Selling to Procurement

Selling to Procurement
Author: Christopher D. Provines
Publisher:
Total Pages: 76
Release: 2013-03-05
Genre:
ISBN: 9781482704587

Selling is getting tougher for one key reason. Many customers have invested in their procurement function in order to be smarter buyers of goods and services. Ever since the great recession, organizations of all sizes and types have learned to use procurement as a strategic profit lever. Unfortunately, many sales teams haven't figured out how to keep up with this new threat. Often the result is lost sales, margin erosion, and frustrated salespeople. It doesn't have to be this way.Based on direct experience working in procurement leadership for a Fortune 50 business, as well as teaching global procurement, working in key account management, and research, the author provides perspectives for how sales professionals can better understand the modern procurement organization.Originally published as a short booklet in e-book format only, it has now been converted to print form based on many requests (about 65 pages in printed form).It is intended to compliment your existing sales and negotiation methodologies. Get beyond the procurement tactics you see to understand what drives procurement's behaviors. Learn how to spot emerging threats from procurement that could cost you the next deal. Find hidden sales opportunities by understanding procurement's goals. Exploit their fears and needs in your next negotiation. Gain confidence in using your value in selling to procurement. This is a field guide to empower sales professionals to better handle procurement to achieve sales success in an increasingly challenging environment.

Understanding the Professional Buyer

Understanding the Professional Buyer
Author: Peter Cheverton
Publisher: Kogan Page Publishers
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2010-11-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0749461470

Understanding the Professional Buyer is a practical guide for sales people, giving them insight into the behaviour and strategies of buyers, so that they are able to deal with them more successfully and regain power in the buyer-seller relationship. In recent years the balance of power between buyer and seller has swung dramatically in favour of the buyer. Sellers are now faced with more professional, more knowledgeable and more powerful buyers - and the sales techniques used in previous years are no longer working. This book shows how to understand this new breed of buyer, in order to interact with them on a more level playing field. Contents include developments in the industry; purchasing organizations; types of buyers; purchasing analysis; and crucially, buyer-seller relations.

Dirty Little Secrets

Dirty Little Secrets
Author: Sharon Drew Morgen
Publisher: Morgen Facilitations Inc
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2009-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0964355396

What is stopping you from closing all of the sales you deserve to close? Hint: it's not you, not your solution, and not the buyer. It's the sales model itself. Now, in this revolutionary book written by the visionary and NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, go behind-the-scenes with the buyer and learn all of the details that go on off-line prior to a purchase. And learn the 12 'dirty little secrets' that are part of the sales model that actually prevents buyers from buying. Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can't buy and sellers can't sell and what to do about it breaks down the entire buying decision process, and offers a complete understanding of how buyers buy - the steps they go through, the systems issues they must manage internally, the types of decisions they must make. And learn how the sales model manages merely the last action that buyers take before they adopt a solution. Moving beyond her 7 other highly acclaimed books on her revolutionary Buying Facilitation(R) model, her new book goes to the heart of the buying decision, with great examples and a complex case study to teach the model. Selling with Integrity reviews: "Finally, a sales paradigm which supports our spiritual values and lays the foundation for the shifts occurring in business today." Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager "Morgen's Buying Facilitation(R) is light years ahead of the rest of the field." Philip Kotler, author of Marketing Management Dirty Little Secrets reviews: "Because of this book, we'll never be able to go back to the old way of selling. It teaches us how buying decisions are made - missing from the industry until now. This book is too big to push under the rug: It's crystal clear and easy to understand, and necessary for any serious sales professional." Jeff Blackwell, Founder SalesPractice.com "This book is a dead-on analysis of how buying decisions get made." Anne Miller, author Metaphorically Selling "Sharon Drew has turned traditional sales thinking upside down and has provided a tactical roadmap for sellers to help buyers get the internal buy-in necessary to buy." Michael Norton, Founder CanDoGo.com "Dirty Little Secrets takes us inside our buyer's decision-making process where we discover factors they need to address prior to buying - most of them having nothing to do with our solution." Jill Konrath, author Selling to Big Companies "Revealing the secret to how people really buy has been untouched... until now! Dirty Little Secrets delivers powerful insights and practical thinking that transform not only selling but all forms of decision making." Lee J. Colan, author Sticking to It "Having pioneered the new sales paradigm more than two decades ago, Sharon Drew is back with a very human, accessible and powerful approach." Britton Manasco, Principal Manasco Marketing Partners "This is not a business-as-usual book, but a dramatic change in how we sell. Someday Buying Facilitation(R) will be a natural part of our sales process." Reg Nordman, Managing Partner Rocket Builders "Dirty Little Secrets is a must read for all senior executives: Morgen explains why sales fails and provides deep insight into how customers decide." Mark Dallmeir, CEO The ROBB Group Holdings "Sharon Drew's Buying Facilitation(R) model is the only approach that manages the off-line decision making. We've used her process for 10 years and our revenues have grown consistently. Dirty Little Secrets should be on the desk of every CEO and sales professional." Jack Hubbard, CEO St. Meyer & Hubbard. "Social entrepreneurs and progressives get uncomfortable about sales techniques and wary of 'manipulating' people. Dirty Little Secrets teaches how to serve customers with no persuasion or manipulation - how to do good, make money and keep integrity intact." Gil Friend, CEO Natural Logic

