Todays post is by Ronald D. Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.

For major chains the liquidation of this stock in a timely manner can significantly reduce reported shrink numbers and improve financial results and liquidity.

A Forward Auction is part of most e-negotiation tool belts. Probably the most well known type of forward auctions are those run by eBay. These tools are often overlooked as a way for companies to sell items that represent overstock, out of cycle, buffer stock, new old stock and other types of inventory that has been paid for and not sold through.

Placing these items for sale on your e-procurement provider’s website so that buyers from a variety of formats such as dollar stores, liquidation companies and other overstock resellers can bid for the items can positively impact shrink.

The simple philosophy here is that getting something for inventory that has already been paid for is better than getting nothing. The biggest dilemma to this solution is that most retailers do not know what is in the back rooms of their stores or how long it has been there.

An issue the above can create is the misinterpretation that shrinkage caused by employee theft, error or other mistakes is actually higher than it is.

There are any numbers of sources that report on annual retail shrinkage numbers. It is safe to say that average shrink numbers across the retail industry has hovered around 3% for years, although you will find significantly higher numbers by specific retail industry vertical.

The fact is that for a one billion dollar supermarket company, this represents $30,000,000.00 annually. With net earnings in this vertical averaging 1%, a reduction in shrink of 33% can improve earnings by as much as 100%.

A quick hit to these numbers can be accomplished by a forward auction. What do you have to lose? Better yet, what do you have to gain?

If  you are profitable enough or don’t care about your shareholders, then  don’t bother to contact a SafeSourcing customer services project  manager. After all, shrink has not gone down as a percentage in 30 years, so most don’t seem to care anyway. Maybe we could help make you a hero. It’s just a click away.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Today’s post is by Steven Belvin, Account Manager at SafeSourcing

Salesmanship, you see it every day, almost everywhere you go. To better understand how important this skill is, we must first look at the definition of Salesmanship according to the business dictionary. “Practice of investigating and satisfying customer needs through a process that is efficient, fair, sincere, mutually beneficial, and aimed at long-term productive relationship.” What this means, in simple terms, is that it is the employee’s job to discover what exactly the needs and wants are of the customer. After we discover what the customer needs and wants, it is then time to discover a process to fulfill those needs and wants of the customer. We must perform this process as fast and efficiently as possible. However, we must also find a way that our company does not lose out on the deal; this is where the “mutually beneficial” aspect comes into to play. A mutually beneficial agreement is an agreed upon term that benefits both parties of the deal. This is crucial to insure both parties are happy and leave the potential to start a long-term and happy relationship with the customer. All this starts with the employees of a workplace. It is key for all employees to go into the workplace with a salesman attitude. You never know who you will be meeting with or talking to at any point of the day, no matter the area you work in. Salesmanship should be practiced by all employees of a company. After all, you won’t have a successful company without customers. Just remember one bad conversation could end a great relationship, as one conversation could introduce a new customer.

Here at SafeSourcing we like to practice salesmanship in all areas of our work. It does not matter if we are talking to a current customer, a potential customer, or even a vendor. We believe we should conduct ourselves in a professional manner at all time, but also have fun while doing so. If you were to give SafeSourcing a call I can guarantee you will find yourself in a conversation with someone here with a great personality. So I challenge you to give it a try and call today and see how we can potential give a 10X or more ROI.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can assist your team with this process or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative. We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.

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“What Is Salesmanship? Definition and Meaning.” BusinessDictionary.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Today’s post is by Mike Figueroa, Assistant Director of Customer Services at SafeSourcing

This is a continuation of the blog “Nuclear Negotiation”. I’m setting out to answer the most important questions about nukes by listing facts I deem important by two measures: How severe the effect on human beings could be, and 2. The number of lives it could affect. Then I will conclude with discussing the human factors at play, and how they affect our daily lives.

