We talk procurement , and of course , negotiations with the Ninja himself , Mark Raffan
PROCUREMENT STRATEGY
We talk procurement , and of course , negotiations with the Ninja himself , Mark Raffan
WRITTEN BY : LAURA V . GARCIA
If you ’ re in procurement , there ’ s a good chance you ’ ve heard of him . A serial entrepreneur and lover of marketing and thought leadership , Mark Raffan , a . k . a the Negotiations Ninja , is an expert in negotiation , influence , and persuasion . His popular Negotiations Ninja Podcast consistently ranks among the top negotiation podcasts in the world and lands on Feedspot ’ s # 1 spot .
Mark has also coached executives and teams in some of the world ’ s largest companies . He has been referenced in Entrepreneur , Forbes , Thrive Global , has appeared on dozens of podcasts and was a Supply and Demand Chain Executive Magazine 2019 and 2021 Pro-to-Know .
Mark and I met only a few short years ago in the small world of procurement and supply chain content creation . When it comes to negotiations , Mark is one of the worlds leading voices , and he loves to talk about procurement . Given the shifting nature of the industry , I thought there was no better time to catch up and garner his valuable thoughts .
LVG : “ As we know , it all rolls downhill ,” I say . “ Procurement leaders are finding themselves having to flip the script and start asking more of their suppliers . Advice for those looking to shift from status quo to excellence ?”
MR : “ Technology is going to play a major role in negotiations going forward . And to think that it ' s not would be very naive , like horrifically naive . Artificial intelligence ( AI ) is progressing so fast that there are now companies that are using AI to negotiate tail spend . Tail spend typically has been an area where most organisations have not really paid attention to because it represents 80 % of the volume of transactions , but only 20 % of the spend . So the number of line items that are required to be able to get a good deal done is significant . Going through that one by one is substantial ; adding in technology such as AI makes that more efficient . “ For example , Walmart is basically negotiating much of their tail spend right now using AI called Pactum [ Pactum ’ s platform provides autonomous negotiations at scale .] So , typically , a procurement professional would negotiate sequentially , one deal at a time . However , this technology negotiates in parallel , which means that they can negotiate hundreds and potentially more than thousands of negotiations at one time .
“ Technology is going to play a major role in negotiations going forward . And to think that it ' s not would be very naive , like horrifically naive ”
MARK RAFFAN , FOUNDER , NEGOTIATIONS NINJA
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