Meeting the Procurement Challenge:
How to Prevent Procurement Groups from Killing Your Price, Margin and Profits

Abstract:
With business performance down across most industrial sectors, companies have heavily invested in their procurement functions to help reduce costs and improve profits. Unfortunately, most suppliers typically respond to procurement pressure by putting their sales force through traditional sales training courses that focus on the tactical interaction between sales and procurement. Sales is basically taught to negotiate harder, which in our view is the equivalent of bringing a knife to a gun fight! The results are not surprising – frustrated sales organizations feel they have no control over their own performance. However, by examining the tactics procurement groups use, suppliers can respond with strategies that improve their competitive selling power.

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