How to keep a big deal moving through procurement

The champion loves you. The business case is approved. The economic buyer has said "let's do it." Then someone forwards a 240-question security questionnaire, legal sends back your MSA with red ink on every page, and vendor onboarding wants an insurance certificate you didn't know you needed.

Six weeks later, the deal is "still with procurement." Your forecast says Q3. Your gut says Q1, maybe.

This is where a lot of enterprise revenue goes to wait. Forrester found that 86% of B2B purchases stall at some point in the buying process. Most sellers file the stall under bad luck. More often, it was built into the deal on day one.

Why the back half takes so long

Late-stage friction has grown for reasons that have nothing to do with you.

• More people. Forrester's 2026 research puts a typical purchase at 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers. Each one can add a question, a review or a week.
• Procurement has a seat at the table. The same research found procurement professionals are decision-makers in 53% of buying cycles, and they engage from the start. If you meet them at the end, they have been forming views about you for months.
• Security review is the new gate. In G2's 2026 survey of software buyers, IT security review was the biggest source of delay after a vendor was chosen: 39% overall, and half of enterprise buyers.
• Everyone wants proof. Vanta's 2024 study found 65% of organizations say customers, investors and suppliers increasingly require them to demonstrate compliance. Your buyer's security team is answering to someone too.

None of these people are trying to kill your deal. They are paid to reduce risk, and an unfamiliar vendor is risk with a logo.

Treat procurement as a design problem

Think of a commercial building project. An architect who designs to code from the first sketch gets a permit in weeks. One who discovers the fire code at final inspection tears out walls. Procurement, legal and security are the building code of enterprise sales. You can design for them early or rebuild later.

In practice, designing early looks like this:

• Ask the process question in discovery. "Walk me through the last time you brought on a vendor this size. Who signed off, in what order, and what slowed it down?" Buyers know. Most sellers never ask.
• Get the paperwork in month one. Request the vendor onboarding pack, security questionnaire and standard MSA as soon as there is mutual interest. Reading them in week two costs nothing. Reading them in week ten costs a quarter.
• Pre-build your trust pack. SOC 2 or ISO reports, insurance certificates, data flow diagrams, a subprocessor list and a completed standard questionnaire. Regulated buyers ask the same 30 questions every time. Answer them once, properly.
• Know your redline positions before they ask. Limitation of liability, indemnities, data protection, IP, termination and payment terms. Decide in advance what you will trade, what you won't, and who on your side can approve a change within 48 hours.
• Meet procurement as a stakeholder, early. Ask what a clean submission looks like to them. People who get a polite early call rarely become the bottleneck.

Put the back half in a mutual action plan

A mutual action plan is a shared, dated list of every step between today and a signed contract, with an owner on each side. Done well, it is the most useful document in an enterprise deal. Done badly, it is a slide your champion never opens.

The difference is usually whether the approvals are in it. A useful plan includes:

1. The business outcome and the date it matters to the buyer: a renewal, a fiscal year start, a board meeting, a regulatory deadline.
2. Every approval step: security, legal, procurement, finance, vendor setup and signature authority.
3. A named owner on both sides for each step, with durations taken from the buyer's own history rather than your optimism.
4. Working back from the go-live date, the latest date each step can finish.

Working backwards is what gives the plan teeth. When the buyer can see that security review must finish by the 14th for the project to start before renewal season, the review gets scheduled. Without a date, it joins a queue behind every other vendor.

Share the plan early, and update it after every meeting. A plan that only appears at the proposal stage reads like a sales tactic. One that has been there since discovery reads like project management.

A question for this week

Pick the largest deal in your forecast. Can you name the person in their procurement team, the date their security review will finish, and the clause their legal team is most likely to push back on? If you can't answer all three, your close date is a guess. Book a 20-minute call with your champion this week to fill in the blanks.