for those in sales this development can and does have a dramatic impact on the ability of suppliers to retain business never mind having to win new customers the fact of the matter is that procurement in the 21st century is a mainstream business function when businesses Outsource increasing amounts of their product and service requirements then procurement as a business discipline becomes a far more important part of the business than used to be the case it has become the new normal and account managers are struggling not only is the function mainstream procurement itself has its own challenges not least in trying to meet the demands of business for its Talent this is illustrated by the growth in education programs aimed at those seeking to build a career in the profession The International Institute for advanced purchasing and Supply or Eye Apps and the children Institute of procurement and Supply have memberships that continue to grow from small numbers about 15 years ago to into the hundreds of thousands globally today meeting this challenge of procurement professionalism is made even more difficult by the development of a suite of standard sourcing tools and techniques that are used across many business sectors it makes procurement a formidable adversary for old-school relationship sellers seeking to secure favorable contracts on behalf of their employers under these circumstances salespeople and account managers would normally expect support and even mentoring from experienced senior managers but in the recent survey we ran on this issue of sales and procurement we found that there is little or no help that's coming from the hierarchy sales and marketing leaders occupying the upper echelons of the management hierarchy with successful careers behind them almost certainly gained their sales field work experience in the years before procurement became so established they're just not equipped with the skills and knowledge to intervene or Provide support to Frontline sales and account managers in dealing and negotiating with procurement we believe that in addition to their sales teams those senior managers also need a procurement education so what should sales leaders be thinking about doing to meet this Challenge and Excel at selling to procurement we suggest four key strategies strategy number one is analysis before action the role of procurement in any organization can vary substantially therefore the first important task sales leaders have is to properly understand procurement's role within their customers its procurement highly strategic sophisticated and Progressive or is it an unloved background function with little power or influence this Demands a new level of analysis of our customers business which is not always as well as understood as it should be it means getting to grips with the proportion of customer activities and spend on Supply inputs the drivers of value that are important to procurement and the links between these and the customer's bottom line profits without an understanding of procurement's influence and its involvement in buying decisions it's very difficult for salespeople to make sense of the behavior they are faced with and because the procurement profession has evolved significantly over recent years attracting many who say the role as influential high impact and a stepping stone to other opportunities sales people are all too often confronted with a formidable adversary fundamentally this analysis demands sales and account managers to look at the relationship Through The Eyes of procurement particularly in terms of what has to be achieved by procurement to satisfy its own internal stakeholders without this understanding effective engagement strategies are a shot in the dark strategy number two is about what it takes to become a new trusted advisor Progressive sales organizations have made big strides in moving from product pushers to Business Consultants or nowadays the trusted advisor unfortunately at the same time at least unfortunately for sales and account managers procurement is also increasingly winning this trusted advisor role internally especially when they can play the trump card of Market objectivity good procurement Personnel become respected in their organizations for their supply chain management and sourcing expertise without a full understanding of the procurement agenda the classic sales approach of relationship management can be lacking trying to win friends at the top of the customers organization May no longer be an effective strategy particularly when procurement decisions have been happily delegated to lower levels and especially if the supply has been classified as a non-strategic purchase salespeople perhaps buy a combination of Nature and role design seek goodwill-based relationships and it can be challenging for them when faced with apparently hostile procurement staff who in reality are just acting in the way required for the spend category they are dealing with it's important for salespeople to see through this and not take it personally this is easier to do if the role of procurement in the product or service category is comprehensively understood without which the aspiration to become a genuine trusted advisor will simply not materialize strategy number three is to understand power and the levers of value in your customer relationships one prominent conclusion from our recent survey is the weakness of salespeople in understanding and using power by using a number of power analysis tools procurement has been able to use this relationship Dimension to more effectively extract value from its commercial interactions with suppliers it seems also that salespeople find this type of analysis and use of power a rather uncomfortable concept and as they most often experience the use or abuse of power during the face-to-face negotiations in the form of intimidating Behavior it directly confronts their desire to build harmonious relationships in addition a thorough mapping of value levers those direct and not so direct activities which help clients it costs reduce risk or increase revenues would enable salespeople to manage power much more dispassionately and effectively for example if sales goes to the trouble of understanding their customers Downstream business that is the customer's customer sales can become an invaluable asset to the client and potentially more powerful in the relationship understanding how spend categories are classified by procurement helps a lot in understanding which value labors are more likely to be appropriate and more impactful and also where the power lies which takes us nicely back to our initial strategy analysis before action strategy number four it's time to engage with procurement we've suggested following our recent survey that the nature of buyer seller relationships are at a fundamental level adversarial both parties in executing their respective rules are in positions where the their primary goal is to secure advantageous terms that enhance the shareholder value for their respective organizations they're not responsible for the success of the other this is not a value judgment it's simply a description of the territory in which our protagonists operate many tales of war from salespeople arise because procurement sourcing decision process is well underway by the time they come face to face with it normally via a tense negotiation or a series of apparently unreasonable demands placed before them we believe these moments of misery can be headed off if sales teams are highly proactive and engage with procurement that means understanding procurement's role mapping out what the client organization values in granular detail and developing value propositions that explicitly address those value requirements it doesn't have to be a boxing match but it does require salespeople to be on top of their game ready for any challenge procurement May throw at them in summary Our advice to sales leaders is Act without delay to train sales people on the toolkit procurement professionals use to manage Supply your relationships bring that new understanding to your account planning and value proposition development proactively review account plans and dispassionately assess each key customer relationship defining New Visions and goals for each and working longer term to create client lock-in and a favorable shift in the Power Balance finally coach account managers think one step ahead in their customer engagement and negotiation preparation encourage them to engage with procurement on an equal basis creating value together but being ever Vigilant in ensuring a fair share of the value created Finds Its way back to the supplier we have created a new kind of selling skills development process which is based on helping salespeople analyze and develop their key customer relationships with the procurement mindset fully considered why not attend one of our selling to procurement executive briefing workshops there you will be able to bring one or more of your own key accounts as case studies and understand the role of procurement understand how the customer categorizes your product or service map out the value levers and power distribution and then plan to maximize your returns from the account we also provide bespoke s2p or selling to procurement development programs directly tailored to your needs our workshops are always facilitated by people who are genuine procurement experts and experienced in real world negotiations