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Congress in Rotterdam: Purchasing and Selling
Two worlds, one goal
Last week I attended a congress in Rotterdam were sales professionals met purchasing professionals. Especially the session by Professor Jeroen Harink was very interesting for me. He explained the main criteria which purchasers use to evaluate a proposal. The Kraljic matrix is one of their basic instruments. But the marketing services we sell, such as strategic marketing advice, do not fit in that matrix so easily.
It reminded me directly to one of my first encounters with the purchasing department of a big Belgian industrial company. After that meeting it was clear that we did not understand each other and were definitely talking a different language. For the purchaser we had a low impact on profit (low volume) and a low supplier’s risk. Therefore he placed our services in the routine quadrant. The only thing he wanted to talk about was the lowest price while we were negotiating a partnership because we were sure we were contributing to the future profit of his company.
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Indeed, many purchasers know and use only one kind of negotation style: "to reduce the price of the offer". Although that might be the right style for negotiations in the routine quadrant, it does not take into account the value a supplier could offer to the bottom-line or top-line of a company.