# Optimizing Procurement to Accelerate Vendor Partnerships

**Podcast:** All Things Product with Teresa and Petra
**Published:** 2026-06-02

## Transcript

Hi, folks.
This is All Things Product with Petra Wille.
And Teresa Torres.
And we're so happy you're here.
Teresa, by the look of your face, I can already tell you're cranky.
So what happened today that you're in such a mood?
I heard it has something to do with procurement processes.
I'm tired.
I really want to, like, give up and just retire.
That's where I'm at today.
Don't.
Please don't.
I think I'm talking to seven different companies about a one-hour speaking engagement.
One of them has been delightful.
They didn't require vendor setup.
They put my fee on a credit card.
We scheduled it for two weeks out.
I'm giving the talk.
It's amazing.
Six of them, it's been like a full-time job.
One of them, I'm not exaggerating, wanted me to sign an...
80 page ethics policy for a one hour engagement.
Not to mention they all have like 40 page master service agreements.
And here's what I hate.
Like someone reaches out to me and they're like, hey, will you give a talk?
And I'm like, yeah, before I quote you a price, let's talk about what you need from me.
Like, am I showing up and giving a one hour talk?
Or is there more to it than that?
It's like one company was like, no, we just want you to show up and give a one hour talk.
I go, great.
So then I send them proposal.
It goes to legal for four weeks.
We're now like a week before the talk.
I still don't have a signed agreement.
I haven't invoiced.
I require upfront payment.
I haven't been set up.
Like nothing's done because their legal team has been stuck with it.
Then they come back and their vendor process takes forever.
And I'm, and I basically, I'm just like, I can't do this.
Like we're going to have to cancel the event.
And then they think that I'm the problem.
Like this is what drives me nuts is like I'm the prima donna because I won't do 20 hours of work for a one hour engagement.
Okay, so...
And they don't want to pay you for the 20 hours prep work, right?
They don't want to pay you for the 20 hours.
Otherwise it would be okay, maybe.
And then here's...
No, because I don't want this to be my life.
Like, I don't want to read legal documents and read your company's ESG policy, which I great...
That's great for your company.
Like, I'm giving a one-hour event.
It's virtual.
There's no ESG impact whatsoever, right?
Like, it's just getting absurd.
And I don't want to do it anymore.
Like companies now reach out and ask me to do a speaking engagement.
And my reaction is I will do a speaking engagement if we use my paperwork.
So you literally sign my agreement and you pay me by credit card and there's no vendor set up.
I'll cover the credit card fees, but no vendor set up.
And if you can't do that, like I'm not going to do it.
Because like it just takes too much time.
And then there's a second piece and then I'll end my rant and let you respond.
The second piece is...
They lie about what they want from you.
Like, I'm really clear.
Like, you want a one-hour talk.
So on this day, I'm going to show up for one hour.
Then they go, well, we want you to show up half an hour early to make sure your tech works.
Okay, we need seven minutes to make sure my tech works.
One.
Then two, they want me to record a promo video that they can share to everyone.
Okay, that's fairly easy.
I'm happy to do that.
Then they want a half an hour meet and greet where they can just tell me about their company.
which I don't get.
Like your company's big.
It's well known.
I know about your company.
I'll do my homework.
I'm a professional.
Then they want like a run of show a week beforehand where I literally give the talk for the tech event people.
Like, okay, now you just want me to show up for an hour just turned into three hours where two of the hours are a colossal waste of time.
I am going to quit.
That's what I'm at.
I'm just going to quit.
But...
Can I, what I see here, Teresa.
So I mentioned I'm a little cranky today.
Yeah, you did.
The thing is I'm observing the exact same thing.
So only if people are wondering if it's only Teresa, no, it's not.
I'm stuck in procurement processes as well.
I currently have one where I have to fill out 12 open word document forms, which where I'm filling in the exact same information.
each one of these documents.
And I can see why they're exposing the old structure.
I can see that one is for procurement department and one is for the legal department.
