The formal buying process a company runs to approve, evaluate, and finalize contracts—controlled by rules, not the people you've been talking to.
Procurement is the buyer's internal gatekeeping process: the policies, approvers, and workflows that have to sign off before money changes hands. You've been negotiating with end users or their manager. Procurement is different stakeholders with different incentives—they care about vendor risk, price, compliance, and legal terms. They slow things down intentionally.
You'll hit procurement once the deal is "done" from the business side. It's where deals stall for months. The champion you've been working with often has no control over this part and can't push it faster. You need a sponsor—someone with authority and skin in the game—to shepherd the deal through. Without one, procurement will bury you in RFPs, security questionnaires, and contract redlines.
Your champion in operations says they're ready to move forward and sign by end of quarter. Three weeks later you hear: "We need to run this through procurement." Now you're in a legal review that moves at legal's pace. Your champion is frustrated too—they want the solution, but they can't override procurement's process. You find out procurement needs SOC 2 compliance, a vendor NDA, and three rounds of contract negotiation. The deal is now three months out.
AEs pretend procurement doesn't exist until they have to. Then they're shocked that the CEO-approved deal gets hung up on contract language. Find out before you're done negotiating whether procurement is a gate and what their timeline is. Get your sponsor to help you understand procurement's specific blockers early. Otherwise you'll do all the work, celebrate the win, then watch the deal freeze.
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