The marketing, sales and purchasing game has more dance steps than the latest Argentine Tango. It is this way because there are humans involved and they all come from different backgrounds. For clarification, here I am talking about the purchasing initiated by major pulp and paper companies, not the selling of their products.

Keep in mind, as I describe this, I am speaking of an idealized world. There are plenty of bad players on all teams in this game. It is assumed you are managing matters in such a way as to ferret out the bad players, no matter if they work for you or the people with which you want to partner.

The first efficiency improvement pulp and paper companies can implement is the one call number. You need a department with one phone number, email address or other chosen method of communication which prospective suppliers can use to reach you. Suppliers waste their time and, more importantly, your time calling all over the place in your company to see if you might be interested in their products or services. A well-educated, small department in your company could do the initial screening of prospective suppliers. In this screening, your company could decide if you are interested in their company and do an initial vetting to see if they meet your requirements to be a qualified supplier.

They just may have something very valuable to your company and you have never heard of them. Or not.

Now, are there some salespersons who will not take "no" for an answer? Of course, but there is a way to expeditiously stop them in their tracks.

If a salesperson calls up one of your department managers anywhere in your company, they could ask for an approval code given to them by the vetting department. Your department managers could then look them up on an appropriate vetting dashboard to see if they are approved. If not on the list, your well-trained employee can direct them to the vetting department, whose contact information is on the vetting dashboard.

With this system, a supplier goes through the vetting process once, understands your terms and conditions, and, most importantly, your individual managers know they can do business with them.

Think how many wasted emails, phone calls and meetings this will save.

Be safe and we will talk next week.

If you would like to dig a little deeper, [click here].

Jim Thompson is CEO of Paperitalo Publications.