The Opportunity
You are a senior Enterprise AE at Vantara, a B2B SaaS company that sells an AI-powered procurement intelligence platform. Vantara helps enterprise procurement and finance teams automate spend analysis, flag supplier risk, and accelerate sourcing cycles. ACV typically ranges from $180K–$600K. You carry a $3.2M annual quota.
You are 60 days into a deal with Meridian Industrial — a $4.8B industrial manufacturer with 12,000 employees across North America and Europe. Here is what you know:
The Account
VP of Procurement (Dana Reyes) is your primary champion. Dana has been pushing internally for a procurement modernization initiative for 18 months. She is bought in on Vantara and has been running an internal pilot with her team of 8.
CFO (Marcus Webb) controls the budget. He has attended one demo but has been non-committal. His EA has twice rescheduled a follow-up call. Finance is under pressure to reduce discretionary spend by 12% this quarter.
VP of IT (Priya Nair) has raised InfoSec concerns about Vantara's data residency model. She has not formally blocked the deal but has not signed off on security review.
The current contract proposal is $340K ACV for a 3-year term. Meridian's procurement team is using your pilot tool daily and has shared informal feedback that it has saved them roughly 15 hours/week in manual spend analysis.
The Complications
Competitive threat: Three weeks ago, Dana mentioned that Meridian received an unsolicited outreach from Coupa — a well-known competitor with deeper brand recognition in the procurement space. Coupa offered a 'strategic partnership' meeting with Meridian's CPO next week. You don't know what they proposed.
Budget objection: During your last call with Dana, she said Marcus Webb's team has asked procurement to 'right-size all vendor commitments.' Dana expects he will push back on the 3-year term and may propose cutting to a 1-year contract or reducing seats. Dana has advised you not to call Marcus directly until she 'sets the stage' — but that call has not happened in two weeks.
Timeline pressure: Meridian's fiscal year ends in 47 days. Dana has told you that any new vendor contracts must be approved by the CFO and submitted to legal 10 business days before fiscal close. That means you have approximately 27 business days to get to a signed contract — or the deal slips to next fiscal year, which Dana says would likely kill momentum.
Internal constraint: Your company's deal desk requires a formal security review sign-off from Meridian IT before a contract can be executed. You cannot waive this requirement. Your InfoSec team has offered to run a one-day accelerated review if Priya Nair agrees to participate.
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