Most sellers still treat procurement as the last obstacle between them and a signature. Dean Edwards would like a word.

In this episode of Value Coffee Talk, Tom Pisello sits down with procurement expert Dean Edwards to explain what the function has actually become. The cost-squeeze caricature is a decade out of date. Modern procurement is measured on risk exposure, supplier resilience, and alignment to corporate objectives, which means the professional across the table is often solving a harder problem than the seller assumes.

Dean’s point is blunt: if you cannot articulate how your solution advances the objectives on your buyer’s annual report, you have given procurement nothing to work with except price.

The conversation reframes the RFP as diagnostic rather than adversarial. Tenders reveal where the buying organization thinks its gaps are, and the gaps they left out are frequently the more interesting opportunity.

Dean also explains the decision logic that governs procurement behavior: choices must be defensible and rational to people who were not in the room. Sellers who understand that stop arguing for preference and start arming their contact with justification.

From there, Dean and Tom get into where procurement is heading. Outcome-based agreements and shared value plans are moving from novelty to expectation, which raises the bar on proof.

Committing to a business result means committing to measure it, and vendors who cannot demonstrate delivered ROI will find renewal conversations far less forgiving. Handled well, the same rigor turns procurement from gatekeeper into the internal advocate who unlocks expansion.

For CROs, value practitioners, and enterprise sellers navigating complex buying committees, this is a rare look at the deal from the other side of the table.

The billable hour is not under pressure from a competitor. It is under pressure from a buyer who now has an analyst on their phone.

In this episode of Value Coffee Talk, Sherri Sklar of AI Venture Catalyst makes the case that professional services firms are facing a business model problem, not a technology problem. Buyers have stopped paying for access to expertise they can approximate instantly. What they will still pay for, and pay well for, is a guaranteed outcome. That shift breaks the economics of selling time and forces a hard question: what does a firm actually own that cannot be replicated by a general purpose model?

Sherri's answer is proprietary knowledge, and her argument is that most firms are sitting on it without monetizing it. The path forward is productization: turning judgment, methodology, and accumulated pattern recognition into something that scales without a consultant in the room. She walks through what that looks like in practice, from firms that have successfully packaged their IP into recurring revenue to the ones that stalled by building technology before clarifying the outcome they were selling.

The conversation is candid about the difficulty. Choosing where to build versus buy, developing AI capability without an engineering culture, and pricing an outcome instead of an engagement are all real obstacles. Sherri's position is that none of them justify waiting, because the buyer expectation has already moved.

For consultancy leaders, agency owners, and services executives weighing how to defend margin, this is a practical look at converting expertise into an asset.

Sound bites

• "Why should I spend X on analyst subscriptions when I have an analyst on my phone?"
• "You can't sit still in this economy; you must adapt."
• "Your proprietary knowledge is your most valuable asset."

Chapters

• 00:00 Introduction to AI in Professional Services
• 02:44 Challenges Faced by Professional Services Firms
• 05:39 The Shift in Buyer Behavior
• 08:44 The Need for Outcome-Based Business Models
• 11:25 Productization of Services and AI Integration
• 14:11 Navigating the Technology Landscape
• 17:13 Real-World Examples of Successful Productization
• 19:52 Overcoming Challenges in AI Development
• 22:48 Strategic Advice for Service Firms
• 25:40 Conclusion and Call to Action

Most lost deals are not lost to a competitor. They are lost to nothing at all, the buyer who agrees with everything, nods through the business case, and then goes quiet. Ted McKenna's research puts a number on it: a large share of pipeline dies not from preference for the status quo, but from fear of making the wrong choice.

In this episode of Value Coffee Talk, Ted McKenna, co-author of The Jolt Effect, breaks down why the standard playbook makes indecision worse. When a seller senses hesitation, the instinct is to pile on more proof, more references, more ROI. Ted's data shows that response often deepens the paralysis, because the buyer was never questioning whether the problem was real. They were questioning whether they could be blamed for the decision.

The conversation gets specific about what high performers do instead. They separate fear of the status quo from fear of failure and treat them as different problems. They build trust in the change itself, not just in the seller. And they use long-term capability planning to right-size expectations, giving the buyer a defensible path rather than a maximalist promise.

Ted closes with a caution the market needs right now. As vendors lean harder into AI narratives and outcome commitments, overpromising has become the fastest way to manufacture the exact indecision sellers are trying to overcome. Trust broken at implementation costs far more than a deal that closes slowly.

For CROs, enablement leaders, and value practitioners staring at flat win rates and aging pipeline, this is a clear-eyed look at where the real friction sits.