If you buy things regularly you probably feel that there may not be anything else to learn about how to buy stuff for your business, especially if it’s a task that you do every day.
However, when you buy anything, from something so small as a sheet of paper to something as large as a building, you have as much responsibility for the bottom line as the Sales team.
If you spend £1,000, typically your sales team has to sell £10,000 of goods or services to pay for it.
sales teams in most organisations receive rigorous and ongoing training in negotiation, sales techniques and relationship building. This gives them an edge when negotiating with most businesses.
We think it’s time to redress the balance and give the people who buy stuff for businesses the same sort of skill set that sales people have.
This will have a dramatic effect on the bottom line
One group of buyers I worked with had responsibility for over £200 million annual spend. Between the 12 of them they had a total of 3 days negotiation training. They made the cost of their Negotiation Skills training back within a few days of the end of the course by negotiating a better deal with an existing supplier.
But it’s not just about negotiation skills.
Effective buying has to be structured, with a flexible approach to get the best deals, add the most value and increase the profit margins.
Quite simply, if you save £100 on a £1,000 spend, your sales team now only has to sell £9,000 to pay for it – or add £1,000 to the bottom line.
Does that sound like a result you would be interested in? We can show you how to do it – get in touch or have a look at our Developing Procurement Talent programme.
Martin was recently interviewed on Pirate FM’s Business Hub – if you’d like to hear what he had to say you can listen again here.