The Co-Creation Edge

The Co-Creation Edge
Author: Francis Gouillart
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2016-09-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781137526755

Rapid changes in business along with better informed customers threaten the traditional sales and procurement process. Thousands of sales and procurement people are threatened with extinction, yet all is not destined to be doom and gloom. A new way of partnering between these two roles can, in fact, create significant value for both organizations. Sales and procurement professionals have a bright future ahead of them if they can respond to six trends that the authors have identified in the business-to-business world. Each trend offers an opportunity to develop a new skill for sales and procurement professionals and adopt a new practice. Because these practices are not yet widely adopted as “best practices”, the authors coin them “next practices.” These trends include: working together to solve complex problems; organizing problem-solving networks across company boundaries; creating processes for live cross-company engagement; facilitating data driven, cross-company interactions fed by digital platforms; providing new personal experiences for individuals and lastly (and most importantly) creating new sources of value for firms. If these trends are adopted by organizations, the ability to co-create means providing significant value to both the sales management team at the supplier and the purchasing management team at the customer. With the alternative being that these job functions will be replaced by web-based or channel-based alternatives that will do most of what they do today at a fraction of the cost. Increasingly, there is no middle ground anymore. SAMs and senior buyers will either evolve into high value-added sales and procurement professionals, or disappear.

Lean B2B

Lean B2B
Author: Étienne Garbugli
Publisher: Étienne Garbugli
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2022-03-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1778074006

Get from Idea to Product/Market Fit in B2B. The world has changed. Nowadays, there are more companies building B2B products than there’s ever been. Products are entering organizations top-down, middle-out, and bottom-up. Teams and managers control their budgets. Buyers have become savvier and more impatient. The case for the value of new innovations no longer needs to be made. Technology products get hired, and fired faster than ever before. The challenges have moved from building and validating products to gaining adoption in increasingly crowded and fragmented markets. This, requires a new playbook. The second edition of Lean B2B is the result of years of research into B2B entrepreneurship. It builds off the unique Lean B2B Methodology, which has already helped thousands of entrepreneurs and innovators around the world build successful businesses. In this new edition, you’ll learn: - Why companies seek out new products, and why they agree to buy from unproven vendors like startups - How to find early adopters, establish your credibility, and convince business stakeholders to work with you - What type of opportunities can increase the likelihood of building a product that finds adoption in businesses - How to learn from stakeholders, identify a great opportunity, and create a compelling value proposition - How to get initial validation, create a minimum viable product, and iterate until you're able to find product/market fit This second edition of Lean B2B will show you how to build the products that businesses need, want, buy, and adopt.

Purchasing Performance

Purchasing Performance
Author: Derek Roylance
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2016-04-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317073142

If the only measure of your organization's purchasing performance is forcing down prices from suppliers then not only is your purchasing team failing to add value, they may also be damaging your supply chain and the medium to long-term competitiveness of your organization. Derek Roylance's Purchasing Performance - Measuring, Marketing and Selling the Purchasing Function is a blueprint to help you identify the performance measures and marketing expertise that matter for your purchasing team. Buyers don't exist in isolation but often find it easier to focus excessively on the external market place leading to neglect and subsequent alienation of their internal customers. The book recommends operating the function as a business within a business. Part of this approach is to increase market share by better internal marketing and selling of their procurement expertise. The author provides practical methods for measuring purchasing performance and then communicating effectively - to the whole organization - the contribution the function can make to increase competitive advantage, profitability and all-round efficiency. In an intensely competitive world marketplace, purchasing can only achieve its true potential if it can persuade top decision makers that it will pay them to involve their procurement specialists in all major strategic decisions; the book shows how to achieve this top-level influence.

Negotiating with Backbone

Negotiating with Backbone
Author: Reed K. Holden
Publisher: Pearson Education
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2012
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 013306476X

Offers strategies and advice on retaining pricing power for business-to-business salespeople who have to negotiate with procurement departments.

Sales Vs Procurement

Sales Vs Procurement
Author: Elliot Epstein
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2018-07-06
Genre:
ISBN: 9781721788552

Sales and Procurement have been dealing with each other for a very long time, often with the mixed messages Dr John Gray famously talked about in his blockbuster 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus' It's a landscape filled with tenders, negotiations, probity, sales quotas, savings targets, strategy, very different personalities, varying expectations and hundreds of tactics. This book takes you 'behind the curtain' by giving you unique insights into the thinking, strategy and tactics of both professional sales people and professional procurement practitioners. It is written in the style of a 'fly on the wall' conversation between us as we discuss, debate, argue and educate each other, and in turn, you, about the real mindsets, tactics and approaches of each side.

Selling to State and Local Government

Selling to State and Local Government
Author: Charles Harris
Publisher: Author House
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2004-09-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1418460737

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1996 the total direct expenditure for state and local governments in the United States was $1,247,435,978,000 (over $1.2 Trillion)! How much of that did your company receive? Written from the viewpoint of someone who has spent many years "on the other side of the table," Charlie takes you inside the government purchasing process. But more importantly, he takes you inside the minds of the government buyers. His insights into the motivation and perspective of the government officials you will deal with in a public sector sale are invaluable. Selling to State and Local Government is must read for sales professionals interested in entering the rewarding world of selling to state and local government.