Procurement – All Things Product Podcast with Teresa Torres & Petra Wille

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Teresa is cranky — and honestly? She has every right to be.

In this episode, Teresa and Petra go on a deeply relatable rant about the absurdity of modern corporate procurement processes. Teresa is simultaneously juggling seven speaking engagement contracts, and six of them have become a part-time job in themselves — think 80-page ethics policies, 800-question security forms, and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) questions asked 17 different times. Meanwhile, the one company that just put her fee on a credit card? Scheduled, confirmed, and done in two weeks.

Petra chimes in with her own procurement horror story — filling out 12 identical Word document forms — and the two draw a bigger point from the chaos: broken vendor processes don’t just frustrate consultants, they prevent organizations from getting the expertise they actually need.

If you’ve ever wondered why that training got canceled, why that speaker backed out, or why your company can’t seem to bring in outside experts — this episode might answer that question.

Topics Covered:

• Why Teresa is (half-jokingly) threatening to retire
• The stark contrast between vendor-friendly companies and bureaucratic nightmares — and why company size isn’t the deciding factor
• The hidden cost of procurement theater: scope creep, repetitive forms, and the 800-question security review
• How a CEO’s buy-in can compress a 4-month legal review process into 10 days — and what that reveals about organizational priorities
• The vendor experience as a brand experience — a lens product people should apply to their own organizations
• Teresa’s new policy: her paperwork, credit card payment, no vendor setup — or no speaking engagement
• How bureaucracy compounds over time through adverse events — and why startups historically win by moving fast

Key Takeaways:

• Your procurement process is a reflection of your culture. If it’s painful for vendors, it’s probably painful internally too.
• Product thinkers should care about vendor experience. Every process your company delivers — including procurement — has brand impact.
• CEO-level buy-in is the fastest procurement tool there is. It reveals how much your organization actually values what it’s trying to buy.
• Simple vendor terms attract the best experts. The more friction you create, the more likely top speakers and consultants will just say no.

Resources & Links:

• Follow Teresa Torres: https://ProductTalk.org
• Follow Petra Wille: https://Petra-Wille.com

Mentioned in the episode:

• Hire Teresa to Speak
• AWS DynamoDB & GuardDuty
• Claude Code
• The classic film Office Space (referenced for reasons that will be very clear)

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