How You Can Sell Value Using Arkestro

The business landscape continues to evolve at an increasingly rapid pace each and every year. As a supplier, you’re tasked with keeping up with this pace of change and responding to bid opportunities, inbound inquiries, and hitting your quarterly targets. This means building relationships with buyers is of the utmost importance when trying to win business. Otherwise, you’re crossing your fingers and hoping that just being the lowest-priced supplier in the market will get it done. Buyers know that the best price doesn’t always carry across the life of the project and frequently use total cost of ownership analysis to calculate the best value outcome when making award decisions. 

So, how do you communicate your product’s value to a buying organization when asked to participate in an online negotiation? Simple! Use modern and innovative tools to your advantage. 

Identify the Value Drivers

Buyers on the Arkestro platform are encouraged to use supplier evaluation criteria to identify which suppliers ultimately provide value that aligns with their organization’s needs. This may include various certifications or guarantees, flexibility of payment terms, or even the ability of your business to meet corporate social responsibility targets. These pre-negotiation questions signal to suppliers how the buyer is thinking about value beyond bottom-line price. You may not provide the cheapest up-front option, but if your organization creates alignment with these value drivers, you’re in a strong position to win the business on the Arkestro platform.

Communicate, communicate, communicate 

Buyers and suppliers have direct access to one another within the Arkestro platform. The real-time nature of the Conversations feature puts buyer access right at your fingertips. Before the bidding event begins, share additional information on potential alternatives you may have, reinforce value propositions that set your offering apart from competitors, or (arguably most importantly) ask for clarification on line items. With requests having dozens, if not hundreds and thousands of line items, it’s essential to keep in continued contact with the buyer to clarify the specification and set yourself up for success. 

Take a Hint

You’ll notice something a bit different about many bidding events executed on Arkestro – suggested pricing. For buying organizations that use this feature, it sets values unique to each supplier to communicate what a competitive offer looks like for each of the included lots and line items. How does this benefit you? Easy – less back and forth trying to establish the ballpark on what it should take to win the bid. Suppliers who submit a quote through Arkestro also see immediate feedback upon submission for a given round. The feedback provides unique rankings to each supplier and communicates a likelihood of winning specified lots within the bidding event, as well as specific feedback on how to improve your offer (if necessary). This means less time guessing and more time spent providing meaningful quotes.

Suppliers Win With Arkestro

It’s important to identify technology continuing to permeate the B2B transaction landscape. Think about where your company was before CRM software enabled your organization to operate more efficiently and effectively. As modern buying teams continue to expand their suite of sourcing enablement tools, innovative suppliers identify how to use these tools to their benefit as well. After all, buyers and suppliers both win if they’re able to get to commercial quicker. Communicating value through Arkestro helps suppliers close opportunities faster, win more business, and build stronger relationships with their buyer partners. 

Arkestro is sourcing enablement for the modern business. Join the Arkestro Supplier Directory and get discovered by and connected with buying organizations around the world.