The Meetings Before the Meeting

You get a calendar invite at 4 PM. A supplier demo is tomorrow at 10. The supplier is already referencing conversations you weren't part of, and your stakeholder is nodding along like the deal is done. Sound familiar?

In this episode, I break down what procurement is actually doing before we ever sit down at the table: the spend history reviews, the internal conversations with finance, IT, legal, and leadership, the market analysis, and the contract landscape mapping that most of the organization never sees. I also talk about the commitment gap, that dangerous distance between where a stakeholder thinks they are in the process and where we actually are.

This one is for stakeholders, but suppliers and procurement leaders will hear themselves in it too. 

The bottom line: a 30-minute conversation with procurement before you talk to a single supplier can save you six weeks of process and protect your project from surprises you didn't see coming.

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New episodes every Monday. 

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Website: https://procurexcellence.com 

Email: robert@procurexcellence.com 

Topics covered: vendor proposals, procurement rejection, discovery process, risk management, mission-driven purchasing, stakeholder alignment, supplier relationships

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

A few months ago, I got a calendar invite at 4 o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon. The subject line said, Quick sync, new platform demo. It was from one of our program directors, someone I work with regularly, someone I respect. The meeting was scheduled for the next morning at 10 a.m. And the invite included an external participant, a supplier I had never spoken to. I clicked into the invite to read the note at the bottom, and it said, Hey Robert, I've been talking with this team for a few weeks, and they're going to walk us through their platform. I think it could be a great fit, and I'd love to get your thoughts. Now let me tell you what that message actually meant, translated from stakeholder into procurement. In other words, it said, I've already decided I want this. The supplier is expecting to close, and I need you in the room, so it looks like we followed the process. I walked into that meeting the next morning, and within 90 seconds, I could feel it. The supplier was presenting like they were at the finish line. They were referencing conversations that I wasn't a part of. They were using phrases like, as we discussed, and based on what your team shared with us. So the program director was nodding along. And then the supplier looked at me and said, So, Robert, what do you need from us to get this across the finish line? And I remember thinking, we're not at a finish line, we're not even at the starting line, because nobody brought me in for the meeting before this meeting. The one where I would have asked the questions that would have changed the entire conversation. That's what this episode is about. Not the meetings you see on the calendar, the ones that happen before them or should. Let me be direct. Procurement doesn't come to meetings blank. We come prepared. And the difference between a stakeholder who understands that and a stakeholder who doesn't, that's the difference between a project that moves forward and a project that gets stuck in a loop of surprises and revisions. So let's talk about what's actually happening in the days and weeks or hours before we sit down with a supplier to finalize a contract. Because this is the part that most of the organization never sees. This is the work that happens in email chains, in chat threads, and 30-minute conversations in Teams. And understanding what we're doing in that space will change how you think about us engaging us early. Here's the first thing. And I mean I'm really looking at it. When that program director sent me that calendar invite, my first move wasn't to review the supplier's website. My first move was to open our procurement system and ask, what have we spent money on in this category in the last five years? What suppliers have we used? How many times did we pay to switch between solutions? And did any of those switches come back to bite us? What do we learn from past implementations in this space? This matters because history doesn't repeat, but it runs. If we've tried something similar three years ago and it ended up being more complicated than anyone expected, that's information I need to carry into this conversation. What if we've had three suppliers in the category in the last seven years? That tells me something about retention and stability. If the switching costs last time were higher than the savings, that's real data I need to factor in. But here's what makes us this urgent. If I'm doing this work for the first time the night before a Safari demo, I'm behind, I'm reactive, I'm cramming instead of preparing. If I'm doing this work continuously, building a baseline of understanding of what we spend in each category, who the players are, where the consolidation opportunities exist, and where the risks are hiding, then when you come to me with an opportunity, I'm not starting from zero. I'm starting from a foundation. The second thing I'm doing is understanding the contract landscape. Not just whether we have an existing agreement in this space, but what the terms across our portfolio look like? Do our current contracts have aligned renewal dates? Or are they staggered in a way that creates leverage? Are there volume commitments that the new supplier would disrupt? Which agreements required the most painful negotiations? And what does that tell me about the risk tolerance of our suppliers that we're working with? Why does this matter? Because when we meet with a supplier, we're not evaluating their proposal in isolation. We're evaluating it against a web of existing commitments, constraints, and precedents. And here's the thing most stakeholders don't realize. Once you sign a contract, you're not just making a commitment for the life of that agreement. You're creating a template for the next one. You're setting expectations about what terms look like at your organization. You're building patterns that become harder to break the more of them you establish. The third thing I'm doing is reading the room internally. And these are conversations that you as a stakeholder probably don't even know are happening. I'm talking to finance and I'm asking, where are we on the budget in this category? Do we have a room to absorb a new supplier? Or is this going to require us to deprioritize something else? Are there cost implications of bringing in a new system? Integration