Professional procurement consultants know all about what it takes to understand a business and their needs. This includes using insight and knowledge to come up with creative and practical solutions to help them achieve their goals and spend money wisely.
Their job is important for achieving minimal supply chain risk, mitigating significant financial impact, monitoring profitability as well as identifying the best possible values in the marketplace, and improving on the purchasing activities of a company through strategic sourcing.
Businesses instil trust in them to deliver quality procurement services that enable optimum business performance, but what specific traits does it take to be a professional procurement consultant and achieve this level of success?
As part of the role, you need to have the ability to think creatively, impact your clients for the better, lead your clients through positive change, be open to a constructive and collaborative environment and have the resilience to help clients achieve their goals, no matter what challenges are thrown your way.
Read on to discover the top five qualities you need to adopt in order to become a successful professional procurement consultant.
The Top 5 Traits of a Great Procurement Consultant
1. Creativity
As a procurement specialist, you need to have the ability to think laterally. The concept of lateral thinking means you have the creativity to use different approaches and strategies to come up with ideas and solutions, including looking at situations from different perspectives.
The aim here isn’t to focus solely on how much money you save on the project, but to analyze the creative spark that leads you there. Would you be able to use creativity to influence the client for the better? It’s about going beyond traditional logic and adopting a creative approach to procurement consultancy — thinking outside the box.
2. Influence
As a procurement consultant, you need to know how to influence both your client and their business for the better. You need to have the mindset of thinking positively about the great change you can make. This will help you introduce new, possibly challenging, ideas to help clients reach new levels of success.
Related Read: Everything You Need to Know About Procurement Consultants, Procurement Strategy and Procurement Services
3. Leadership
When we talk of leadership, this isn’t meant in a hierarchical sense. As a procurement consultant, you should be able to lead your clients and businesses through change, adopting a forward-thinking mentality and attitude, and instilling trust. Think: “This has to happen, and I’m going to find a way to make it work.”
4. Challenging
A great procurement consultant or strategist at Proxima has the ability to challenge up, down, and around an organization. This is how you create positive change. You’re not only able to be constructive and respectful in the way that you challenge colleagues and clients, but also to show humility when being challenged in return.
Related Read: How Undergrad Prepared Me For A Career In Procurement…Or Not
5. Resilience
Procurement consultants aren’t typically unanimously welcomed by clients and their businesses or teams. As they’re involved with trying to cut costs themselves where appropriate, they often see external procurement groups as invading their territory. In this type of situation, it’s important to have the resilience to take on challenges, disagreements and even animosity from clients, and to rise above the conflict to help them achieve their goals to the best of your abilities.
Why join Proxima?
At Proxima, we offer a wide range of procurement services to help businesses optimize their processes, reduce costs and increase profitability — helping our clients to spend money wisely. As such, we’re always open to looking for new talent to help us on our mission.
As a procurement consultant and specialist, you’re there to use your knowledge and skills to help our customers spend well, while also giving you plenty of opportunities to identify and unlock performance improvement.
Interested in joining Proxima? Reach out to a member of our team.
