Sales and Marketing

Derek Roylance asks "are we neglecting these vital skills at our peril?"

Introduction

Many years ago I started a new job as deputy to a very experienced Purchasing Manager in an organisation where purchasing was not very high up the pecking order. My manger was a superb negotiator, very patient, focused and tenacious and I learned a great deal from watching him operate. However only my colleagues and our suppliers realised just what a good job Ken was doing for the organisation. When I moaned to him that we had no power and were only involved in a tiny proportion of the organisation's total spend his reply invariably was "we are the purchasing department and when people need us they know where find us". Did they come and find us? Of course not they were having far too much fun doing their own thing. Instinctively I knew that the only way to raise our profile within the organisation was to embark on a hard sell of our strengths. In time when Ken retired I became Purchasing Manager and immediately set about changing the culture. Buyers were encouraged to think of their jobs as BUYING from outside and SELLING inside and if the selling part did not work there would be nothing to buy. Did it work? Well, not as well as I wanted - we did not take over the world - but the department did eventually report to the deputy chairman and our annual spend rose from £12 to £80 million.

Marketing

The crux of marketing is to find out your customer's real needs and desires and then to create and sell a product or service which fulfils that need and desire. It is proactive NOT a reactive function. How good is purchasing at marketing itself? Often not very good because it is far too busy reacting to events which come along as a series of continual surprises. Some people even enjoy fire-fighting!

How to find out your customers needs and desires? Well why not take a leaf out of the marketers book and undertake some market research. You will be seeking the answers to a whole series of questions not only concerning their real requirements but also their opinions of the service that you currently provide to them and you really need it to be straight from the hip with no punches pulled. You could ask them yourself or perhaps send out a survey form - both pretty unproductive techniques as it is doubtful that you would obtain critical, honest opinions by these methods. Slightly better is to ask a neutral manager from another department to ask face to face questions. The best approach is to use an outside consultant - we would say that wouldn't we? - but seriously we know the probing questions to ask, have done it before and have no axes to grind.

Another source of opinion to rank your professionalism is suppliers. They are in a good position to be able to judge you against other purchasers. Once again probing questions are required coupled with an assurance to your suppliers that you really need their true opinions - warts and all.

Armed with the information the real hard work begins in making the changes to become truly customer focused. Invariably most organisations find that buyers will need to spend more time with their internal customers - it is all to easy to spend too much time dealing with suppliers. Using the survey information the aim should be to make the case that purchasing is involved much earlier in the planning process and can make a valuable contribution to strategic issues at the top table.

Sales

Sales is the "make things happen" follow up to any marketing initiative. Any sales campaign requires careful planning and needs to be tailored to your customer's idiosyncrasies.

However it is a skill which needs to be learnt. Buyers often think that from observation they know all about selling. This is rarely the case, sales people receive far more training and most of them are very highly motivated because their results are very easily measured and many are on commission bonuses. How many buyers are sent on selling courses? In our opinion this is an essential skill which buyers must learn both to help them in their day to day negotiation and to help sell internally the benefits of professional purchasing. We advocate that one out of every three courses should be highly sales orientated. Why not send purchasing staff on the same courses as your sales force?

Using the information gained from your marketing survey you will need to carefully plan and target your sales campaign. Placing yourself in the position of your internal customer you must decide the best techniques to use, for instance -

What is the best way of opening the door - the best approach technique?
Will you sell by talking face to face with decision makers: who in your department has the best chance of succeeding?
Would a formal presentation be best?
Maybe use your boss to influence the head of your target department?
Do you need a sales brochure either written or on your Intranet?
Is their a "special offer" you can make as a come on?
Impress them with a supplier conference which your internal customers are invited to?
Identify a problem area you can help them with.
Better still ask them to help you with a problem - Flattery works!
Copy techniques which sales people use which work on you.
Do you need a monthly news letter highlighting purchasing matters which will interest them?
Introduce staff exchange visits for both sides to learn from each other.
Do your progress reports need revising to reflect their interests? Invite them to join cross functional teams.
We could go on but hope this supplies a few good ideas.

Two musts:

a/ Do not launch your sales programme until you are completely confident you can handle the extra work load. To fail at the first hurdle is disastrous.

b/ Marketing & sales is not a one off effort. You must be prepared to carry on ad infinitum!

Reverse Marketing

Too many buyers treat suppliers with arrogance and contempt, for instance they ask them to visit then keep them waiting ages in Reception. Your survey to suppliers should pick up bad vibes - they need to be dealt with strongly. We believe the rule should be "treat suppliers in the same way you should like to be treated yourself".

Un-thinking buyers don't seem to realise that Suppliers have the choice on how they deal with your organisation whether it be well, indifferently, badly, or not at all. The aim should be that they should like dealing with you, not because you pay over the odds but because you are professional, don't mess them about and that you are "nice people to do business with". Sticking to the agreed payment terms also helps. It is a definite source of competitive advantage if your suppliers treat your organisation better than your competitors.

To achieve this goal marketing to your suppliers (called reverse marketing in the latest jargon) is also essential. Broadly speaking the same Marketing and Selling techniques, as recommended above to your internal customers, need to be employed.

Reverse Marketing should be an integral part of your Supplier Development and Supplier Relationship (SRM) programmes. Vendor rating (addressed in our efficiency check list) is the basis to this and Reverse Marketing dove-tails nicely into this by setting up events such as Supplier awards and open days.

For many buying organisations a huge cultural change is required to establish new healthy relationships with suppliers based on mutual shared knowledge and objectives. We can help achieve this.