Selling to procurement

1-day in-company training

As a sales professional you cannot avoid buyers. It’s that simple. The buyer is the one person you need to know better than anyone if you want to be successful. You won’t achieve results by applying sales tricks. As a sales professional, you have to be willing to go one step further. Wanting to understand what goes on in the buyers’ mind. What is the strategy behind the tricks they use. Only then can you be one step ahead of the other. Learning to think like a buyer. That is the purpose of this training. I guide you through the mysterious world of the buyer and the buying strategies that are applied in a one-day training course.

4-8 people

1 Day

Anywhere in the world

What can you expect?

During this interactive and practical training, you will step into the buyer’s mind. You’ll do this together with a small group of 4 to 8 colleagues. This way, we ensure the right dynamics and the confidentiality necessary for a training to pay off. The training can be given in Dutch or in English, whatever suits you best.

You’ll learn

» To analyse the buyer and the market
» To analyse yourself as a sales professional
» To determine the balance of power between both sides
» To define a sales strategy that actually works for you

You’ll learn

» A personalised action plan based on your own real-life situation
» The Workbook ‘Selling to procurement’
» My book ‘The Other Side of Sales’
» 1-on-1 follow-up after the training (2 x 30 minutes)

What participants say:

“Extremely valuable to gain insights from the other side of the table”

“Very recommendable for key account managing”

“Mark has a wide experience in different criteria of negotiations”

“Very interesting fact to learn more about ‘how to influence a customer’ in our daily business”

Real-life examples

The challenge

A key account manager struggled to sell extra volumes to a customer. They had been doing business for years and the volumes were the same every year. He wanted the business to grow, however he faced resistance from the buyer every time. Even price cuts didn't seem to help.

The solution

Together with him, I analysed the buyer to find out what drove this particular buyer. It turned out that it was not about price at all, but all about managing risks. This buyer wanted to spread the volume over several suppliers in order not to be too dependent on a small number of suppliers. Once that was clear, we were able to create a good pricing strategy. We may not have been able to increase volumes, but we did increase profitability.

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The challenge

My customer had the constant feeling that she was being put under pressure by the buyer during negotiations. Price reductions were expected every year, although this was not financially feasible because the margins were simply not there.

De oplossing

It was clear that the buyer had targets to achieve, but at the expense of the seller. Together we analysed the buyer and the situation, whereby we could conclude that the buyer really had nowhere else to go. The seller therefore had more power in the relationship than the buyer suggested. From that moment on, the negotiations ran a lot smoother and cooperation was possible on the basis of a healthy margin.

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Want to know how I work?

Every situation is unique and therefore requires its own, unique approach. It is always important to study all available information carefully. Based on this, you can determine your plan of action by means of good preparation.