🪨Seven Hard Truths About Trust in Procurement

Antoine Sauvageot
May 30
3 min read

Because credibility isn’t built in PowerPoint, it’s built under pressure.

Every procurement professional talks about trust: “Trusted business partner”, “Strategic supplier relationship”, “Mutual value creation”.

But most of the real work of trust is invisible, earned in side calls, quiet course corrections, and uncomfortable conversations that never show up on a slide.

After a decade in procurement across continents, categories, and corporate cultures, here’s what I’ve learned.

🔹 1. You Don’t Get Trust for Free. Even Internally.

Your title might say “Director,” but real influence doesn’t come from hierarchy. It comes from patterns people can count on..

Do you show up prepared every time?
Do people trust you to own the outcome, not just the process?
Do you challenge the numbers before someone else does?
Do stakeholders believe you’ll still be here after the contract is signed?

Trust is consistency under pressure. Not charm, not urgency, not last-minute heroics.

🔹 2. The Strongest Negotiators Don’t Rush to Win.

Winning is short-term. Credibility is long-term.

I’ve had negotiations where we intentionally left 3% on the table. Why? Because signaling good faith today secures flexibility tomorrow. We were thinking long-term, not just about savings, but about resilience, partnership, and future growth.

The real question isn’t: Did you win the deal? It’s: Did you win the relationship?

🔹 3. Your Stakeholders Watch How You Treat Suppliers.

They might not join the negotiation, but they’re always listening. And they know the supplier you ignored in Q1 might save the launch in Q4.

Treating partners like transactions doesn’t just hurt the relationship. It weakens your credibility inside the business. It signals you're only focused on cost, not continuity.

Old-school procurement pushes hard, gets the price, and moves on. Strategic leaders protect future options even when no one’s watching, even when it’s not the easy choice.

🔹 4. Suppliers Trust You More When You Say “No.”

I used to think being collaborative meant saying yes. Now I know: the most strategic suppliers value clarity more than consensus.

“We won’t renew under these terms.”
“You’re not the right fit for this scope.”
“Here’s where we missed the mark on our side.”

Being direct builds trust faster than being vague. Because vague people are difficult to forecast, procurement relies heavily on forecasts.

🔹 5. Culture Shapes Credibility.

What builds trust in one culture might break it in another.

In France, I could open a negotiation with pricing. It showed rigor and transparency. In the U.S., doing the same often killed the energy in the room. It was too transactional, too soon.

Credibility is contextual. If you’re leading global teams or suppliers, adapt your instinct, or lose your influence.

🔹 6. Contracts Don’t Build Trust. Behavior Does.

We’ve all seen 40-page MSAs that never get enforced. And we’ve all worked with suppliers who honored a handshake deal better than some who signed.

Legal protections are necessary. But they don’t replace relational capital.

Trust is what happens when the contract is silent, and the situation isn’t.

🔹 7. Your Reputation Travels Faster Than You Do.

The world is smaller than it looks. People remember how you acted when the deal got stuck, when you escalated, when you celebrated, or didn’t.

You may think you’re negotiating a one-off event. But in reality, you’re negotiating your reputation.

And once trust is broken, it rarely makes a comeback.

🪞The hardest feedback is the one you give yourself.

These learnings didn’t come from a book, a training, or ChatGPT. They came from one brutally honest question: “Did I handle that the way I meant to?”

Every negotiation, every presentation, every high-stakes moment leaves a mark. And when the answer was no, that’s where the growth happened.

But here’s the catch: The more experience you gain, the easier it is to ignore the discomfort, to skip the reflection, to move on too fast. And that’s the real risk: Losing the moments that shape how you lead next.