Why Your Buyers Aren’t Getting Better
Businesses ask me quite regularly to recommend training courses for their buyers. Usually the frame is something like “we’ve noticed our procurement team isn’t as good as it needs to be, so we’re thinking about training”.
Which is a reasonable instinct, and sometimes it is the right one. When I ask a few more questions though, it is usually not really a training problem. Or at least, training on its own won’t fix it.
The buyer isn’t underperforming because they don’t know how to run a tender. In most cases they know that well enough. They are underperforming because they are running fifteen tenders at once with no prioritisation, or because their spend visibility is so patchy that they can’t build a category strategy against it, or because the last three sourcing recommendations they made got overturned by an operational stakeholder who preferred the incumbent. Sending them on a five-day category management course won’t change any of that.
The gap between what training teaches and what buyers actually need
Procurement training, done well, covers the theory of good practice. Category management frameworks. Sourcing methodology. Negotiation technique. Contract fundamentals. Supplier relationship management. It is useful content and, at the right stage of somebody’s career, it moves the needle.
The catch is that most of the buyers who go on training already know most of the theory. They have been in procurement roles for years. They have run tenders. What they need isn’t more theory. It is the operational conditions that let them apply the theory they already have, and the coaching to build the judgement calls that theory can’t teach.
Training gives you frameworks. It doesn’t give you the confidence to push back on an FD who wants to sign the contract on Friday. It doesn’t teach you how to have the difficult conversation with the operations director whose favourite supplier isn’t the best choice. It doesn’t build the internal credibility that lets you influence a decision before it has already been made.
Those things come from experience, from a manager who invests time in developing them, and from a business context that lets buyers stretch into more demanding work than they have done before. If any of those three is missing, no amount of training will make the difference the business is hoping for.
Where training works, and where it doesn’t
Training does work in specific situations. When a buyer is genuinely new to a technique they will need, formal training accelerates the learning. When you need to move a team onto a common framework so they are all doing sourcing the same way, training is a decent vehicle. When you are building capability against a specific regulatory or technical requirement, training is the fastest route.
Where it doesn’t really work is as a broad answer to team performance. A buyer who is decent but not landing well won’t come back from a two-day course transformed. They will come back with a bit more confidence in the terminology and no more real ability to hold their ground when they get back to their day job on Wednesday morning.
Businesses that see training as the answer to a capability gap usually end up doing several rounds of it before they realise the gap didn’t close. By which point everybody’s spent money and nobody’s got noticeably better at their job.
What builds capability
The things that make procurement teams stronger are quieter and take longer, but they work.
Structure that matches the workload. If you have got three buyers running eight categories each with no prioritisation, no amount of training will make them strategic. Sorting the workload comes first. Which categories genuinely need strategic attention. Which can run on maintenance. Where the specialisation should sit. Which handovers between team members are wasting time. That kind of design work sits under procurement strategy rather than under training.
Systems that support the work. Spend data that is clean enough to build category strategies against. A contract register that is actually current. A workflow that catches new sourcing activity early rather than as a fait accompli. None of this is training, but without it, buyers can’t do the work training teaches them to do.
Coaching from somebody who has done it. A more experienced procurement leader working alongside the team on live sourcing activity. Watching a negotiation, then debriefing what happened. Reviewing a category strategy before it goes to the board and pointing out the questions somebody senior will ask. This is where judgement gets built, and it’s the thing training can’t replace.
Stretch, with a safety net. Buyers who get better are usually the ones who take on something slightly harder than they’ve done before, with somebody senior around to catch them if they get stuck. Consistently doing the same category work at the same seniority level for years doesn’t develop anybody.
Once those things are in place, targeted procurement training that fills specific gaps in the way each team member needs. Which is a very different exercise from sending everybody on the same five-day course because it seemed like a good idea in the training budget review.
The honest question
If you are thinking about sending your team on training because performance isn’t where you would want it to be, the honest first question is what specifically the team can’t do that you need them to. If the answer is a real capability gap that training will close, invest in it. If the answer is broader, that they are stretched, or they are not senior enough for the work you are asking them to do, or they don’t have the context to challenge stakeholders effectively, the training budget is probably going in the wrong place.
That is often not the answer businesses want to hear, because training is easier to buy than the alternatives. It is the option that fits into a budget cycle. Fixing the structure, systems and coaching around a team is a longer piece of work, and one that needs somebody with the procurement governance experience to lead it rather than a supplier who sells courses.
If you are weighing that up and want a straight view on where the actual gap sits, happy to talk it through.