Supplier Hunting. Go out and find your Suppliers (not the other way around)

Today we want to talk about Supplier Hunting applied to large organizations and demystify the concept of

"I'm big, the best will come to me"

As we explained in one of our previous articles, one of the biggest challenges for emerging suppliers is to promote themselves to large companies. Vendors have to face the cold cabin of entering the purchasing portal and leaving their data. Many are not even attracted to the idea of doing so.

The Nature of Vendors

All of us who have been on the sales side of the supplier side know that salespeople are a specimen. I like to use the shark analogy. We need to see blood to move. This causes sales teams to focus their efforts on targets that are achievable.

It's worth remembering that salespeople rotate through companies and that makes their objectives very short-term, which affects future sales planning. This explains why it is so complex for a factory to take the time to complete a company registration or successfully execute an approval process.

The Vendor's Brain

Salespeople have 8 to 9 hours a day to accomplish their goals, so they will primarily invest their hours in those processes where they can have a return in the short term. That is, in potentials where they see a real opportunity to close business.

So, just as organizations must go out and find the best talent to attract to their company, they should go out and find qualified prospective suppliers and persuade them to invest time in registering and preparing bids.

Remember, to compete for their attention and get a few hours from the vendor, without promising business.

But expanding the list of qualified suppliers can help you mitigate the risk of depending on only a few, and encourage competition to improve your buying position.

How to do effective Supplier Hunting

1. Build lists of potential suppliers.
2. Contact the company to identify the executive that serves your region or use Outbound techniques used in Marketing.
3. Sell your company: Yes, you heard us right! Promote your company to convince vendors because you would be a great customer.
4. Nurture your regular suppliers with processes and best practices, using email marketing
5. Analyze suppliers through open RFI-RFP processes, to learn in detail about their capabilities and pricing levels.
6. Choose the best. Build a short list and invite those who qualify to register with your company and participate in formal procurement processes in your e-procurement.

By the way, the Babelus platform fully automates this Supplier Hunting process by providing supplier data by category including the contact person, nurturing them about the company and attracting them to your account within Babelus to provide information so you can get a short list.