And I'm always like, okay, AI is just around the corner to save us all.
And these companies still live in the late 90s with their procurement processes.
So that's the reality we're all exposed to.
But what I wanted to highlight is this one thing that I think might be helpful for some people that are currently listening to.
So if you're wondering why your company is not doing such things like bringing in an expert and having this training sessions or having an internal product community of practice, that might be the root cause.
So your procurement processes might be hindering people delivering these things to your organization.
So go look at that.
If you work at a company where you were told I was coming to speak and it got canceled last minute, I'm going to tell you it's because your legal team couldn't review my contract in time for the speaking event.
And this is wild.
No, yeah.
And this is wild, right?
And then on the other hand, what really drives me crazy about that is in product, we design.
experiences right we design the user experience and the customer experience of course with the help of all our amazing colleagues cross-functional blah blah blah you know the drill it's not only the product person um so it's not about roles here but in general somebody does design um processes and experiences and i think we should consider all processes and experiments experiences that the company basically delivers and that includes vendor experience, because all of that has brand impact, for example.
So I think that is the learning for product people here.
Consider these even procurement processes that you're having, because maybe you currently don't want to speak at your organization, but I bet you're purchasing, I don't know, AI subscriptions or whatever it actually is.
And that might take ages as well with the procurement processes that you've got.
Okay, you brought up AI, so I'm going to go there too.
I'm talking to another company where they want to use our AI coaches, but to get approved for AI tools, they have to go through their security team.
I get it.
Security is a nightmare.
I fully respect these teams and they need to understand their exposure.
I'm completely willing to play along.
Okay, I cannot express how much I am not exaggerating.
I received a Word doc that has about 800 security questions.
Now, what's worse is they're repetitive.
I think I was asked 17 times on the forum whether or not I use MFA on different tools.
They could have just asked me, is there any tool where MFA is not being used?
But no, they have to ask it 17 times.
Sometimes they even ask for the same tool, right?
But are we looking at an iSlop?
questions already?
I don't know.
Maybe.
I don't think that somebody's using AI because nobody can get through their AI review process.
Okay, so I go back and forth.
Like, I go back and forth for, like, six weeks over email.
Apparently, my answers to their 800 questions aren't adequate.
So, and there's a lot of things on there that, like, I didn't do a good job of answering.
I will be totally upfront about that.
And that's because I'm not a security expert.
So, when you ask me questions like, What's the encryption algorithm being used by AWS on a Dynodb table?
It turns out I don't know.
But I can tell you I use Dynodb and that it's encrypted by default at rest.
And that seems like it's Dynodb is like an AWS service that's well known that seems like it should be good enough.
But it wasn't.
They needed me to like Google the exact algorithm.
So like I didn't do that the first time we had to go back and forth.
So then we go, really, I just asked Claude.
So then we go and they're like, we think we're close.
We just have two outstanding items.
And the two outstanding items are monitoring and penetration testing.
And I go, okay, great.
So here's what I can do for monitoring.
I'll turn on GuardDuty.
That's AWS's monitoring service.
I go penetration testing, like total deal breaker.
I'm a small company.
I don't have a lot of exposure.
I'm not collecting sensitive data.
And they're like, okay, let's do a call.
So we get on the call and I'm expecting that we're going to talk about penetration testing.
That is not what we talked about.
The guy was totally unprepared.
He's looking at this 800 question paper that he has printed out.
And he goes, I just have a couple questions for you.
I go, okay.
He goes, do you use MFA?
I go, on which account?
Like you've already asked me this question 40 times.
And he goes, on your AWS admin account.
And I'm like, can I look through the paper you're looking at and point where I've answered that seven times already?
I felt like I was in the office space, that stupid movie.
I could not believe that that's what we got on a call for because I had already answered it like 17 times.
And then his next question was, do you recycle your password every 94 days?
And I said, no.
And he goes, well, that's our company policy.
And I said, I understand.
I don't work at your company.
And he goes, okay.
