1. Show Procurement’s Value
How to
Show Procurement’s Value
You, Too, Can communicate
like a marketer

2. What’s the Problem? What Can Help? How To Make the Shift
overview
What’s the Problem?
What Can Help?
How To Make the Shift
Tips and Resources

3. What’s The Problem?

4. Our mindset We’re ethically- and legally- minded
Our mentality focuses on “doing the right thing”
“Saving money and reducing risk is doing my job”
We are ethically- and legally-minded people, so traditionally our mentality focuses on doing the right thing (using our contracts) and being humbly behind the scenes – “saving money and reducing risk is my job”

5. Our Customers Online shopping changed the game
They’re being advertised to every day at home
our “customers” are used to easily comparing pricing in easy to use online environments. We’re not there yet so they’re frustrated.

6. Our Management What we do is more visible in the institution
There’s increasing pressure to prove our worth
Procurement has become more visible to management, especially as we embrace revenue-generating contracts. Our VPs are networking and asking questions. And as students become more actively involved in asking questions about our contracts.

7. Pressure
Both our customers and our management are asking us to show them what we do
Equals increased pressure from above and below (people who don’t understand what we do) to show our value and direct spend to show savings

8. What Can Help?

11. Note: these are obviously for different purposes, but the point is to just think about how many walls of text we push out to our customers when we want them to know or do something

12. Marketer Procurement How we Communicate Exact detail Legal language
Lots of text
Marketer
High-level
Easy language
Visuals
How we Communicate
Neither way is better, they just have different purposes
What are those purposes?
Procurement’s purpose with communication: to fully express how a business relationship will work and to detail and protect from risk. Marketer’s: to persuade, change minds, sell something – to say “I have thought about what you need and here is why what I have will work for you”

13. We Need to Stay Relevant
If we want to be seen as the vital part of our operations that we are, we must shift the way we communicate.
Shift
Note that this is a call to action! On that note Here are some simple tips with resources that anyone at any level in procurement can use to up their game

14. How to Make the shift

15. The Basics Audience Who are you talking to? What do they want?
Are there sub- groups (segments)?
From a yachting magazine. This says, I know who you are, what compels you, what you want, and where you are.
What are ways we can define our audiences and understand them?
Outreach, active listening
User groups
Written out diagram

16. The Basics Value Proposition
How is what you’re offering going to benefit your audience?
Their proposition is clearly stated: we offer everything opposite of what’s terrible about riding in a cab.

17. The Basics Call to Action What do you want your audience to do?
From “Look Inside Now” to “Act now” to “Order Today” this is begging you to do something.

18. The Basics Tone How do you communicate with your audience?
@Starbucks
Starbucks is more formal, while Wendy’s is funny, casual, and sometimes mean to its audience. Why do both work? Might they have different audiences?
@Wendy’s

19. The Basics Channel Where do you communicate with your audience?
For which messages?
, website, in person? What’s an example of where you’d use different channels for different messages?

20. The Basics Reach How do you know who listened?
How do you know if your communication worked?
Common metrics: opens, clicks, web hits, number of attendees at meetings. More importantly, did anything change? (depends on what your value proposition is) Is there a way to measure this?

21. Practive
Scenarios

22. Tips and Resources

23. Pro-Tips We Learn Visually.
HubSpot studies show that people “have the ability to recall 65% of the visual content that they see almost three days later.” Source.
Readers spend more time looking at images than they do reading information. Source.
When given directions with text and illustrations, people perform 323% better than those who just receive text. Source.
Use visuals to express or enhance an idea, or to attract attention
Here’s some study-backed stats about how we learn visually (the fact that I cherry picked these means I’m spinning information…like a marketer!
Even if they’re not backed by firm science, what do you look at from this below first? Visuals are also really effective for showing processes.

24. Pro-Tips
Align your message to your department and institution’s mission and branding
This is part of the UC system’s impact report. While it’s text heavy (it’s a report!), it has visual elements, is well organized, and note how the “results” and “total benefit” are presented: they clearly report on what the UC procurement mission emphasizes: cost savings, sustainability, collaboration.

25. Show a process on your web site Annual operational report
Pro-Tips
Show a process on your web site
Annual operational report
Tell contract users about a new feature or savings
Meet with a group of customers and find out what’s important to them
Design a handout about your department or a new initiative
Where to start

26. Pro-Tips
If your institution has a communications department/person, collaborate!
Know your institution’s mass communications policies and branding guidelines
Institutional communications
Collaboration with communications could mean just a line of communication, offering to help with contracts, or asking for advice

27. Pro-Tips
Bullet points can help visually break up text (but keep it short)
The Rule of Three
Image use rights
Passive voice
Some subjects require complex detail. Consider:
Targeting detail to a relevant segment
Making detail easy to navigate
Starting with a summary
Other tips to get you started

28. Constant Contact / Mail Chimp Istockphoto.com (and others)
Pro-Tips
Canva.com
Create infographics and visuals
Constant Contact / Mail Chimp
marketing
Istockphoto.com (and others)
Quality stock images
Other links? Like advice?
Free or low-cost resources

29. Thank you. Shannon Wampler University of Virginia saw2w@Virginia
Thank you! Shannon Wampler University of
Now go do something.