Your champion is telling you great things. The big deal looks done.

Then procurement holds your proposal next to the requirements. It doesn't line up. They stop.. and they absolutely hammer you.

🐬 Mike Muhlfelder (Calm Ocean Sales, TechCXO) has 30 years of selling behind him. The week we recorded this episode of The Sales Show, he'd had four conversations about the same thing: how do I sell to procurement? A little less than eight weeks to the end of the calendar year, that question gets loud.

If you sell into mid enterprise or enterprise, you probably have procurement to deal with, and so will every seller you hire. Fighting them or sneaking past them can cost you the deal, or another 20% of it.

Still, most sellers avoid procurement. The opposite is what works: make procurement your partner, and the bigger deal lands with ease. You stay in control of the conversation.. sitting next to procurement, asking what they need to sign, and doing the work for them.

What procurement actually cares about

Procurement is driven, without bias, to deliver solutions for the organization with the best possible economics.

So they aren't thinking about who your champion is. They aren't thinking about your features, other than how those features compare to the requirements.

🐯 They also aren't amateurs. Mike's surprise for sellers: procurement goes through as much or more training on how to negotiate and buy as salespeople get on how to sell. They go to trade shows and teach each other.

"It's not some dark magic that they do," Mike said. "They are trained professionals."

Depending on the organization, they are trained toward a discount level or toward deployment metrics and KPIs. And they will usually tell you which one, if you ask: what's the most important thing to you?

Why selling around procurement kills the deal

Salespeople are generally afraid of procurement, Mike said, so they try to sell around them. He calls it a huge mistake.

His line:

"If procurement says you may not go to the CFO, and you go to the CFO, you're dead."

When they find out, Mike said, they take you out and you don't get your deal. Or they make your life miserable: we got to December 31st, we just couldn't get the deal done, we'll do it on January 1.

And they can squeeze you. His version: on December 31st, I'm going to squeeze you for another 20% because you broke the rules. A bitter way to end your year.

One exception: an equal or larger enterprise (Mike's examples are Salesforce and Oracle). Procurement may punish them, but may not throw them out.

If you're not a name brand, you'd better have something that is a one and only in the market. Otherwise they kick you right out and stop returning your calls. You can offer it for free. "Nope, nope, nope, nope," Mike said, "because you can't play by the rules."

When procurement walks right over the CFO

🌴 About four years ago, while Mike was still in an operator role, his team lost a deal at the CFO level. The CFO had committed to signature. Then procurement stepped in and said no.

In 30 years of selling, he had never seen that happen.

The reason: it wasn't in the project cycle for that year, and the company already had two different integration solutions. They didn't need a third one, unless the seller could say why one of the two they already owned wouldn't work.

That was the end of it. They never got back to the table.

If you're selling AI, this one is about you. Procurement's job right now, Mike said, is to protect the business from having multiples of the same thing, especially if they already own it and it isn't being used optimally. They look at their list and ask: do we have something like this? They test hard that it's secure, together with the CISO. So be buttoned up, and be able to prove why they need to buy it.

They don't care that you believe you have the greatest solution in the world.

"Nobody ever tells me this stuff"

So what do you do instead? Mike learned it years ago at Siebel Systems, on a first deal at Bose.

He and his boss were in a conference room negotiating with the procurement officer, and they were getting nowhere. When the officer left the room, his boss said: we're missing it. I don't think he knows what we do.

When the officer came back, they asked whether he only negotiated technology for Bose. No, he handled everything. Transistors, capacitors, memory chips, all of it.

Then they asked whether he understood what they intended to do with their value propositions. His answer: nobody ever tells me this stuff.

🐬 So they stopped and took him through the business case, the rationale and the value they expected to deliver.

He worked at the pennies and dollars level, because if you save a penny on 100,000 items, that turns into real money. Once he understood what they were doing, Mike said, the deal was almost instantaneous.

And it tells you how much they have on their plate. That's why my strategy is simple: make their life easy.