I guess I'll have to note that as a security risk.
Like, that was it.
We never talked about monitoring.
We never talked about penetration testing.
For some reason, this company is like super focused on MFA and recycled passwords.
And me answering that question 17 times in a Google Doc wasn't adequate.
We had to get on a call.
This is my life and I hate it.
I am literally going to quit.
I'm not going to do any work with companies ever again.
Oh, my God.
And when people want to know why, it's because of this.
Yeah, it's because of this.
And that will.
That's by the way, why I think startups were so successful at the first place, because they didn't care.
They just moved quickly.
And so some of these companies will be outperformed.
Yeah.
So if you want to hire me to speak and you can put on a credit card and there's no paperwork whatsoever I'm in.
Otherwise, I'm going to enjoy my outdoor lifestyle here in Bend, Oregon and be retired.
I loved it.
Yeah, I loved it.
I have two price tiers for companies where I expect.
And by the way, it has nothing to do with the size of the organization.
I have big corporate clients where it's basically handshake deals.
Somebody looks you in the eye and say like, we're doing this and then you're doing this and they're paying it.
So there is nothing going sideways.
It's just, it's easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
And then you have mid-sized companies where you think like, okay, this will be a piece of cake.
And then it's not because then they have all the procurement and acceptance gates and whatever.
So I think it not necessarily has to do with the size of the company, but the big corporates that have these processes and where these processes suck are the ones that always use, yeah, you know, corporate culture as an excuse, but that's not the case.
I have pretty big organizations.
Not a problem at all.
They set up really as an organism.
So where smaller teams can actually do things and make calls and hold budgets.
This is like bureaucracy, like the definition of bureaucracy.
And I kind of understand how companies get here.
Adverse events happen.
They add a little more process.
Something else happens.
They add a little more process.
I get it.
But I also I'll tell you about another company I'm working with.
They contacted us like three weeks ago.
They have their pants on fire, urgent for training.
They want us to come do a training in person.
And then they're going to do follow-on coaching.
And I said, okay, all of this is great, but we require upfront payment to travel.
We will not incur risks of not getting paid if we're spending out of pocket.
Can you get that done?
This is a giant company.
And he's like, yes, my CEO is on board with the training.
He will get it through.
So they have all these procurement processes in place that normally they only pay net 90.
It takes like four months to get through their legal review process.
We're getting it done in 10 days because the CEO is on board.
And so what I'm learning is this also tells me how much pull does my contact have in the organization?
How important is this to the organization?
And if you want, like how much impact is my talk going to have or how much impact is this training going to have?
I also am just at the point where I don't know how much I care anymore.
Like I just, this can't be my life.
And some people listening might be like, well, why don't you hire somebody?
It doesn't work that way.
Like every, we all tried that.
We all tried that multiple times.
Like every system is unique.
It, everything, everything breaks in its own unique way.
Like I can't have a admin sign.
Like.
deal with negotiating a contract.
I'm certainly not paying a lawyer $700 an hour to negotiate these contracts.
Like, I just will say no to the work.
Yeah.
And that is sad because people could use your help, Teresa.
But yeah, I totally agree with you.
It's bollocks.
Do you know how many people go, what, you don't want this?
We want to pay you.
We want to hire you.
I'm like, no, you don't really.
You want to pay me for 1 40th of my engagement.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, can't do it.
And it is getting increasingly worse.
This is a giant rant and I apologize for that.
But I, I, it's funny.
I don't usually have like seven contracts in process at the same time.
Everybody wants speaking engagements right now for whatever reason that is.
I'm not sure why that is.
And I have a whole bunch and like six of the seven are heinous.
And I think I just want to quit.
And I'm not quite quitting.
I'm very vocally quitting.
Yeah.
You know, quite quitting is not our thing.
I love it.
Yeah, I'm not quite quitting.
Thanks, Teresa, for sharing your rant and your perspective.
I think it's still valuable.
Thanks, Petra, for humoring my rant.