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Reasons why Procurement does not call you are:

REASON 1:  They want to buy time.

Procurement Managers might have up to 20 contracts to renew at any one time (each with internal paper work attached to allow sign off) and the workload is too high to deal with everything at ones, so they will call those whose contract they are dealing with that day. By not returning sales calls they attempt to stay more in control of what they do when. It is also possible that they are waiting for the client to return their own call, because it is best practice to coordinate responses out to sales people.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Check with your client that they are not holding up any questions posed to them by Procurement. Ask your client to check with Procurement where in the queue your contract is.  If you know your contract is being reviewed - stop calling for status updates - and let the Procurement Manager do his/her job. 

REASON 2: They need to understand the client's needs first, before being able to represent them in talks with sales people.

Procurement, unfortunately, often gets asked to be involved very late in the sales cycle. So by the time the contract hits their desk time is short but the buyer needs to carry out internal due diligence before commencing discussions with the sales person. Procurement checks whether the client is authorized to buy the product, has the budget to do so and that no alternative product is available.  These are all internal discussions and there is nothing to say to the sales person until this is complete. Rather than explaining their internal process, the buyer prefers to let the sales person wait.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Never present a contract to your client without first having spoken to Procurement. If during sales discussions the Procurement Team is not mentioned or involved  - ask to be introduced.

REASON 3: They are not interested in buying.

Unless there is a client with a need (and budget), procurement will not commence discussions with sales organisations. They cannot help with cold calls, will not make recommendations or give out the names of people in IT (mainly because they don't have enough technical knowledge). Even if a client wants to buy but there is no proven budget, procurement will often not commence any discussions as they know that it is unlikely that a purchase will be made.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Assuming you have a client with a need and you are already speaking to them, make enquiries about available budget. If they are replacing another supplier with yourself ask when payments to the other supplier are stopping (if your client is tied in there might be an overlap on costs and the budget is not really available).   

REASON 4: Negotiation Tactic

Some buyers will take the passive aggressive approach and stop talking when they don't get want they want. If you are in a legal dispute the buyer might be instructed by their legal team to take this approach. In reality, legal disputes are rare and it is more likely that the buyer wants to show their muscle.

Ask for very clear instructions on what it is that the buyer wants (e.g. drop your price is too vague) and make as assessment on whether you feel the threat is real (check with your client what they think). Unfortunately aggressive behaviour can be a sign of immaturity or bravado. If your buyer is not very senior you may want to escalate to their management team or your client. If they are the Chief Procurement Officer, find someone in their team to try and build a more cooperative relationship with.

I hope the above examples have been of use.

If you want to comment, please email me at wanda@amycus.com

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