Open with three words

Mike gave away a pattern interrupt for your first meeting with procurement. Start with these three words:

"I love procurement."

They never hear it, he said, especially from a salesperson. It stops them. They ask what you mean. And you say: because I know that if we work together, I can get my deal, you can get your deal, and the company wins.

Nobody says it, because salespeople go in "either prepared for the fight or they shrink in their chair."

One of them is a fight you can't win. The other is begging. Neither one has you in control.

One warning. Mike legit loves working with procurement, and I think that's why it works. You have to really have that intention. They are generally very literal people. They will tell you what they want and what they don't.

Slow down and meet them in blue

I treat a purchaser the way I treat the assistant of a CEO. Many salespeople see two blockers and go directly to the CEO. I do the opposite. I know that for large deals it takes months of building a relationship with the assistant and with the purchasing department.

I always think of four or five buyers. The assistant is the enabler: without them you won't get a meeting. The purchaser is an actual buyer, and I go through my 8 Steps with them too.

In our sales training we use red, blue and green. I'm very red: quick, impatient, no small talk. Green is people-oriented. Blue is analytical, process-driven, risk-averse and compliant.

I assume a purchaser is blue, otherwise they wouldn't have that role. I would survive about two minutes in a purchasing role.

🐯 So before the meeting I shift. I slow down. I come prepared with facts, figures and a spreadsheet. I ask about process, compliance, risk management and possible doublings in their system. I try to be their thinking partner first.

Ask the question that puts you on their side of the table

Years ago, Mike worked with a co-founder who always sat next to the most senior person in the room. Her lesson: when you sit across from somebody, even on a Zoom, it feels adversarial. Side by side, it's friendlier.

So Mike plays it like a board game. You ask questions and do things that bring you around the table until you're sitting side by side. Something in the air shifts. The emotion and the temperature change, and procurement is no different.

The question that gets you there:

"What do you need from me to help you with the business case?"

Mike's experience is that probably 99 times out of 100, the procurement person answers with a list. A valid ROI study. A five-year cost timeline for predictability. What has to be in the T's and C's before they can bring it forward.

Great. Done. Go do it. Then watch how quickly the deal moves.

🌴 My version sounds like this: what do you need to sign this? They told me one, two, three, four, five. I said okay, let me set it up. Should I make a first draft? They're overworked, and I was doing their work. I helped with their presentations to the board. They trusted me more and they gave me hints.

That's what control looks like here. Nobody is chasing anybody. You know exactly what stands between you and the signature, and you are the one building it.

And if it's a competitive situation and your competitor hasn't asked? Mike again: "You will win the deal because you are becoming easier to work with."

Procurement can even bring you the deal

Procurement is the only group in the organization with real visibility into everything being purchased, every project, every timeline. When Mike's sales teams built those relationships, procurement would tell them things like: we've acquired this company, and they don't have a CRM system.

At that point, Mike said, you're not selling to the business anymore. Procurement is putting you into the deal and saying go get it, with the pricing already worked out. Somebody's sales team gets that call.

In my experience many of them have a weekly meeting with the CEO, and they hold information the executives need for board decisions. So make them your partner.

Your one move this week

Pick the biggest deal on your board. Before the next procurement conversation, write down this question and ask it first: what do you need from me to help you with the business case?

Then go build what they tell you. Picture that call: they name five things, you say "should I make a first draft?", and the deal starts moving from your side of the table. Hand the same question to every seller you hire, so it stops living only in your head. And score it on Friday: did you ask, and what did they name?

That's how a bigger deal gets signed without the December 31st squeeze. A business that funds the life you want.. that's a Sprintlife.

Watch the full episode with Mike here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa1EB00nrZI

Want the 8 Steps I take every purchaser through? Start them inside Sprint Club with other founders doing the same work, free for 7 days: https://www.strategysprints.com

Ready to accelerate now? Book a Discovery Call: https://calendly.com/strategysprint/discovery-call?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=article_cta&utm_campaign=discovery_call

Happy hunting.

Simon & The Sprinters 🐬⚡️🐆