What does love have to do with corporate procurement?

According to Natalia Pickett, a whole lot. 

Natalia is Head of Procurement at Keolis Amey, a global transportation company focused on public transport, as well as a non-Executive Director for Woodenshark. In a recent episode of The Sourcing Hero podcast, host Kelly Barner spoke with Natalia about her leadership journey in corporate procurement and some of the most important lessons she’s learned along the way and is now sharing with others through her mentorship and service work.

Savings, risk, compliance, sustainability, and… love?

Of all the concepts associated with the procurement function, love probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But, says Natalia, love actually plays a big role in corporate procurement and can even determine the success or failure of a particular initiative, partnership, or program. In other words, love can have a significant impact on procurement outcomes and on the business.

“Procurement needs to create an atmosphere of openness, partnership, and collaboration – basically, love – so their relationships can be fruitful, and we can achieve innovation and efficiency,” said Natalia.

Relationship building is much like matchmaking, said Natalia, with procurement facilitating a mutually beneficial back-and-forth among stakeholders. But, to do that well, there needs to be a certain level of what she calls “chemistry” between internal clients and suppliers. Without that chemistry, the collaboration – and the business – will ultimately be exposed to a greater amount of volatility and risk.

Building chemistry between clients and suppliers

What should procurement do if there’s no chemistry, no ‘spark’ between the client and the supplier? Is the relationship doomed to fail from the start? It’s certainly a warning that the business should be alert to before making a long-term commitment to the supplier, but there are a few strategies Natalia suggests to build a stronger relationship from the outset:

Hold a “chemistry meeting”

Before tender exercises, Natalia likes to hold “chemistry meetings,” which are basically Q&A sessions between the client and the suppliers. For these sessions to be successful, Natalia limits them only to account managers, not salespeople.

Natalia observes the nature of communication and collaboration between the stakeholders – are they talking?How productive are the conversations? Do they need help facilitating positive communication?

The emphasis in these sessions is less about discussing specific evaluation metrics or details of the tender and more about “creating an atmosphere of trust where people can work together and discuss the good, bad, or ugly.”

Prioritize high-priority relationships

Natalia suggests only holding chemistry meetings for business-critical purchases and suppliers. When a purchase is key to the business or comes with safety implications, these sessions should be required. “If we are buying something business - or safety - critical,” she said, “absolutely, there should be 100% trust between the business and suppliers. If it’s safety-critical, for example, somebody can literally die if our communication doesn’t work. So, it’s paramount.”

Check your ego at the door

When procurement is trying to make a good match between client and supplier, but it just doesn’t seem to be ‘clicking’ for either party, there are usually a few common reasons why, says Natalia. First, “personal ego, predominantly.” This can lead to a toxic power imbalance that “never ends well.” 

Dividing procurement’s affection between internal clients versus suppliers

The type of investment that procurement needs to make to build a strong, productive relationship with internal stakeholders is both similar to and a little different from the approach they should use with suppliers, says Natalia.

“With internal clients, particularly during the budgeting process, we need to invest time with them, understand how their budgets work, what their priorities are, and in general build personal relationships with them and become friends,” she said. The stronger and more personal the relationship is between procurement and the internal client, the more they will trust the match and support procurement’s recommendations.

With the supplier, relationship building is still a priority, “but it’s a little different because there is a different sort of leverage at play,” said Natalia. “They are outside the company, so we can’t necessarily say as many things or be quite as transparent, but there also has to be some type of healthy communication or basis for trust there.”

Love in action

Procurement knows that relationship building is a key part of the function. For practitioners who want to come from a place of love when establishing trust, collaboration, and strong communication with their stakeholders, what are some ways they can put that in action right away? It’s easier than you think, says Natalia, and the benefits can be far greater than you expect:

“Today, just call your top ten account managers and have a chat. Ask them how they are, if they’re doing ok, or if they want to meet for coffee and talk. It’s not about performance, it’s just human-to-human interaction. There’s nothing heroic about it. It’s just being human. Just talk to them.”

Just talking, as Natalia calls it, might not seem heroic, but when you approach a conversation with the best of intentions and with authentic, genuine interest in the other person – one might say, with love – a little bit of that love can go a very long way for the business.

For more insight into the world of corporate procurement, listen to Natalia's full episode here: