Chapter Four | Purchasing Process | Local to Global | Chapter 4 of 6
To give you an idea of how weak the buying process got, I remember a call from Winnipeg by a guy getting quotes on 500 pencils. I told him his time was worth more than the time he’ll spend on the process and suggested that he should pick a vendor and go with it. His response was to threaten to have me blacklisted for such blasphemy. The lesson there was that the process in government is often important than the reason for it; even when it is more important than promotional products.
Another example I was made aware of was when civil servants had to choose consultants that technically passed but whose greatest asset was they were cheap.
After that time, government business went to being part of a necessary mix of clients instead of a focus on excellence. While there were certainly a lot of good promotional companies in Ottawa and I had competition, a clear industry to target was no longer here. Sales for most of the teen years were lower than they had been since I started and going backward was perhaps the hardest lesson I ever had to deal with. It was not like losing a job, it was a sudden shift to the reality that globalization and technology had undermined my value. Not worthless, however, but with a challenging reinvention road ahead.
Brougham sells on margin and globalization meant we were selling less expensive products from overseas. Buyers bought what they needed for less. We used to sell products that had North American manufacturing costs that overnight dropped to China costs. However, the biggest game-changer was and is communication technology. I’ll never forget the day when I realized I was competing against a German company, with an office in Vancouver, for products made in China. I used to compete against the guys down the road. The change had already come but when civil servants lost their discretionary buying power was when it caught up with Brougham. When the stability of a solid market disappeared, it was time to change whether I wanted it or not.
So much of the teen years were about not giving up and working to keep it going. It was about trying to compete against technology with unrealistic efforts like building a custom website that was competing against global companies. It was about trying to do my regular job while I learned about a new way to work. It was about trying to manage people while keeping sales going the way I knew worked.
It was not adapting fast enough to change while developing new techniques to find clients that appreciated good service and reliably fair pricing. It was clinging to relationship selling and news flash… it still works. In fact, where it works best is with customers that can afford it. I mean why not? If a supplier is going to work to make your decision-making easier and back up everything with better guarantees, then why not use them?
The truth is that those global companies are selling with technology, have expensive shareholders and executives, and while they list at competitive prices they don’t sell for less. No sound business does unless you’re Walmart - a business whose model was to undermine communities and businesses by being cheap.