In our first two instalments, we gave you the top ten things you can do to be the Preeminent Procurement Influencer. While that’s more advice than anyone else is going to give you without a large retainer, we’re not done yet. We have one final piece of advice for you.

Find your next job sooner than later!

You might think this is crass, but the doctor has your best interests at heart because, being one of the last remaining OG analysts and bloggers who has now been in this space for two and half decades, he knows the cold hard truth.

You’re getting into it for the fame, thinking the fortune will come, but it won’t.

You need to remember that THIS IS PROCUREMENT. It’s Not Public Relations. It’s not Marketing. It’s not even Sales. You’re not selling to someone who’s cool. You’re selling to someone who’s less cool in the corporate culture than the IT Squad locked in the basement, who has significantly less budget and oversight than the IT Squad because the C-Suite at least understands their e-Mail and ERP needs supersized servers (even if it doesn’t, because that was what was required two decades ago and they haven’t learned anything about IT since) and their shiny new gadgets (laptops, tablets, smartphones, and Garmin GPS devices which are great for hiking the Himalayas) cost big bucks, and someone who has almost no say into corporate decision making and goal setting. Moreover, you’re selling to a function which has the least professionals of all functions across the business, as well as the least jobs (about 500K in the US compared to about 2.5M marketing and 5.5M sales professionals in the US). They are few and far between.

As a result, that rush of getting new likes and followers isn’t going to last very long because you’re not going to get that many followers no matter how hard you work, how often you pump out that flashy content we chronicled earlier this week, or how cool you are. The first few hundred followers will come very fast, the next few thousand will come at a good pace, but then, things will slow down. The gratification and dopamine highs from seeing those numbers trend up will be fewer and further between. Right now, the most popular influencers in our space on LinkedIn have about 30K followers. Think about that. 30K followers, when most big name influencers have 100K+ or 1M+. That’s not very many, and that’s because of the very small market you’re targeting. If there are only 500K in the US, that means the number of professionals you’re targeting across North America, the UK, and EU (where LinkedIn is popular) is only a little over 1M — and they aren’t all on LinkedIn.

Thus, at the end of the day, there’s no fame.

And there’s no fortune either.

I don’t know if you bothered to do your research, but like most actors and actresses (who have to waitstaff or do odd jobs just to survive on their cans of tuna), most influencers don’t make money! YouTubers who get 1Million views a month can’t even pay their rent on that. UNLESS YOU HAVE A MILLION FOLLOWERS AS AN INFLUENCER, YOU CAN NOT MAKE A LIVING OFF OF IT!

But I can get sponsors? Good for you. You might pay your (office) rent on that, but you won’t pay your bills on that either. Ask the OG bloggers.

The daily grind is all there is. The ongoing, never ending, slog that will be there day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year with no fame, no fortune, and no reward.

And if you’d stop to ask why there are so few bloggers, sorry, content creators, left in our space, even fewer that have been doing it for more than a couple of years, and next to none that have been doing it for more than a decade, and did your research, you’d know that it’s because many started thinking it would be cool and fun, get them recognition and renown, and it would eventually pay off big.

But after a couple of weeks, months, or years, the vast majority of these bloggers, sorry again, content creators, realized that it’s not cool and fun (it’s just hard work), the breadth of recognition and renown was much (much) less than they dreamed, and the money, well, it just wasn’t there. They still had to make their living as a procurement leader, consultant, or startup founder — which, as we know, already required constant overtime before the content creation.

Dear Influencer, This Is Your Life! And let me save you some heartache by telling you now that You Don’t Want It. So figure out what you want to do and go do it. You’ll be much happier if you do. (Because no one is going to write your content creator obituary when you suddenly stop one day because you’re just too tired to keep going. the doctor stopped keeping track after the first hundred (100) or so dropped off. Yes, you read that right, hundred or so. Shortly after THE PROPHET and the doctor started almost two decades ago, we went from maybe a dozen bloggers to over one hundred, and then back down to less than two dozen three years later. They didn’t last, and you won’t either.)

Most of the time, it’s only the strong survive, but in our space, it’s only the non-sociopathic masochists with a pressing need to try and educate (or at least intellectually stimulate) others that survive. (And the doctor hopes THE REVELATOR agrees!) In other words, if you’re mentally well balanced, your chances of success are about equivalent to a pig flying through hell fast enough to keep the snowball from melting …)

As per Part I, this should have been a short post, because the answer is short and sweet:

All Influencer Content is Mostly Useless.

But if you understood this, you wouldn’t be following them (and these influencers would disappear as fast as they came, but, instead, we’ll have to endure them for a few years — more on this in another article).

