Over the last few years, procurement professionals have grown used to a growing number of challenges like supply chain disruption, inflation, and uncertain markets. Unsurprisingly, Deloitte’s 2023 CPO Survey indicated that 70% of CPOs feel that risk has increased significantly over the last few years. Among their top high-risk concerns?
Talented procurement professionals.
RED BEAR’s Mike Slomke, a retired Fortune 100 Chief Procurement Officer and RED BEAR leader, recently sat down with Supply Chain Management Review for a Q&A to discuss the challenges of attracting, retaining, and developing procurement professionals and how procurement negotiation training can help CPOs tackle their biggest talent problems.
The Current State of Procurement Talent
Historically, the industry has relied on procurement professionals with long tenures to maintain a deep bench of skilled procurement talent. However, new challenges arise as many of these professionals reach retirement and are replaced by less seasoned team members — who may have shorter tenures.
As the makeup of procurement teams evolves, challenges range from attracting the right new talent, keeping new and seasoned team members engaged, and ultimately setting procurement team members up for long-term career success.
This is where negotiation skills training shines.
In the recent Supply Chain Management Review Q&A, RED BEAR’s Mike Slomke shared:
“Developing your team into world-class negotiators is more important than ever. The benefits of this approach include results like better negotiators who deliver improved business results, demonstrating your commitment to the development and long-term success of your team, keeping your talent engaged, and expanding your team’s skills to better face today’s procurement challenges.”
The Impact of Negotiation Training on Talent Retention
Procurement leaders often focus on the proven business impacts of negotiation skills training like cost savings, vendor accountability, and optimized working capital. An effective talent strategy must also recognize the value of negotiation training.
As Slomke shared:
“The most pressing challenges in attracting and retaining procurement talent include fierce competition for skilled negotiators, providing a clear and meaningful procurement strategy and metrics, and the frequently unfulfilled need for continuous professional development.”
Here are a few tangible benefits of negotiation training on talent retention:
Improved Employee Engagement
Today’s procurement professionals want to feel like they are moving forward, continuously improving, and expanding their contribution to bottom-line results. The alternative is stagnation — the kiss of death to employee engagement.
Building momentum for employee engagement isn’t a one-time effort. It requires long-term, continuous investments like customized negotiation skills training. When training is tailored to an individual or company and focuses on relevant solutions, employees build a connection to solving their company’s challenges.
Improved Employee Satisfaction
Today’s employees want to feel connected to their organization’s goals and be a part of achieving success. Negotiation skills training helps procurement professionals feel aligned with their procurement organization and provides them with a guide to understand how their actions contribute to results. They’ll also feel better-equipped to face modern procurement challenges head on.
Improved Work Culture
Only 20% of the workforce believe that leadership is actively involved in their professional growth and development. Just like employee engagement and satisfaction, an improved work culture often follows when leaders show they care about the professional development of their individual team members.
Demonstrating an appreciation of your team’s career growth and providing opportunities to achieve that growth is important to fostering a supportive work culture.
As Slomke shares:
“Leading organizations must foster a supportive work culture and provide opportunities for career growth by developing and deploying the advanced processes, skills, and tools required for today’s top performers to succeed. Addressing these challenges ensures that talented professionals are attracted to and remain committed to delivering impactful business results.”
Enhanced Reputation
New talent often considers factors like a company’s reputation for leveraging innovative technology and processes when evaluating new job opportunities. Today, new talent is often looking for forward-thinking teams that leverage a cutting-edge approach.
Procurement leaders need an answer when new talent asks how their team leverages AI or other technologies. However, this doesn’t mean abandoning the all-critical human factor of negotiation.
Teams that invest in cutting-edge negotiation training can start their team on implementing a process that balances human expertise and the productivity that comes from technology like AI.
As Slomke shares:
“Leading organizations prioritize process excellence before applying technology. Technology is highly effective at retaining, recalling, searching, and transmitting large volumes of data quickly. But technology’s role is to supplement, not supplant, the underlying business process to deliver value by improving the speed, accuracy, and throughput of that process. If technology is applied to a poor process, it will only accelerate the delivery of poor results.
Negotiation is Procurement’s most critical business process to deliver value to the business. An advanced negotiation process combined with cutting-edge negotiation skills are required before enhancing the negotiation process with technology tools.”
Negotiation Skills: Investing in Your Team for the Long-term
Attracting and retaining procurement talent will continue to be a significant risk factor faced by procurement leaders for the foreseeable future. Investing in procurement negotiation training is a key step to address the talent acquisition challenges.
When asked what was the single most impactful thing Slomke did in 17 years as a Chief Procurement Officer, Slomke shared:
“A world-class negotiation training program, process, and skills to create a team of world-class negotiators. This approach leveled the playing field between my procurement professionals and the highly trained and highly skilled sales professionals they negotiate with daily. It equipped them to win!”
Check out the full Supply Chain Management Review article for more of Slomke’s thoughts on talent acquisition, retention, and upskilling.
