I recently became interested in the issues that arise when selling to corporate procurement departments. A legal process outsourcing company that I'm associated with is cracking this nut, and the differences between the sales processes are night-and-day.

Like any good writer, my first step was the internet, where I saw several back-and-forth postings expressing lots of frustration from each side of that relationship. From the sales side, there were articles pointing out how a procurement department can, in the blink of an eye, render useless years of relationship-building and good customer service. The articles assert that the personal touch that many sales folks strive gets reduced to a spreadsheet - and "quality relationship" generally isn't measured - or at least doesn't count for near as much as a penny here or there.

From the procurement side, a different frustration is echoed. Here, good people with solid processes and procedures are subverted constantly, as sales people continue to go around them to their corporate "champions," seeking to curry influence and gain powerful allies. When this happens, the procurement manager often finds herself in negotations with her own clients about why BigCo's product or service isn't as good as GiantCo's, even if their box seats at the game were better.

Interestingly, short of the whining, there was little in the way of useful information. No suggestions on relationship building across company lines, no suggestions as to how to improve the RFP responses, no suggestions on how to work with each group of customers to improve the overall deal. Just a good bit of ranting.

My favorite read was Tibor Shanto's blog, "The Pipeline," where he used the word "chumpion" to describe the business-side person who wants to champion a product, but doesn't have the political clout to "get past procurement." Look at those words - "chumpion" - the chump, and "get past procurement" - as if the procurement department is an internal roadblock (which many think it is).

Anyhow, the information (or lack thereof) available in the marketplace tells a story - one of mistrust and, dare I say, contempt for the very people that one must deal with. After all, sales people aren't going away anytime soon. And procurement departments will continue to reach up the value chain and seek to control the purchasing of items once seen as discretionary. The question is how to get these two groups with diametrically-opposed interests on the same page.