So now we’re going to break it down continuing with the top 10 list we just published!

KPI Kollections just Konfuse the Krux of the Kase

The more metrics on that dashboard, the more directions you get pulled in. It’s not how many KPIS, it’s how relevant they are to measuring your progress in the right direction. For every active initiative you should only have two or three. For your department, you don’t want more than a dozen key KPIs that align to your primary objectives, and, preferably, less than ten if you can get away with it. (Every executive and function head will want their own metric, but not all are relevant.)

Shaping Supplier Superstars Requires Synergistic Sessions not Spec Sheets

A 12 Steps to Supplier Success check-list is nothing more than that, a checklist, which for most practitioners is totally useless because, either

1. they are too junior to know what to do,
2. they are too senior to get any use out of it, because they know what to do but don’t have the time managing a dozen other projects, or
3. they are intermediate and more than anything need a workflow tool that guides them and prompts them and guides their supplier management interactions and makes it easy for the supplier to make their contributions.

Either way, it’s not helpful. They need development plans, management software, KPIs, insights, and, sometimes, help to get it done. A checklist just reminds them of yet another thing they aren’t doing.

Minimal Maturity Models are Meaningless Without Modification Maps

In other words, all of these maps on their own are mostly useless (including, and not limited to, the maturity model the doctor did over a decade ago, which you can access here), because, again, your readers don’t need a five-by-five grid of process or technology maturity level, they need

• a maturity assessment that helps them understand where they are
• process or platforms that can help them get to the next level
• transition plans to get them from where they are to the next level on a particular path
• an understanding of the value they will realize by expending the effort to move up
• a vision to hold onto because it’s an 8-year plus journey to Best in Class for most large organizations

In other words, a five by five does absolutely nothing for the average practitioner.

Lackadaisical LogoPalooza is Lamentable

They don’t need 50 to 100 random logos they know nothing about, and likely can’t even translate into a URL — they need 5 to 10 suppliers who offer expert vetted software solutions that should be able to solve 70% to 80% of their current automation needs that they can confidently invite to a first round RFI to find the 3 to 5 they will begin a serious process with.

Agentric AI is Artificial Idiocy

Yes, RPA is great. Yes, there are valid uses for Gen-AI. Yes, you can build a natural language interface to an RPA agent and use that interface to define rules where it an auto-perform certain tasks as data comes in and states change. And yes, you can call that an agent. And if that was what Agentric AI was, that would be great and you’d be doing a service.

However, Agentric AI is being used to refer to the next generation of Gen-AI models that are supposed to have “reasoning” capabilities, that are supposed to be able to learn on their own (how?!?), and that are supposed to be able to replace the procurement professionals you want as your followers. (You read that right, these systems are being designed with the goal of replacing people, not augmenting them.) But we all know the current state of Gen-AI that can’t spell, tells you to eat rocks, and when you get unhappy with it, makes up a response it thinks you will like, backed up by references to fake articles by fake authors with fake bios, all of which it created on the spot just to please you (because that is what it was trained to do, and since hallucination is a core function of this technology … )

So, yeah, the doctor is NOT an influencer because he:

• only does top 10 lists when knitting fog is the only way to make a point
  (he is a contrarian satirist after all)
• despises inspirational posts
• believes motivational posters are useless
  (and, thus, will only tolerate LOL Cats)
• believes hobbies are for hobby blogs (or special one-time posts in special series, NOT ongoing play-by-play coverage)
• believes no good comes from exclusives or private clubs and that’s why Sourcing Innovation has always been, and will always be, equal free access for all
• avoids KPI overload (it’s not good analysis)
• would rather focus on tools and processes that enable suppliers than useless checklists
• only created and published a maturity model as part of an explanatory white paper [that followed a 3-part series] and only for a company that was putting together programs to help its customers advance to the next level (and until another such company comes along, won’t do one again)
• despises logo maps to the point that the only thing he despise more is
• the Gen-AI/Agentric AI hype train (and has to argue against it daily)

So, if you’re looking for an influencer, don’t follow him. He doesn’t care about influencing, just educating and inducing you to think. If that’s you, and we haven’t said it already, Welcome to Your SI!

This could be a short post, because the answer is short and sweet:

All Influencer Content is Mostly Useless.

But if you understood this, you wouldn’t be following them (and these influencers would disappear as fast as they came, but, instead, we’ll have to endure them for a few years — more on this in another article).

So now we’re going to break it down starting at the bottom of the top 10 list we just published!

Top 10 Lists Tell You What Is Relevant — Not Why, and even worse, Not How!

