Procurement Realities: Winning Deals Through Brand, Relationships & Value (Not Undercutting)

Procurement is a strong generator of great deals but realistically works in the following 3 scenarios:

1. Your brand is already the GO TO leader (or among the top 3-5 obvious choices)

2. Race to the bottom (so damn common)

3. Golden referral (a champion/advocate from a previous deal or company or relationships with the CXO layer)

I’ve been fed up with RFP for years because of the boilerplate and sourcing 20 companies just to make up a proper tender round, and eventually pitch the firm next door.

But we’ve been closing more lately by being the market leader in certain cases (or the agency next door for local branches, realistically speaking).

And I also pay attention to the pipeline and other signals:

– RB2B/SiteStop reports going to the corporate sites
– newsletter subscribers from the aforementioned companies
– staff members peaking into my LinkedIn profile
– internal insights by common friends indicating there’s an actual selection going

Basically, it’s relationships and brand-building in a nutshell.

Rising stars may go above and beyond to undercut just to plug a logo in. That happens a lot, and these legitimately take on new business.

(9 out of 10 times, these are grueling and pretty painful, squeezing the most out of the vendor with a pretty unever relationship.)

Our best relationships over the past decade have been mostly balanced out: based on trust, loyalty, commitment, expertise, mutual respect.

Anytime conversations around undercutting come up, I advise against that. If we try to squeeze in on one end, the same principle will apply on the other. And the overall results will struggle.

As a supplier, I give the heads up.

As a client, I pay full price and pay immediately. This is how I have full control and confidence of expecting 100% of what’s promised, compared to chasing discounts and Black Friday offers and hoping for excquisit quality.