The paper is directed at a close survey of current patterns and trends in buying and selling relationships that could throw light on probable developments for the seventies. This current survey identifies industrial purchasing under seven main headings. They are Raw Materials, Components, Consumable Materials, Packaging and Wrapping, Plant and Equipment, Technical Services, General Services. Each sector is demonstrably different. Expertise differs. Unit cost differ greatly and tend to determine whether top management becomes involved in the outlay of large capital sums. Some involve purchases of nonindustrial goods and services. Others are highly technical and only rarely bought. Other consumable items are bought regularly. Some specialised services are brought only at board room level. There are five main types of selling activity. They are the following: Industrial, Speciality, Technical, Services and Engineering. It would seem to be a national line of enquiry to examine whether there were regular patterns of linkage between types of purchase and types of salesmen servicing these needs upon supplier's behalf. Patterns do emerge. But clearly there needs to be a considerable amount of further research to be done in the many twilight areas where buyers are unsatisfied because the supplier's men are not hand picked to offer the many ancillary services and knowledge that are required. In this field, an offering is made of a blueprint for successful salesmen for the seventies. This covers the common ground of those essential duties, qualities and skills needed to service professional industrial buyers adequately. The growth of the “anonymous buyer” both within the company and that posed by external advisors such as consultant architects, engineers and designers is closely examined. This is done because of the covert and powerful influence such people can wield in the choice of supplier and product. Buying committees and the increasing use of “value analysis techniques” are given due consideration. Tentative conclusions are offered upon the following buying/management areas. Because buying and selling are such high cost company centres, a combined approach to a more effective integration of buying needs with supplier's expertise is needed to keep costs under control in inflationary market conditions that are expected to continue for the foreseeable future. This preempts a much closer and intimate working relationship between buyer and salesman. This field includes a much more important role for selling in the provision of information from buyer to supplier. It preemps a much closer relationship between the technical support people of both the buyer and the seller. It predicts the bringing of suppliers' sales people into prospective buying company's future projects at a preliminary design stage. This should optimise mutual expertise and knowledge for the combined good. This would result in “tailored to measure” solutions being worked out in good time, at least cost, well ahead of requirements. This would replace the generally unsatisfactory method of “off the peg” offerings under pressures of time and cost. It is not too far-fetched an idea to visualise a more common position existing between buyer and seller in which the buyer may be seen as the ultimate projection of a supplier's marketing policies and plans in the field. Conversely the supplier's research and development department may be seen by a prospective buyer as his own marketing and design projection in a potential market. The growing emphasis upon “systems selling” has brought this idea a step nearer to acceptance. We can see a pattern emerging in the seventies in which a buyer not merely seeks augmented values of a comparative competitive nature form a chosen supplier. We can thus see a package deal representing a totality of buying advantage values coming much more into the picture. This will mean an increasing interchange of information from both buyer and supplier and the provision by a supplier of a whole range of ancillary services which he will have to calculate into the ultimate contract price. Sales managers will, by this token, be forced to raise the level of quality and performance of their salespeople. This will involve getting better quality salespeople with a much wider range of interests and knowledge who will act as competent interpreters between supplier and buyer of those essential buying needs and values that must be satisfied before a a deal can take place. Finally, we are faced with a dramatic change in the selling outlook of the average supplier's board room. Conventional lip service paid to a marketing concept is quite insufficient. What a buyer is demanding is a totality of satisfaction from a chosen supplier which has a demonstrable edge over all other competitive sources of supply. The foregoing poses a nice question to entrepreneurial boards of directors whether customer satisfaction coupled with an adequate return upon investment are not the most viable keys to planned future growth and the optimisation of a company's market share.