Organisations with professional procurement departments are well prepared for complex sales conversations. These departments are often armed with large amounts of data about your organisation's performance globally and comparative competitor data. They may know more about your organisation than you do. Plus, they have a variety of smart tactics at their disposal to lock-in better deals for their organisation. All of which creates a challenging environment for sales people to successfully penetrate - your sales team needs a new way of dealing with procurement.
Sellers without the experience of knowing what works - and what doesn't - especially in the complex sales arena, may find winning the business a difficult and expensive learning curve.
So, to help companies sell into procurement we've combined our extensive understanding of best practice in procurement with deeply researched best practice in sales and account management, developing an approach to dealing with procurement which has been shown to deliver real sales improvements.
Our Dealing with Procurement live webinars are a great way to learn more about procurement's motives and tactics. Join us as we ask the questions, "Who has the power in any relationships you have with procurement departments?" and, "Are you developing the most effective engagement strategies?" To register your interest in attending a future webinar contact us.
Over 300 global sales professionals have attended our Procurement Masterclass workshops - remotely or in a group situation - where we equip senior level sales leaders with a clear understanding of the mentality of professional buyers and the strategies, processes and tactics they adopt. Key account managers and sales leads work on real accounts to develop actionable plans as part of a larger Win or Account Plan. These are based on an approach to account management and negotiation that combines your existing processes and frameworks with our best practice templates, practical advice and expert selling skills. To chat about the workshops contact us.
5 TOP TIPS TO MAKE PROCUREMENT RELATIONSHIPS WORK FOR YOU
Lots of salespeople, be they junior or very senior, shy away from engaging with procurement. Maybe they view them as some sort of ogre. They aren’t, they are human beings. However, their agenda is very different to that of the salesperson. You need to get ready for the right conversation.
3 WAYS TO BUILD SALES RELATIONSHIPS WITH PROCUREMENT
What strategies do your Sales Account Management teams have in place to win your next contract? How do they work with sophisticated procurement departments? In this blog post we discuss three of our top tips for building successful sales relationships with the ‘professional buyer’.
FIVE TIPS FOR NEGOTIATING WITH THE PROFESSIONAL BUYER
We often get asked how modern-day category managers think, and what is it about their practices that can create such tension in customer-supplier relationships. Here, David Atkinson discusses the complex subject of professional procurement and how Sales Account Managers can improve their negotiation strategy.
Bear in mind that cost reduction might be firmly on procurement’s minds – perhaps even more so following the recent challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. Bear in mind too that they will be asked by their bosses to secure the best deal, and high on that list will likely be delivering year on year cost savings from suppliers. They’ll be assessing supply chain risk and leveraging technological advances further driving sales teams to step up their game. If sales teams want the balance of power to shift towards them, learning how to deal with procurement will be key to unlocking the possibility of sales improvements.
