In case you missed yesterday’s Next Level Purchasing Association monthly member’s webinar yesterday, I thought I’d post a few highlights here. And there were many highlights due to the fantastic presentation from ClearEdge Partners‘ Tom Demarco. Some excerpts from Tom’s sage advice…
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- On incumbent supplier’s inflexibility with pricing: “They know you won’t leave them unless you’ve kicked the tires with someone else.”
- On the three things an organization needs to do if it wants to have any leverage when negotiating with IT suppliers: “Play early, have supplier intelligence, [and] act as one team.” If you deploy these negotiation strategies, you will be “a shark against a shark” not a guppy against a shark.
- On what you should train your IT counterparts to say to suppliers when they ask what are the business drivers prompting the procurement process: “I really don’t know. I’m just here to validate the technology.”
- On the goal of a salesperson: “Know you’ve won the transaction before negotiating.”
- On why salespeople are so adept at controlling sales processes: “US enterprises spent $6 billion training sales professionals in 2007.” (Source cited: ES Research Group, 2008 Sales Training Vendor Guide)
- On testimony given by a large IT firm during anti-trust hearings: The CEO said that they charge what they think their customers are willing to pay.
- On the need to structure the procurement process before it begins: “You have to start early. You cannot start at the time that you need the technology.”
- On clues that salespeople look for in order to resist procurement negotiation tactics: “If I know you have a $3 million problem, you’ll never get me down to $50,000.”
- On why procurement departments need to have a negotiation plan for their big IT suppliers: “Almost every supplier that views your transaction as strategic to them has a playbook on you.”
Keep an eye out for the August NLPA webinar to be announced soon! Not a member? Click here to join – it’s FREE!
