Vendor Manager

If you’re American Airlines, you’ve got to be careful what you pay for fuel. If you’re McDonald’s, you’ve got to be super picky about where you get your beef. And if you’re The New York Times, you’ve got to be best friends with your paper supplier and printer.

All this is to say: When you’re a business, it’s not just what you sell that counts. It’s also what you buy.

For that reason, one of the most important jobs at large companies is that of Vendor Manager.

A Vendor Manager is paid to find and manage vendors, purveyors, and suppliers. Mostly, that means handling negotiations, as your number one job as a Vendor Manager is to get your company the highest-quality goods and services, but at the lowest possible price and with the best possible terms.

Achieving your goal requires researching potential vendors; shopping for products and services at trade shows; meeting with suppliers; overseeing contract negotiations; documenting all purchases and agreements; communicating with financial officers and employees; monitoring supplier performance in areas such as shipping time, customer service, and order completion; and balancing questions of cost, convenience, and quality.

It also requires relationship building, which means personally engaging vendors in order to establish a rapport that bears fruit in the form of preferential terms and pricing.

Your most important responsibility, however, is communication. You’re responsible for maintaining open dialogue between two entities that have entered into a contractual union for the mutual benefit of both. Ultimately, that makes you a Marriage Counselor of sorts — but for companies, not couples.