What Sales Teams Need to Know About Procurement

Course Content

‘Inside the Buyer’s Head’ is our training programme for sales professionals. As the roadmap above shows, this is a modular curriculum that addresses the big issues that sales face when procurement is a significant factor in
their target accounts.

The course will be delivered through three modules and will enable you to learn how to:

• Build influence and power by knowing procurement structure and objectives.
• Align to the buying process – create differentiation by selling the way procurement buys.
• Turn the supplier management strategies that procurement uses to your advantage.
• Deliver RFP presentations and sales pitches that work the way that procurement think.

Learning Objectives

Procurement's increasing influence is changing the way an organisation needs to sell to clients. Understanding the new breed of commercial customers is key to continuing existing client relationships or growing new clients.

During the course, you will learn how to:

Help understand industry-wide procurement best practices and standards.

• Build better strategies to shape customer decision-making.
• Help develop another channel to C-Level.
• Demonstrate how best to approach procurement.
• Provide an understanding of Procurement’s decision-making criteria and processes.
• Explain the importance of presentations in the context of the RFP process & how presentations should be structured.
• Enable improved negotiation planning and techniques.

Your team will then be able to:

• Adjust the approach to help them get what they want or counter procurement tactics.
• Focus the sales pitch on quality and service level improvements, not just price.
• Look at ways to sell alternatives to price reductions.
• Look at the client's business needs and evaluate different options as a result.
• Read the signals that Procurement will use when undertaking a supply review and understand how to get involved in that process.
• Tailor RFP presentations to meet procurement criteria.
• Develop proposals in terms of a business solution and not just technical jargon.

How is it delivered?

Training is delivered through three key activities to ensure students are engaged and applying their learnings:

Workshop: Instructor-led 90-minute session in an interactive and engaging format (virtually or in-person).

Assignments: Students apply the module’s content to the job by completing a set of assignments, which takes 1–2 hours to complete. Ideally, This on-the-job activity should focus on a live supplier relationship to make the training relevant and bring its value to life.

Coaching: Throughout the assignment period, students get access to the course leader for 1:1 coaching support to build on their understanding and ensure effective implementation.

Resources: All course attendees will receive a complete suite of support resources and reference material – to ensure a consistent approach to SRM is embedded into your organisation.