And in Procurement, if you don’t know why something is relevant, you’ll never be able to do anything about it. (And then, if you don’t know how to do it to get results if you try, you’re in trouble, especially if it required a large portion of your very limited budget to try it.)

If you want an inspirational quote, you need look no further than your favourite guru or mystic.

More importantly, you don’t need inspiration to succeed, you need perspiration … and a bit of guidance on how to make your perspiration most effective.

You don’t need motivation, you need a raise and a bonus.

Motivation doesn’t pay the bills, and if you’re in the mood for motivation, there are professional motivational speakers that do motivation for a living (and because they get paid for it, you know that if they don’t do it for you, no one will).

You barely have time for a hobby you , so why the h3ll do you want to read about someone else’s?

As a Procurement professional, you’re unappreciated, overworked, denied the tools that would make your job easier, and blamed for everything that goes wrong. You laugh when you see the Monday.com commercial that shows people underwater by 10 am because you’re underwater 24/7, 365 days a year (366 in leap years). If you’re dedicating a few minutes a day to read something, there better be a reward in it for you. It better at least spark a usable idea if it doesn’t give you one.

You’re a Procurement Pro and you know that “Exclusives”, “Founders Clubs”, etc. is all just Sales BS to suck you in to something you don’t necessarily need!

You don’t need to belong to an exclusive, founder’s club. You don’t need to read through pages of spiel just to sign up for more pages of spiel when all you need is training, insights, action plans, proper tools, and useful KPIs that get results. If you just need a course, there are Professional organizations and training programs where you can sign up and pay per course. Real analysts, consultants, and other Procurement professionals will give you insights for free (but if you need help or training, that will cost — but the details/proposals aren’t hidden behind exclusive paywalls). Action plans need to be tailored to your needs and built by you or a qualified consultant. Proper tools are there, but you need budget, and, most importantly, real guidance from people who actually know the tools (and not just how to scrape their logo from their website and put it on a logo map). Useful KPIs are those that will encourage the right behaviours and need to be carefully matched to the project. And all of this needs to be delivered sales and marketing free to be useful.

 

Come back tomorrow for Part II!

As per part I, the votes have been counted and apparently everyone wants … an Influencer!

Not a consultant. Not a practitioner. Not an educator. And definitely not a leader!

So now you too want to be an Influencer! Hell yeah!

So how do you become the Preeminent Procurement Influencer! Either ask THE PROPHET, the OG Influencer, or just follow this top 10 list and you’re virtually guaranteed to succeed!

05. Krazy KPI Kompulsion

We all know you can’t manage what you can’t measure, and what’s better than a metric? A Key Performance Indicator metric. And what’s better than a Key Performance Indicator? A whole page of Key Performance Indicators organized into super cool looking (but inherently unusable) dashboards that are the perfect eye candy! Remember to pump one of these out at least once a month, and every quarter replace a metric or two and explain how the metric you replaced was outdated and not outcome focussed, because we’re all about outcomes, right?

And again, if it’s not overwhelming, it’s not done right!

Using ProjectManagement.com so as not to embarrass any Procurement Application.

04. Shape Supplier Superstars

Remember to remind those Procurement professionals weekly that their failures are not their fault! It’s their suppliers who are not performing up to par. All they have to do to improve their performance is ensure that their suppliers step up their performance because, then, good things will magically happen! On top of that, given them a checklist of relationship management things to do, mention a platform or two, one or two metrics and … abracadabra … things are going to magically get better. (Ignore the fact that there is no supplier improvement unless someone puts in a lot of work and that many Procurement professionals don’t have the time or the knowledge to put together the detailed operational improvement plans needed to improve supplier performance.) And don’t forget #08 when you do it. The best way to inspire collaboration is motivation, right?

03. Procurement Maturity Models

Create a matrix, preferably Five By Five, because that is the best signal strength with the best clarity after all (even though you’re not an engineer and don’t understand what that means). Plus, it’s the golden ratio for Maturity Models (it’s not, but you’re not a mathematician, because, if you were, you’d use Eight by Five for the Nine to Fives as that’s closer to the golden aspect ratio). So just pump it out, don’t worry about how accurate it is, or, more likely, how useful it is, and just keep on listening to your Ella Mae Morse.

