Share The Love - Save The Cash

All of my colleagues are bugging me for a special mention in my blog. For some reason they have likened this page to some sort of pirate radio station that plays house and garage music whilst some seventeen year old muppet shouts out the names of his friends with his mouth so close to the microphone that you can actually hear what he had for breakfast. So for those people – “BIG SHOUT OUT TO THE MANIA MASSIVE – MEENA THE MUNCHKIN, BIG DAVY DAVE, LISA THE LUSH AND THE PINK PRINCESS SOPHIA G – WORD UP AND NUFF RESPECT!”

Can I get on with it now please? Thank you.

Let me ask you a question. How are you? OK, that wasn’t it, but I think it’s important that you’re relaxed when you read these. I’m trying to be your friend here but I’m starting to feel that we never seem to talk about you.

Right! Enough of that, now let me ask you the real question. Do you do ALL of the buying of promotional merchandise in your company? There’s really only a handful of people who can say yes to that. In fact, the bigger your company, the more people there that are likely to be purchasing materials. Do all of their decisions go through you? What’s more, do all of their decisions get shared with each other?

The answer is usually a resounding no, and these people are all missing a trick. It’s an obvious one and every time I share it with people they nod in understanding, but these same people are wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds every year.

“But this is a disaster!” I hear you cry – actually you probably cried something that sounded a little less like a bad actor in a 1950’s disaster movie, running away from a 400 foot dinosaur as it rampaged through the streets of New York. I imagine some of you will have used rude words too, but I can’t print those. But you’re right – it is a disaster and in this current economic climate (or Operation “Please Kill Me Now” as the Government have labelled it) – it’s just plain stupid as well.

Sharing your purchasing decisions throughout the entire organisation just makes good sense. Like the good little students that you all are, you need an example, so here we go:

Let’s say that John in Marketing is looking to order 5000 pens (yes, I said pens, we all know how I feel about pens but I have to use something here). Now, unbeknownst to him (unbeknownst? What is this – Shakespeare?) Jane over in Human Resources also wants 5000 pens for her department. On top of that, neither John nor Jane know that Kevin up in the Manchester office is also looking for 5000 pens. Now let’s be clear – it’s not like John and Jane don’t speak with each other, but when was the last time you stood around the coffee machine chatting about pens? Really? As recent as that? That’s quite sad. Perhaps you need to watch some telly or go out?.....but I digress.

So each of them gets a quote and places an order. Each pen at the 5000 rate costs them 25p. So the company has committed a total spend on these pens of £3,750. However, had they ordered all 15K in one go, the unit cost would have dropped to 20p, thus saving the firm £750. To make matters worse, the first that any of them is going to hear about it is when Valerie in Accounts (you know Valerie – red hair, likes dogs, one leg shorter than the other) challenges three separate departments on why they are wasting money.

Now I know what some of you are thinking – no, not that – the other thing – what if each department had wanted different artwork or a different coloured pen. It’s not a problem, which does still come as a surprise to many of our customers. We’re talking about buying in bulk here, and most suppliers will allow you to mix and match colours and artworks within one order, as long as the actual product does not change.

So how do we put this into action? It’s simple – get together a list of all of the people in your company who buy merchandise. Set them up as an email group and every time you’re going to ask for a quote, simply tell them all about it and ask if anyone else would like to jump in and increase your buying power.

We can manage those lists for you here if you’d like, but we would need to know that everyone on the list had given permission to share the information.

Now my little example here saved the company only £750. I can site real examples where clients have saved thousands. Why don’t we run a competition to see which one of you can save the most. The winner gets the recognition and appreciation of his employers, which is worth a lot more than the pen that I would send you as a prize.

Today’s blog was typed in front of a live studio audience.