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 The cost-squeeze caricature is a decade out of date.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.

Roughly half of sellers miss quota every year, and the industry keeps treating it as a rep problem. Lee Levitt argues it is a management problem, and it has been hiding in plain sight for decades.

In this episode of Value Coffee Talk, sales performance consultant Lee Levitt takes apart the assumptions behind quota setting, pipeline math, and the coaching that never actually happens.

His diagnosis is uncomfortable: most sales organizations hire for activity, measure for activity, then wonder why buyers do not see value. Lee's counter: a structure for turning a seller from a taker into a giver who earns the second meeting rather than begging for it.

The conversation goes deeper than technique. Lee makes the case that buying decisions are emotional before they are rational, that soft skills and emotional intelligence are the real differentiators in a market where AI has commoditized information, and that improv, not scripting, is what lets a seller stay present when a conversation turns. He also challenges leaders directly: you cannot coach authenticity into a team you manage by dashboard.

For CROs, enablement leaders, and value practitioners rebuilding how their teams sell, this episode is a candid look at why the fundamentals still fail and what to fix first.

Every vendor now leads with an AI story. Far fewer can prove what that AI actually delivered.

In this episode of Value Coffee Talk, Jim Richmond, veteran Chief Customer Officer at Smartling, joins us to unpack the widening gap between AI promises and proven outcomes, and what customer-facing leaders must do to close it.

Jim makes the case that buyers are no longer impressed by capability demos. They want to know which metric moved, by how much, and whether the result holds at renewal.

The conversation gets practical: how to quantify outcomes that were actually delivered rather than modeled, how to keep the customer at the center of the narrative instead of the product, and why curiosity beats defensiveness when a customer starts questioning your AI claims. Jim also challenges the reflex to answer pain with features, arguing that CS teams earn their seat by diagnosing the business problem first.

For CROs, Value Leaders, and Customer Success executives under pressure to defend AI investments, this is a working session on turning promises into proven value.

Ninety-seven percent of B2B buyers now use AI search as part of how they evaluate solutions. That single shift is quietly rewriting the economics of every service business built on selling expertise by the hour.

In this episode, Jon Erickson, a veteran Forrester analyst, joins us to unpack what AI actually changes for consultancies, agencies, and professional services firms, and what it does not.

The short version: AI compresses the cost of producing insight, but it raises the premium on trust. Clients can generate an answer in seconds. What they still cannot generate is confidence that the answer is right, defensible, and grounded in data they believe.

Jon and I get into the harder questions most firms are avoiding. If AI is a force multiplier, what happens to a business model priced on effort? Where does a consultancy add value once the analysis is commoditized? And why do the firms winning right now treat AI as a continuous experiment rather than a tooling decision?

If you lead a services business, or you sell into one, this conversation will give you a clearer read on where the durable value sits.

AI has made the build option look almost free. A few prompts, a weekend, and you have something that resembles a value calculator. What you don't have is a methodology, a maintained model, a governance trail, or a seller who trusts the number in front of the CFO.

In this episode of Value Coffee Talk, we dig into the build versus buy decision for value automation in the AI era. Vikas Mundada, a community favorite and value leader for Ping Identity, joins us to unpack why the hard part was never the math, why frameworks and structure determine whether AI produces credible value or confident noise, and what total cost of ownership really looks like once you account for maintenance, enablement, and trust.

What you'll take away:

• Why AI amplifies the quality of your value framework rather than replacing it

• Where homegrown tools quietly break: model drift, adoption, and no one left to own it

• The training and certification gap that stalls most AI rollouts

• How to compare TCO honestly, including the costs that never show up in the build estimate

• Where value automation management is heading, and what to stand up now

If your team is debating whether to build your own value engine, listen before you commit the sprint.

Sound bites

• "Frameworks make AI work better."

• "Get your team certified on AI tools."

• "Outcomes matter more than hypotheses."

In this episode of Value Coffee Talk, host Thomas Pisello speaks with Ken Powell about the remarkable growth journey of K1X and the evolving role of business value in today’s SaaS and AI-driven economy. The conversation explores how organizations can move beyond product-centric selling to focus on measurable outcomes, customer adoption, and long-term value creation in increasingly competitive and rapidly changing markets.

Ken shares insights on outcome-based buying, AI transformation, and the importance of embedding value into customer workflows to drive engagement, retention, and scalable revenue growth. The discussion also highlights leadership strategies for navigating change, accelerating adoption, and staying adaptable in an era where speed, curiosity, and customer impact are becoming critical competitive advantages.

• K1X’s growth journey and SaaS scaling strategies
• Embedding business value into customer workflows and sales
• Outcome-based buying and the shift toward measurable value
• Driving adoption and engagement in SaaS and AI environments
• Leadership, adaptability, and navigating rapid market change.