When purchasing professionals consider professional designations or certifications, they typically look at it from their individual perspective and whether a designation is worth pursuing.  Usual considerations are the requirements to be eligible for the designation, the difficulty of the examinations, the cost / duration to achieve the designation, the professional status that the designation will provide, and the promotion / employability enhancement factor.

While I have those same considerations, I also consider how a professional designation will benefit me and my employer in my dealings with vendors.  In other words, when a vendor receives a communication, such as an e-mail, from me (or a business card), how will the professional designation position me with that vendor?  In a negotiation, can I use a professional designation as a negotiation tactic?  Will the designation give me leverage?  Will I get some r-e-s-p-e-c-t from the vendor?

For example, when I hand a vendor my business card, which has all of my professional designations, it tends to cut through a lot of vendor crap—real quick.  It tells the vendor that I take my profession seriously and that I'm probably pretty well-trained on the vendor's bogus negotiation ploys.  It tells the vendor that they should give me a better deal up front because they know that I know a bad deal when I see one.  In the middle of a negotiation, if the vendor does pull some lame ploy, I can say (and have said) something to the effect that I read about that ploy in studying for my professional designation (even if I really hadn't).  In any case, that statement usually has the immediate effect of sinking their ploy.

That's what I see as the real value of a designation: for a few thousand dollars and a few weeks of examination preparation, I can quickly and easily save my employer tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars in a negotiation just by the sheer virtue of having a professional designation.  So, if personal motivation isn't enough for you to obtain a designation, consider the fact that you probably owe it to your employer.  If your employer is too small-minded to pony up the $$$ for you to achieve a designation, give your employer this blog post as a part of your ROI business case.

In my mind, if you're a non-governmental purchasing professional (i.e., you're in "commercial" contracting), there are two must-have professional designations: the Certified Purchasing Manager (C.P.M.) from the Institute for Supply Management and the Certified Commercial Contracts Manager (CCCM) from the National Contract Management Association.  The C.P.M. is being phased out and replaced by the Certified Professional in Supply Management (CPSM) designation.

By the way, if you've ever wondered why you need to include the periods in the Certified Purchasing Manager (C.P.M.) designation, it's because "CPM" (without the periods) is the acronym for "Certified Professional Midwife."

Happy studying!