Who Deserves More Training: Sales or Procurement?

Authored by Claire Sexton

If you haven’t been keeping up with Maggie Slowik’s updates about the Procurement Leaders Mini MBA series, you definitely should. In her latest post, she cited a remarkable statistic: “An experienced sales representative could get nearly four times as much training as their procurement counterparts.”
Skills training in our industry is often debated and talked about – but few companies ever dedicate enough time, resources or budget to the training that inevitably will increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your procurement team.

Three things holding procurement back from making the investment in training include:

• A lack of understanding of what the team truly needs. Without a proper skills assessment, procurement leaders will never grasp where each staff member is struggling. This initial, time-consuming step is often the first thing that halts an investment in training. 

• User resistance. Procurement is finally at a crossroads. In an industry where approaches and processes have largely remained the same for 20+ years, change is hard. In an effort to be more efficient, users may feel ‘replaceable.’ 

•  There was no continuous plan. One-time training at the start of a technology rollout is a necessity, but training must be built into every quarter and consistently reassessed. 

Do you feel your team has received enough training? What do you want to learn more about?

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