Procurement Memes

I’m going to share some real procurement stories that have happened to me, since we are on the theme of memes, I will let on what really happens in the day of a procurement manger. If you want to read the other version click here

In the early days of my career I was working at a global company and I let out a tender. I got the most surprising feedback from a supplier. Essentially he kindly declined the tender by writing me a long email along the lines of your organization X (not twitter) prefers dumb blondes and we only date brunettes. I can’t remember the content now as it was so long ago but I remember being really dumbstruck as in how can someone write such a nasty email. It then turned out that the person did want to do business with us, but they wanted to use shock tactics to get noticed. Needless to say it had the opposite effect! Does it make a difference if I say I was buying marketing services? I don’t think it should, such an encounter has never occurred again.

The other day an email notification automatically went out to alert a supplier of a tender opportunity and I got an email from a supplier saying “I couldn’t make the meeting, I was busy first thing in the morning, next time can you give me more notice, can we catch up tomorrow” A few crying emojis are needed. Firstly I didn’t ask for a meeting, an automated tender notification was issued to say the tender has gone live, so the person jumped to the wrong conclusion and assumed that they could have a meeting the next day. Howling laughs J

I remember one tender I did, I can’t remember the commodity but again this was in the early days of my career, the supplier didn’t make it pass the PQQ and threw their toys out of the pram. I recall there was a legitimate reason on why they didn’t go through but I was sent a bullying letter saying I will complain to your CEO. I said go ahead!

I had a supplier who came in to a meeting really aggressively, essentially the client was saying that the work wasn’t good enough and they had to re-do it. This was one of the most shocking meetings I had, as the supplier was shaking with anger and fury at how his team could be deemed as not providing work up to scratch. Normally to a certain extent the customer is always right, not in this case, the supplier was letting off steam in a style never seen before.

Here is another story, I once had a stakeholder who moaned a lot, they thought that because they were the client they could do as they please, I think I was even told that I wasn’t doing enough to make the supplier perform.   Well, I do believe in being reasonable, maybe I’m to amenable for someone who buys services for a living, anyway the stakeholder got what they wished for and the old account manager was swapped out and the same thing happened again, the supplier was never good enough, well it turns out this account manager knows how to fight back, he put an informal complaint in mentioning the bullying ways of the client (not procurement) and said boundaries had to be drawn.

I went for an interview and I won’t name names but the person turned round to me and said in some negotiations these can be nasty, outburst and we cut our suppliers down to the bone, can you be aggressive in your style, or how do you handle aggressive suppliers. I didn’t get that job, but neither did I want it, culture fit is sometimes more important.

I hope you enjoyed the tidbits of real life experiences I’ve had, now let’s roll out the red carpet for the procurement memes.