costs, training costs, transition costs that someone needs to account for. And here's the one that catches most people off guard. I'm asking finance about timing. Because even if the money exists, it might not exist in the right fiscal period. I've seen deals stall for months because the organization, it's not because the organization couldn't afford them, but because the funding was allocated to next year's budget and nobody wanted to pull it forward. When I'm talking to IT, I'm asking, can our infrastructure support this? Are there security implications? If this supplier needs to integrate with our systems, what does that timeline look like? Who on IT's team would own that project? Are they already stretched thin on something else? And I'm asking the question that nobody wants to hear. What happens to the data if this doesn't work out? Because data migration is the hidden cost of almost every technology decision. And if we don't want to talk about that up front, we will be talking about it in a much more painful way 12 months from now. When I'm talking to legal, I'm asking about liability frameworks. I'm asking about data ownership and confidentiality. I'm asking about what happens if the supplier goes out of business. Most stakeholders don't realize that what happens if that most stakeholders don't realize that what happens if something goes wrong is just as important as what happens if everything goes right. And I'm talking to leadership. I'm asking, is this strategic? Does this align with where we're trying to go as an organization? Are there conversations happening at the executive level that would change how we approach this category of spending? Because I've been in situations where a stakeholder is excited about a new supplier. And meanwhile, the COO is about two weeks away from making an announcement about a new strategic initiative that would make that supplier irrelevant. The stakeholder doesn't know that, but I need to. All of what happens before we ever invite a supplier to the table, and all of that is information that shapes what I bring to that meeting. The fourth thing I'm doing is understanding market conditions. What happens if the supplier's space right now? Are we in a buyer's market or a seller's market? Are suppliers in this category hungry for new clients or are they turning business away? Have any of their competitors gone through a merger or acquisition recently? Are there regulatory changes on the horizon that would affect how these solutions operate? If you're excited about a supplier because they're responsive and eager to work with you, I need to understand why. Is it because they genuinely see a fit? Or is it because their pipeline is thin and they need the revenue? Those two scenarios lead to very different negotiations. The fifth thing, and this is a delicate one, I'm thinking about the commitment gap. That's the distance between where the stakeholder thinks they are in the process and where we actually are. When that program director sent me an invite, the supplier had already invested weeks at discovery calls, tailored demos, and follow-up emails. They'd built momentum. They'd invested energy. The program director feels a sense of obligation, not contractual, but social. These people have done a lot of work for us. We owe them a fair shot. And that social obligation is one of the most powerful forces in procurement. Because the more involved a stakeholder becomes with a supplier before procurement is at the table, the less flexibility we have. The supplier has momentum, the stakeholder has emotional investment, and now when I come in and say, we need to understand how this compares to other options, or we need to restructure the timeline. That's why engaging us early matters so much. If I'm in the conversation before or from the beginning, we can shape the process together. We can ask comparative questions without it feeling personal. We can introduce the business constraints without it feeling like we're blocking momentum. We can be strategic instead of reactive. Now let me talk about what's already been decided or assessed by the time we sit down together. In that ambush demo meeting, I wasn't walking in undecided about the path forward. Based on my prep the night before, the spend review, the quick calls to finance and IT, I already knew we were going to need a competitive process. I already knew the budget picture was tighter than the program director realized. I already knew IT had systems migration on their roadmap that would affect the integration timeline. And I already knew that what felt like a simple platform purchase was actually a decision with implications across three other departments. None of that made me the bad guy. That made me the person in the room with the most complete picture. And that's really the point. The meeting before the meeting isn't about control, it's about context. Here's a concrete example of why this matters. Last year, we had a department head who brought me a consulting engagement. They'd already scoped the work, agreed to the consultant's rate, and told the consultant to block off six weeks. When I reviewed it, I found that we had used the same consultant two years prior, and the project had gone 40% over budget because the scope definition was too loose. The department head didn't know that. It was before their time. But it was in our records, and it changed how I structured the new engagement. Tighter milestones, capped hours, and a shared accountability framework. Did that slow things down by a week? Yes. Did it prevent a repeat of the budget overrun? Also, yes. And the department head, once they understood the history, was grateful. Not frustrated, they were grateful. Because I wasn't blocking their project, I was protecting it. Let me give you another example because I think this one captures the other side of it. The side where early engagement actually accelerates things. We had a team lead come to me at the very beginning of a project. They said, we're thinking about bringing in outside help for a research initiative. I don't have a supplier yet. I don't even have a fully formed scope. But I wanted to talk to you before I start looking. That 30-minute conversation changed the trajectory of the entire project. Because when we talked through their scope, I realized we already had a master service agreement with a firm that did exactly this kind of work. The contract was acted, the rates were prenegotiated, and we could issue an SOW in under the existing agreement in about two weeks, instead of going through a full competitive procurement that would have taken about two months. The team lead had no idea that that agreement existed. But why would they? It wasn't their job to know the contract