Ask Peter Smith what occupation he would choose if he had his time over again and he replies “a disc jockey”. But as it turns out, that is really only his second choice. Despite a lifelong passion for music, what he really wanted to be was an actor.

As an unconventional maths student at Cambridge University in the late 1970s, Smith got involved in the famous “Footlights” group, where his peers included comedians Griff Rhys Jones, Rory McGrath and Jimmy Mulville. However, when his attempt to secure a part in its summer production failed, he realised his acting ambitions were misplaced.

“I was rejected because I couldn’t sing Mary Had a Little Lamb in the style of Frankie Vaughan,” he recalls. “This was 1977 and I was into the Sex Pistols. I’d never even heard of Frankie Vaughan!”

Quarter of a century later and Smith, who takes over the CIPS presidency from Jeannie Bevan tomorrow, hasn’t lost his love of acting (or, indeed, his mischievous sense of humour). One of the things he enjoys doing most in his working life is presentations. And the bigger the audience, the better.

“I’d far rather stand up in front of 500 people and present on a stage than I would sit round a table with five people for an informal chat,” he says.

Presentation skills - and the art of communication generally - is something he believes is essential for purchasing and supply management professionals at most levels nowadays.

“You can still probably survive as a relatively junior buyer or category manager if you hate doing presentations. But if you can’t stand up in front of a board and come across well presenting results or a project proposal, you won’t make procurement director.”

Many organisations take it for granted that purchasing staff will have core skills, such as being able to run tenders and negotiate contracts, he says. What they want now is people who can manage complex projects, work as part of multi-functional teams and have excellent interpersonal and analytical skills. A strong business focus is also essential.

Smith notes that the latter can raise awkward issues for purchasers. He uses the example of somebody internally contracting a marketing agency without going through procurement in order to respond quickly to a competitive threat. Deciding whether to complain to their boss or take a more flexible stance can be a tough judgment call, he says, “but sometimes you have to help people break your own rules when there are sound business reasons”.

He believes there is a gap between these requirements and the skills most purchasers possess. There are plenty of buyers who are more comfortable working in the “traditional confines of procurement” and on their own, rather than in an environment where they have to persuade and influence others.

Before moving to the other side of the table as a consultant, he admits he didn’t fully appreciate the importance of good selling skills. But he now thinks purchasers ought to undergo sales training as well.

“The first thing you learn in sales is that you don’t go in and sell your service, you find out what the client might want to buy. How often does a procurement director go in to see the head of IT, for example, and say, ‘Let me tell you about our strategy and what I can do for you’, rather than ‘Tell me what your big issues and challenges are and let’s see if there’s anything we can do to help’? It seems obvious, but I wonder how often procurement people think like that.”

Softer skills

Turning supplier has also confirmed his view that many people lack the softer skills needed to manage relationships well.

He is astonished by how rude and unprofessional some potential clients can be, refusing to respond to proposals or take phone calls despite asking him to spend many hours putting a bid together. “If you treat people properly, you definitely get more out of them,” he says.

That view underpins his approach to people development. In his previous roles as group purchasing director at NatWest and procurement director of the Department of Social Security (DSS), he settled on two principles. First, always prefer internal training and promotion to buying in talent. Second, try to strike a balance between the needs of the organisation and the desires of the individual. So while he was a strong advocate of the CIPS qualification, for example, he was less enthusiastic about funding staff to do MBAs.

Smith began his own career at Mars as a graduate trainee and became a buyer by accident (“I was one of the few people who could beat the head of purchasing at tennis!”). After eight years he left to join a food processing company called Hunter Saphir, where he ran a potato plant, and was general manager of a spice factory that burnt to the ground, forcing him to learn disaster recovery skills on the hoof.

Spells at business information specialist Dun & Bradstreet (where he first joined the institute) and the DSS followed before he ended up at NatWest, where he remained until the company conceded defeat in its takeover battle with the Royal Bank of Scotland in March 2000.

Despite being responsible for 80 staff and a £2 billion annual spend, Smith found time to keep an 85,000-word diary, charting, among other things, senior executives’ efforts to fend off the attack and the mood among his purchasing team.

Smith hesitates when asked what the priorities for his presidential year will be, pointing out that CIPS is 12 months into a three-year strategy. But he wants to help bed down changes to its governance structure, introduced during Bevan’s term, and continue to build stronger alliances with other institutes internationally.

“I also want us to get into the public eye more,” he says. “Not for the sake of it, but where we have got something to say on social responsibility and ethics, for instance, we as an organisation should be in the Financial Times or on the Today programme.”

Although he thinks there is a danger for the institute of purchasing and supply of becoming too important to remain a specialist discipline, he is generally optimistic about the profession’s future. This feeling is enhanced during the many hours he spent reading entries for this year’s Kelly’s CIPS Awards for Excellence in Purchasing and Supply, which will be presented in London next week.

“The awards are a sign of credibility and maturity in the profession. We’re important enough now to recognise excellence,” argues Smith, who chaired the judging panel.

As part of the process, he also sat in on interviews with candidates for the CIPS Young Purchasing Professional of the Year, a new award for 2002. All had significant experience and responsibilities, and a few even struck him as potentially having chief executive qualities, he says.

Indeed, Smith believes the UK profession will have truly come of age when every year a dozen or more purchasers move into senior management positions in major companies.

“It would be wonderful to have 20 or 30 FTSE 250 chief executives who started in purchasing,” he says. “They won’t forget where they’ve come from.”

Career file: Peter Smith

Director of procurement services, Shreeveport Management Consultancy, aged 44

1976-79: St John’s College, Cambridge, MA (Hons) in maths and management science

1979-88: Mars Confectionery; graduate trainee, various roles ending as purchasing manager, packaging and services

1988-90: Hunter Saphir (food processing and trading firm), general manager

1990-95: Dun & Bradstreet, director of European procurement

1995-97: Department of Social Security, director of procurement

1997-2000: NatWest Group, group purchasing director

2000: Enters consultancy world with Shreeveport