Episode show notes
“I think we don’t always realise that we have a reputation with our suppliers, just like a company will have a consumer brand.”
Consumer branding is a standard aspect of any business that’s well documented – lesser considered but equally important, however, is the prospect of your supplier branding.
Presenting yourself to potential suppliers for a partnership is a skill, one in which Cameron Holder is highly proficient.
Having recently departed his role as Head of Commercial & Procurement at Nando’s, Cameron joins Martin this week to share their approach to supplier relationships, how to win over pickier suppliers, and how to nurture a relationship that works for everyone.
This episode of Talent Talks covers:
- How supplier branding plays a huge role in the partnerships you can make
- Ways to win over the suppliers who may be in demand, and are more picky about who they work with
- Nando’s’ journey to taking a more consistent baseline approach to engaging with suppliers
- The human element of procurement, and avoiding the conflation of being nice with being ‘soft’
Episode highlights
“I think we don’t always realise that we have a reputation with our suppliers, just like a company will have a consumer brand. And I think, more recently, we’ve got kind of hints around the fact that companies also have employer brands,” – 2:15 – Cameron Holder
“Procurement people haven’t always been taught how to think about what the supplier wants from the supplier side of things, because we’re taught other skills.” – 4:15 – Cameron Holder
“The first thing is about engaging suppliers. I don’t think this is as much of a problem with smaller companies, I think it’s a bit of a pitfall for larger companies that we have become so corporate, we’ve forgotten the human element in dealing with people.” – 6:25 – Cameron Holder
“Nando’s was brilliant at engaging with suppliers, when we thought about it. Our problem was that we were wildly inconsistent about it. So a supplier’s experience of people was very, very different depending on the people that they dealt with.” – 11:50 – Cameron Holder
“People really do business with people they like. To translate that into creating procurement value, it’s about saying: if a company doesn’t like you but they want to do business with you, then the only thing you can talk about is the paycheck.” – 15:35 – Cameron Holder
“The only way a relationship with a supplier improves is when you can improve it over time. It’s having those difficult conversations. It’s working out what you can do about it. It’s making a plan, coming back in a few months and checking, did we actually follow up with the plan?” – 19:55 – Cameron Holder
“You have this preconception from inside a company sometimes, that if we’re nice to people, they might take advantage of us, or they might think that they can kind of slack off a little bit. What I’ve learned is, that doesn’t have to be true. You can be nice, still be commercially firm, and be very clear about what you’re doing.” – 27:25 – Cameron Holder
“Creativity and innovation happens within those relationships, and I learned this from my marketing procurement thing because my biggest background is being a marketing procurement person – you can’t get creative with somebody that you don’t like. ” – 30:05 – Cameron Holder
Links & References
- Cameron Holder, Former Head of Commercial & Procurement at Nando’s
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameronholder/
- Martin Smith, Founder & Director of Talent Drive
https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinsmith2009/