•  Global Nuclear war would not end all life on earth: The US and Russia each have detonated thousands of nuclear weapons tests, and these did great harm to the environment, but it did not trigger an extinction level event (though most were in the ocean, to prevent debris fallout that an actual war would not). A war detonating anything above 100-megatons of total yield seems to be the estimate for what it would take to end “modern” humanity, in terms of causing global collapse of infrastructure (Turco et al. 1983) due to its environmental and radiological effects. Most experts seem to agree that some remnant of human life would continue to exist, even if it took thousands of years to recover, though of course there is no guarantee it ever would return to our current level of modernity.
• The system will only work/stay out of nuclear war for as long as all players behave predictably. Mutually Assured Destruction (or MAD as it’s referred to) is the concept that for as long as it is assured that an attacking company would be destroyed for destroying its intended country, it won’t make the attack in the first place out of its own interest of self-preservation. The problem though of course, is that MAD assumes a. all participants are rational, and b. that no unpredictable cause, such as an accident/malfunction or terrorist nuclear incident, would occur and throw the delicate system out of order.
• The British philosopher Bertrand Russell called this balance a walk on a tightrope, however: “You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.” There are bills being considered with the aim of limiting the US President’s ability to launch a nuclear strike (Lockie 2017) in an attempt to create a safety net below this “tightrope”. However, this in and of itself could cause nuclear war, by removing the “Assured” part of Mutually Assured Destruction for any would-be attacking nation.
• Reducing Risk  If you’ve wondered why there has been so much pressure over the years to reduce all nations’ nuclear arsenals, this is it. The assumption is that there needs to be a balance where our weapons of mass destruction are present enough to de-incentivize war, but that there are few enough of these weapons around that we don’t destroy our species over a misunderstanding inept leader. Afterall, the leaders we are trusting not to push that nuclear button are subject to all of the same weaknesses you and I are, and to expect that to go on indefinitely without disaster is to not understand human nature.

Why has MAD worked for the past 70-some years? Because of game theory: Player A makes a move, that forces player B to make a move to get to an optimum point, and both players keep making moves until there is no new move that will improve either player’s condition (equilibrium). In procurement, this means a buyer will switch suppliers that provide better products, pricing, logistics, etc. And conversely, a supplier will adjust pricing in order to retain (or gain new) business, up until the point where any more moves will not gain more benefit/would incur a negative outcome. Sound familiar? It’s the force that drives basically all human activity: Businesses change suppliers, people change relationships, nations create weapons of mass destruction, and the changes continue until all actors have reached a point where change would be less good than the current arrangement, and so equilibrium is reached.

But have you ever seen someone make a decision/change that took them out of equilibrium, to the point that they incurred a loss? Someone destroys a positive personal relationship? Sells product at a loss? Makes an irrational decision? It’s an irrational but very human thing to do. We do have the ability to learn and the capacity to be rational, and avoid making this mistakes in our professional lives. But maybe the most important thing we can do, is ensure our leaders the world over are unflappably rational, by knowing how to be rational ourselves. It’s literally the only thing allowing us to deal with our opponents effectively, in politics and in business.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can assist your team with this process or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative. We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.

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Mills, Michael J., Owen B. Toon, Julia Lee‐Taylor, and Alan Robock. 2014. “Multidecadal Global Cooling and Unprecedented Ozone Loss Following a Regional Nuclear Conflict.” Earth’s Future 2 (4). Wiley Periodicals, Inc.: 161–76.

“[No Title].” 2017a. Accessed March 12. http://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/IS3904_pp007-048.pdf.

———. 2017b. Accessed March 12. https://ia802303.us.archive.org/26/items/ManhattanDistrictHistory/MDH-B8V02P01-LosAlamos-Technical.pdf.

“Nuclear Arsenals | ICAN.” 2017. Accessed March 12. http://www.icanw.org/the-facts/nuclear-arsenals/.

Turco, R. P., O. B. Toon, T. P. Ackerman, J. B. Pollack, and Carl Sagan. 1983. “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multple Nuclear Explosions.” Science 222 (4630). American Association for the Advancement of Science: 1283–92.

Today’s post is by Jericia Stevens, Account Manager at SafeSourcing Inc.

Good leadership is a direct correlation to the success of a company, because of this good leadership cannot be overlooked or over emphasized. Leadership is the substance that makes all other elements come together. Great leaders know the importance of being in tune with the needs and issues concerning the business as well as his/or employees.

As a leader of an organization or business, it is also important to stay abreast of new developments in leadership theories and methods in order to maximize effectiveness.

Rebecca Hourston stated it best, “The substance of what you do—the result you deliver—is pretty fundamental in today’s economy. But working on the way that you do it is what will launch you into a different sphere of success altogether—even if you already count yourself as pretty successful.”

An effective leader trains others to become leaders. A good indicator of your ability to lead is how well the company operates in the mist of his/her absence. A company should not falter in the absence of its leader; it should operate business as usual.

An important thing to remember is leaders and leadership styles may need to change at times to accommodate the changes within the business or organization. For example, when new people are hired and join your team; when a leader is promoted or moved to another department.

Leadership also effects productivity.  A good leader knows the strength of their team and knows how to delegate task efficiently, resulting in increase in work productivity.

Also, good leadership can improve employee morale and make workers more loyal to the company.

We enjoy bringing this blog to you every week and hope you find value in it. For more information on how we can help you with your procurement needs or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.

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Hourston, R. (Ed.). (2014, June 09). 7 Steps To A Truly Effective Leadership Style. Retrieved March 15, 2017, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/womensmedia/2013/04/24/7-steps-to-a-truly-effective-leadership-style/#62e15e411ce5