portfolio, but it was mine. And because they came in early, we saved six weeks of process, got them a vetted partner at rates we'd already negotiated, and the project launched ahead of schedule. That's what the meeting before the meeting can do when it happens at the right time. This is the kind of thinking that happens in the prep nobody sees. Now here's the thing about why it matters so much to stakeholders. If you engage procurement early, and I mean early, before you've had three conversations with a supplier, before you've become emotionally invested in a solution, before you've hinted at timelines or budget, then the procurement process becomes something we're doing together, not something procurement is doing to you. When I'm in the room from the beginning, I'm asking the supplier questions with you, not interrogating them after you've already decided they are the answer. I'm introducing constraints at business parameters, not obstacles. I'm suggesting process in a way that feels like we're being careful, not like we're being slow. But when I'm brought in at the end and you've already chosen your supplier, you've already set your timeline, you've already communicated your enthusiasm, then I'm walking in with a very difficult job. I have to deliver bad news. I have to slow things down, I have to introduce complexity into something that already felt simple. The meeting before the meeting is actually about something even bigger than all of this prep work. It's about how decisions actually get made in an organization. When I walked into that ambush demo, and the supplier asked what they needed to get this across the finish line. I had choices. I could have said, we're not there yet, and shut the room down. Or I could have said, let me tell you what I need to feel confident recommending this. And let's talk about what that process looks like. The difference between those two responses is whether the program director feels like they have agency in the process, or whether they feel like procurement is a wall. The meeting before the meeting is also about understanding what's driving the request in the first place. Why does the director need this platform? What problem are they trying to solve? And is the supplier actually the best way to solve that problem? Or is it the first solution that they found? If I'm doing my job right, I'm not just evaluating the supplier. I'm evaluating the underlying need. And sometimes what I find to be the real problem isn't that we need a new platform. The real problem is we're not using our existing tools effectively. Or we need to renegotiate terms with someone we've already worked with, or even we need to consolidate three separate systems into one. Those are conversations that can only happen if procurement is in the room early. Let me address something directly because I think it's worth saying out loud. Some stakeholders avoid engaging procurement early because they think we're going to kill their ideas. They think procurement is the department where good initiatives go to die. And I understand why that perception exists. In a lot of organizations, procurement teams are lean. We're managing a lot of spend across a lot of categories. And we don't always have the bandwidth to engage on everything early. So when we end up being brought in at the end, it's a reactive mode. And we end up saying no or not yet, or not how you want it, more than we'd like. But that's not because we're opposed to innovation or progress. It's because we're managing constraints that we hadn't had the opportunity to build into the process from the start. And here's how we'll do it in a way that works for the organization. That's fundamentally a different conversation. So let me bring this home with some specific advice. And I'm going to segment this for different audiences because the episode is aimed at stakeholders. But I know that the audiences listening is across several different roles. If you're a stakeholder, if you run a program or a department or an initiative and need to bring in external resources, here's what I want you to do. Before you have a single conversation with a supplier, come talk to me or my team. Tell us what you're trying to solve. Tell us what you're thinking about. And then listen. What you'll find is that we'll ask you questions you haven't even asked yourself yet. We'll help you think through what success actually looks like. We'll make connections to things you're already doing that might solve part of your problem. And by the time you go and sit down with a supplier, you will have a much clearer sense of what you're actually looking for. This is not asking for permission. This is asking for perspective. And the perspective from someone who's evaluated hundreds of suppliers, who understands your contract landscape, who knows what your organization can actually absorb, that perspective is worth the 30-minute conversation. If you're a supplier listening to this, when a stakeholder reaches out and wants you to move fast, the smartest thing you can do is say, great, let's make sure your procurement team is included early so we're all set up for success. That one sentence earns you more trust than any demo ever will. Because it tells me you're building a long-term relationship, not just trying to close a quarter. And if you're a CPO or a procurement leader, the work we do before we walk into the room is invisible to most of the organization. And that's okay. We're not doing it for the credit. But we do need to make sure that our stakeholders understand that the PrEP is happening and that it's happening for them, not to them. Build the internal relationships with finance and IT and legal and HR. So those pre-meeting conversations are quick and natural. Keep your pulse on the market. And when you sit down with a supplier, let your stakeholders see that you've done your homework. That doesn't make you look slow, it makes you look indispensable. The meeting before the meeting is how you change the dynamic from procurement as a gatekeeper to procurement as a partner. And in my experience, once a stakeholder sees what that partnership actually looks like, they never go back to the ambush invite. Next episode, we're shifting gears completely. We're talking about something that I think is one of the most fundamental misunderstandings in how organizations think about procurement's value. We're tackling savings as a lie. And we're doing it for the CFOs and CEOs. It's a conversation about what we actually mean when we talk about cost savings, why the metric everyone fixates on is the wrong one. And why chasing the wrong kind of savings can actually cost you more. Thanks for listening. I'm Robert Brindle, and this has been the other side of the table.