Purchasing Manager Frustration

A pal of mine used to be a buyer (I know, how could I…) and I was asking him his thoughts on what people might think in terms of a buying process for a product of mine.

As we chatted, he revealed his pet hate with reps.  He’d often need to conduct beauty pagents with several vendors (those were the days) and at the end of each meeting, he’d purposely give each rep a list of pretty much the same things to get back to him with.

These were pretty banal.  Particular brochures, lead time stats, price books, customer list.  The usual flannel.

Yet he was flabbergasted at how the seemingly most simple of requests would go undone.  He always favoured reps that said they’d do something, and did it.  Preferrably quickly.  Wouldn’t we all…