As my shiny-suited salesman neighbour dug me in the ribs with his Personal Electronic Voting Module and whispered “Wake up! You’ve spilled your coffee” my instinctive reaction was to reach over and throttle him. His choice of words was so close to the “Wake up and smell the coffee” line that glib strategy consultants like to use, it seemed only reasonable to end his life quickly, if not humanely.
My hangover from the night before, the mood-altering blue lighting and the slightly too-warm auditorium had all conspired to send me into a state of blissful slumber, despite the riveting content. I clearly needed to practise my Sleeping With Both Eyes Open While Holding Coffee Upright skills. Either that or choose more interesting events to attend in future.
But, having been invited to join our commercial group’s semi-annual jaunt, held in a palatial conference centre in Arizona in the midst of an otherwise dismal autumn, it would have been churlish to decline.
I was right. The weather was sublime, the location awesome and the entertainment truly inspiring. It was just a shame about the conference.
As salesperson after salesperson got up on the stage to “celebrate a breakthrough in regional customer penetration” or “recognise outstanding online volume growth” I grew increasingly annoyed. Everyone is casting their sales net wider, everyone is selling online. Nothing convinced me that we’re doing any better than our glorious competition. Maybe that’s a question our CFO reserves just for purchasing. “Competitive advantage? Show me the facts!” is his normal riposte, something I desperately wanted him to ask right now.
While we’re on the subject of equal treatment, does purchasing get to visit such salubrious venues for festivals of self-adulation? No. Perhaps a night or two in some empty Mediterranean resort in the low season; all the coffee shops closed, beaches deserted and hotels filling rooms with worn-out old buyers like me. But we do have great conferences. By “great”, I mean we actually do some work and generally stick to drinking orange juice.
Frankley’s Law of Conference Identification states: If the location is up-market but the content weak, it’s a sales bash and get your drinks order in early. If, on the other hand, the location is a little sub-optimal, but the content is spot-on, listen intently for a bunch of buyers in the bar later on discussing bidding strategies. (OK, I was lying about the orange juice, but there still won’t be a long queue for the hard stuff!)
It seems to be a simple extension of the more enduring principle of Guess Which Side of the Table They Sit. Here’s how it works. Buyers are down-to-earth, blunt, process-driven introverts. Sellers are vaporous, transparent, opportunistic flirts. It’s nothing personal, but once you’ve worked it out, it takes just a few casual observations to be 100 per cent accurate in identification tests. HR and finance folks obviously don’t register on the same scale.
Try it in the car park. The sellers park out front in expensive cars. The buyers park in the rear in modest ones. The rationale is simple: buyers would never spend that much on a depreciating asset and park to make a quiet exit. Sellers have bigger cars and park to be seen. The really smart sellers (called “marketing”) have spaces reserved right by the entrance for them.
It works for job titles as well. Since salesmen gave up selling products or services and started flogging solutions or packages, their titles have mysteriously changed. No longer does the “sales manager – MRO” call on the “purchasing manager – MRO” Now it’s the “director of client solutions – managed facility services” calling on the same old “purchasing manager – MRO”. Titles are cheap; their newly branded wares rarely seem to be as economically priced.
As for the conference? Well, as our senior vice-president of global sales and customer solutions (or some such other person) wobbled across the podium to give the keynote speech, his opening line could not have been more appropriate. “Fellow road warriors, wake up and smell the coffee!” Just as well for him I wasn’t near the stage!
Jim Frankley (not his real name) leads a purchasing function in a Fortune Global 500 company. He can be contacted at frankleyspeaking@cpoagenda.com
