Ep 204: Behind The Red Tape Of B2B Buying Decisions with Jennifer Butler
Your buyer said yes. So why hasn’t the contract been signed?
It’s not your proposal. It’s not your pricing. It’s the system your contact has to work inside: the approval tiers, the legal review, and the procurement queue where your SOW sits right behind the janitorial contract for all 27 floors of HQ.
Jennifer Butler, founder and CEO of Primrose Leadership Solutions, spent 25 years inside Fortune 50 organizations before a position elimination nudged her to hang her own shingle. Two years later, she’s running a thriving executive coaching and leadership development firm, and she knows exactly what happens on the other side of the table after you hit send on a proposal.
We talked about where to find buyers with fresh budgets, how approval thresholds actually work, and how to help your champion sell you internally (without doing unpaid work while you wait).
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The first client: map your whole network
Jennifer never dreamed of entrepreneurship. She liked the safety and security of corporate life. (Same, girl. Same.) She spent about 25 years there, and when her role was eliminated, she started looking at other corporate jobs. They gave her the ick.
So she gave herself a couple of months. If nothing happened, she could start applying for jobs again. What’s the worst that could happen?
A longtime peer mentor handed her a single sheet of paper: a checklist to start her business on one side, and a way to scope out revenue streams on the other. She followed it step by step, and step one was mapping her network.
She went through every text thread and every LinkedIn connection and sorted people into three groups:
Friends who get the “Hey, I’m launching a business!” message
Former colleagues who get the “We used to work together, maybe we could again” message
People who control a checkbook who get the “Let’s talk” message
Her first two clients were people she had worked with before. (I ask almost every guest this question, and the ones who got traction fastest all did some version of this.)
Look for role changes and big shifts
Jennifer’s early clients had moved to new companies with a list of 15 priorities and the internal capacity to get through maybe 10 of them. That gap is your opening.
Here’s what most consultants don’t realize: contractor spend usually comes out of a completely different budget than headcount. A $50,000 employee might actually cost the company $75,000 once you add benefits. That’s the loaded cost. A $35,000 to $40,000 contractor engagement goes through different approvals, moves faster and removes the risk of a bad hire.
Signals to watch for:
People in your network who just changed roles (Sales Navigator makes this easy to spot)
Companies going through mergers or acquisitions
CEO or senior leader transitions, especially when a long-tenured leader is replaced and the new one wants to bring in change
How approval thresholds actually work
Every company is different, but Jennifer sees a pattern:
Around $10K: a manager or director can often approve it, sometimes right on a credit card
Above $15K: at least one more level of approval
Above $50K: procurement and/or legal usually get involved
Legal wants to protect their data and confirm you carry insurance. Procurement wants to know whether a vendor already in their system could do what you do. Unless it’s a formal RFP, how involved procurement gets varies a lot.
Don’t be afraid to ask: What are the approval levels? Who are the approvers? When does your fiscal year end?
Make it easy for your buyer to sell you internally
When a client needs a quick turnaround, Jennifer sends the statement of work along with her proposal, plus everything they need to set her up in their payment system. Many HR, L&D and marketing leaders rarely deal with procurement, so handing them a complete packet takes the stress off their plate.
It’s basically sales enablement for your champion. A few questions she asks:
Who has to sign the contract, and would it help if I met with them?
How are we keeping them in the loop?
Who’s going to be your most challenging internal stakeholder?
That last one lets you write the proposal to speak directly to what that person cares about.
For larger engagements, break the work into milestone-based phases. Think $25K to start, $25K at sign-off and $25K at wrap-up. Procurement may still see the full picture, but phased invoicing feels less risky to the people approving it.
Q4 is “use it or lose it” season
Corporate budgets usually don’t roll over. Jennifer once spent $650,000 in four hours in November. Leftover budget is your opportunity.
Scope now, deliver later. Sell the scoping phase this year and contract the execution for next year.
Split the payment. If they’re on a calendar fiscal year, offer 50% now and 50% in January.
Pitch pieces of big early-year events. Sales kickoffs, keynotes and annual meetings often have budget that can be spent this year.
As Jennifer put it, it’s like getting services on layaway. And late summer through fall is when next year’s strategy and budgets get built, so it’s the perfect time to get on the plan.
Be willing to pause the work
Your point of contact doesn’t control the process. And to procurement, finance and legal, your contract is a lower priority than the multimillion-dollar ones (they’re also reviewing the janitorial services for all 27 floors of HQ). Give everyone some grace, and build that time into your process.
But be ready to stop working if signatures stall. When Jennifer was on the corporate side, a vendor paused work with a very direct message, then called her to explain they hoped it would help. It did. It gave her the leverage she needed to get the contract signed.
Now she does the same with her own clients when something falls off a desk in accounts payable. She’s not taking her ball and going home. She still has a business to run.
The biggest thing to remember
It’s not your point of contact purposely adding these processes. It’s the system they work inside. Learn the system, and you can help them get to yes faster.
Jennifer Butler
Jennifer Butler is the founder and CEO of Primrose Leadership Solutions, a boutique consulting firm focused on executive coaching and bespoke leadership development for organizations of all sizes. She brings 25 years of experience in Fortune 50 organizations and global industry leaders, where she partnered with sales, operations, high-potential talent and global teams. Jennifer is an ICF-credentialed coach, certified in StrengthsFinder and the Leadership Circle Profile 360.
