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Be in the room as Congressman Neal addresses the Greater Boston business community.
11/13/2025
2:45pm - 4:00pm
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David Cho, Chief Procurement Officer at the University of Massachusetts, sat down for a fireside chat to share his wisdom with the Boston business community. In his previous blog post, he shared a deep dive into how companies can best implement procurement practices within their organizations. In part two of this installment, Cho will share tips specific to suppliers with the hope of providing both diverse suppliers and Pacesetter’s members some ideas about how they can build more connectivity and trust with potential enterprise partners over time. These are methods that can be helpful at the appropriate time with the appropriate audience and are methods that can largely be applied regardless of the size of your organization.
Question One: What does it look like for a supplier to demonstrate both IQ and EQ while selling their product or service?
Cho: There might be quite a few smart people one can partner with, but that does not necessarily mean you want to break bread with them! The same goes for supplier partners. If a partner knows their audience and can not only provide a solid product or service but collaborates with integrity and a strong commitment to providing overall value, they can certainly distinguish themselves from their competitors.
Procurement officers and experienced supplier relationship managers can quickly sense who is trying to do the right thing and who is primarily motivated by sales or the margin for a transaction. Having the emotional quotient (EQ) to understand how to be a true partner and evolve into a credible advisor is worth so much more today than the traditional expectations businesses have had towards sales account managers.
Determining what outcomes are important to enterprise clients is an art that needs to be developed through trust building and bringing the right sense of urgency to the table. Take the time to ask the simple question, “what is important to you” as a buyer and determine how you and your company can respond to that need.
Question Two: How does a supplier commit beyond a transactional sale?
Cho: How can MBEs best position themselves to create a new partnership with a company? Many salespeople can be considered a commodity of sorts but reliable partners who can act as true advisors are diamonds in the rough. For example, when an account team says they will follow up with action items and they consistently do, it builds tremendous credibility over time. Consistent service over time can create more opportunities to grab a greater proportion of sales. Creating that culture of doing the right thing for enterprise clients can be noticed pretty quickly while those who attempt to nickel and dime might pull off a transaction in the short term but may never become a longer-term strategic partner. I find many partners who are less concerned with the immediate sale but look to build longer-term partnerships gain significantly more revenue from enterprises over time.
Question Three: How do suppliers gain the credibility to turn “what I’ve done for you lately” conversations into “what you can expect from me shortly?”
Cho: Partners who can build institutional equity with a customer through offering up intellectual equity certainly build stickier partnerships with enterprise clients. Having the confidence to share the good, the bad, and the ugly can build trust with partners that consistently demonstrate accountability. There are quite a few opportunities for partners to take a step back and share a point of view of future state partnerships. I find that many partners who could apply periodic business reviews with their clients often don’t take the time to have those sessions. Those who conduct those sessions well can partner with credible influencers within the client institutions to build a broader partnership. Business reviews that take the time to provide a balanced view of performance, ability to meet obligations or service levels, and methods to remediate problems evolve the partnership into a very different relationship between supplier and client.
Take the time to build that institutional equity so you earn the right to ask for more engagement with your customer. Once you build that equity, it’s a lot easier to cash those chips in to ask for new opportunities, ask for more direct feedback, and ask for the right audience to share a proposed roadmap.
When businesses in the Commonwealth lead the way through collective collaborative efforts, diversity, equity, and inclusion can thrive within the region.
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