02. Logo Maps

Just slap 100+ logos on a page, divide them up, make up some labels, get bonus points if you can do Venn Diagrams, and look like you are a super Guru of ProcureTech. Ignore the fact you have little to no formal technical background, can’t differentiate SIM vs SRM vs SPM vs SUM vs SCM vs SOM vs SNM vs SEM vs SQM vs SDM (and think the doctor is just making this up when he’s not and one of the handful [literally, you can count us on your fingers on one hand]) of OG analysts who have been around for over two decades (with a solid background in computer science [and applied mathematics, which is considerably more important than you think if you want to analyze advanced analytics, optimization, RPA, and ML/AI technology and not just take the vendor BS marketing at their word]) when you probably struggle to differentiate sourcing vs. procurement vendors (given all the marketing noise they make these days). (And remember, whatever you do, don’t make those logos clickable! No one cares what the squiggle actually represents … it’s all about the cool graphic!)

01. Agentric AI is the Future!

There’s nothing a Procurement professional likes more than the night train than the Hype Train! (After all, thanks to the nonstop Big Tech, Big Analyst, and Vendor Marketing onslaughts, they’ve all been Blinded by the Hype!.) So keep telling them how great it’s going to be when Agentric AI does their job for them (and ignore the fact that companies are hoping they can use Agentric AI to fire them).

And that’s all there is too it! Follow these 10 steps and you too can be the next Procurement Influencer with thousands of followers ignoring, sorry, hanging on your every word. Just whatever you do, please don’t tag me in any of this content. (And if you’re looking for any of this, definitely don’t follow me.) You’re welcome!

The votes have been counted and apparently everyone wants … an Influencer!

So, welcome to Influencer Week on Sourcing Innovation! It’s time to give the influencers their due.

After all, when it comes to a:

Consultant? Nope! Once the money is gone they leave you with the mess you created (by selecting the system the big analyst firm put on the upper right of the map du jour) and you don’t want that.

Practitioner? Double Nope! Like you, they slave in the dungeon of the Tower of Spend on an old 286 which can barely play a low resolution version of Weird Al’s It’s All About the Pentiums and use Ariba Web 5.

Educator? Hell No! No one wants to learn and they definitely don’t want some random sap expending all their energy trying to teach them.

Leader? Are you crazy? As far as the CEO and CFO are concerned, ALL the bucks stop with Procurement and everything that goes wrong is Procurement’s fault, whether Procurement had any control over it or not including, but not limited to, tariffs no one predicted a year ago when the contract was signed, natural disasters, and the lack of results due to a complete lack of funding for modern technology and skilled talent.

Who does that leave?

An Influencer! Hell yes!

So now everyone wants to be … an Influencer!

Unlike a consultant, you don’t have to do projects doomed to fail. Unlike a practitioner, you get to work in the limelight and not in the ghost light of the old monochrome CRT hooked up to that 286. Unlike an educator, you don’t have to actually teach, just get likes, follows, and clicks! And, unlike a leader, you don’t have to care about results and whether your influences get any! It’s the perfect job!

But how do you become an influencer? Well, you could ask THE PROPHET, one of the OG Influencers of our space (who, by the way, only became one AFTER he learned how to solve business problems), or you could just follow this top 10 list and you’re virtually guaranteed to succeed.

10. Post top 10 lists regularly!

Letterman was right. The masses love these. While 10 is not a perfect number, the average person seems to think it is, so just go with it. They’ve been getting results for 40 years! (Since September 18, 1985, to be precise!)

09. Inspirational Quotes in fancy graphics.

Everyone likes an inspirational quote right? A little bit of feel good to start their day (otherwise they might have to stop by Dr. Feelgood‘s on the way to the office). Make sure they rise and shine to you!

08. Motivational Posters, Procurement Style.

What do people like more than an inspirational quote? A motivational poster! Even better if it has cute kitty kats because we all have to

Bonus points if you can figure out how to make these Motivational Procurement Posters Gangnam Style

07. Don’t Forget Your Hobby!

Yes, remember to tell us weekly about how you ski the specialist slopes, sail the strait, race cars or do something else super cool every weekend because not only are you a Procurement Influencer, but you’re a super cool human! (After all, an AI could never make up a story about how it raced a car at the local track this weekend or generate a picture of itself at the beach because it’s an AI, right?) And everyone wants to connect with, and thus be influenced by, a super cool human, right?

06. And Definitely Don’t Forget the Exclusives!

After all, you’re not a true influencer until you have a cult, sorry, fan club, sorry, exclusive member club of leading Procurement professionals who get access to your most exclusive content that distinguishes them as the biggest suckers, sorry, leading thinkers who will take their careers to the next level with your industry leading content (all designed to keep their dopamine levels at maximum capacity).

But Wait, There’s More! Don’t forget that you have to offer them something to sign up for at the low, low starter price of $19.99 a month! (After all, Mr. Popeil made that the magic number 50 years ago and it’s held on ever since!)

Come back tomorrow for Part II for the top 5 suggestions to be a Preeminent Procurement Influencer!