# Mark Coulson

Mark Coulson writes about practical procurement: negotiating supplier deals, managing spend categories, improving visibility of procurement in business decisions, and applying human judgment to AI-generated work.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/mark-coulson/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/interimprocurement
- LinkedIn followers: 14,107
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, procurement, ai-in-procurement
- Based on 13 dated posts, latest 2026-10-07

## Summary

Mark Coulson is most useful for practical procurement content on supplier negotiation, spend categories, visibility, and checking AI work.

- Best for: B2B SaaS or procurement software campaigns targeting procurement and finance practitioners who influence spend.
- Not for: Consumer brand campaigns seeking broad UK household reach or lifestyle-led creative for general audiences.
- Check first: Confirm audience role, seniority, industry, geography, company size, and recent post results.

### Takeaways

- A software benchmark said 15% savings; an experienced negotiator got 44%.
- Five stages assess category management, from unowned spend to source of advantage.
- Procurement's problem is visibility, not status; board packs affect accountability.

## Main ideas

- **Benchmark tools set a floor, not a realistic savings target**: Mark Coulson argues that benchmarking platforms can show what savings are plausible across a market, but they cannot weigh what determines how far a specific supplier will move: leverage, timing, competition and an experienced negotiator's judgement about when to push and when to stop. In their account, the benchmark becomes dangerous when its output is treated as gospel rather than a starting position.
- **Procurement's problem is visibility, not status**: Mark Coulson argues that procurement struggles at board level because it has no visible number, not because the function lacks importance. A number spread across other operating costs cannot be defended, credited or acted on like a marketing or IT line. Their conclusion: functions taken seriously in the boardroom make their number visible before anyone asks where it is.
- **Most spend categories are owned on paper, not actually managed**: Mark Coulson sets out five stages a procurement spend category moves through: nobody owns it; someone reacts to problems; there is a plan, reviewed rarely; the category is actively managed against the market; and it becomes a source of advantage. In their view, most categories in most businesses are at the reactive stage. Moving up does not require adding headcount; it takes someone with the time and expertise to run the category, not just hold the title.
- **The risk with AI is accepting the first answer**: Mark Coulson argues that AI does not deskill procurement teams by itself; the damage comes when people accept its first output without reading, testing or adding their own supplier knowledge. The cost is not only the occasional wrong answer but the erosion of the judgement people were hired for. They offer three questions for anyone handing over AI-generated work: what did it get wrong, what would you change before a supplier saw it, and what did you know that it did not?
- **Ask where a supplier's margin actually comes from**: Mark Coulson argues that a low agency fee can hide where the client's money really goes. Media owners reward agencies for the volume they place, so if rebates, bonuses and discounts earned on the client's budget are not returned, part of that budget funds someone else's margin and influences where ads run. Their practical test: ask in writing, before the pitch and before any ideas are presented, whether every rebate earned on the client's spend will come back.

## Work to read

- [A software benchmark said 15% savings; an experienced negotiator got 44%](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/interimprocurement_controversial-topic-but-an-important-one-activity-7509180153168576512-jrwJ)
- [The five stages of procurement category management](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/interimprocurement_every-procurement-spend-category-in-a-business-activity-7508461453130096640-hiNh)
- [What to do when a team member sends an AI answer without reading it](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/interimprocurement_the-answer-came-back-quickly-well-written-activity-7513493517818720257-BOxU)
- [Why procurement is invisible in the board pack](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/interimprocurement_sat-in-on-a-board-pack-review-last-month-activity-7508782475121364992-xPmQ)
- [The rebate question every marketing and procurement leader should ask an agency](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/interimprocurement_we-asked-six-media-agencies-the-same-question-activity-7513179616384008192-ySiQ)

## Brand relationships

- **BMC** (mention)

## Partnerships

Mark Coulson's posts offer no sponsorship terms, rate card, deliverables, partnership policy or commercial inquiry route. Their procurement commentary is written for practitioners, not brands. Any paid placement would need to be agreed directly with Coulson, including format, price, review and approval process, and disclosure requirements. The posts cover supplier negotiation and benchmarking tools, spend category management, procurement's visibility in board-level reporting, media agency rebates, and the use of AI in procurement teams. They address procurement, finance and commercial leaders rather than a general consumer audience, making the readership relevant to a B2B SaaS company seeking procurement decision-makers. The posts do not say whether paid partnerships are available or describe sponsorship formats. Before budgeting, a brand should ask Coulson to confirm availability and terms in writing.

## Alternatives

- Justin Etkin: Choose Justin Etkin when the need is a live software or SaaS renewal and the buyer wants deal-level negotiation examples rather than a category diagnosis. The Carta account is the posts' clearest example: the vendor had stopped moving, Carta's team learned through Tropic's intelligence that the vendor was stalling rather than out of room, changed approach and found 21% in additional savings. The posts also make a case about AI consumption, where token spend moves daily, pricing changes every few months, and the model a buyer signed for can be deprecated before the contract ends. For a B2B SaaS company whose bills now include AI usage, that is the part of the estate where the existing renewal calendar and category owner no longer fit. If the campaign needs one negotiation story, a number on the table, and a route into spend that procurement does not yet own, these posts carry it more directly than a general category argument.
- Jeremiah Franklin Shrack: Consider Jeremiah Franklin Shrack when the buyer's problem is one high-value, heavily worded agreement where money leaves through contract language rather than the headline price. The posts model an agreement across 15 provisions, put figures on the leakage and specialty-margin exposure, and argue that the strongest negotiation starts before the RFP with provision-level details and replacement wording. Audit rights, rebate definitions and guarantee mechanics are treated as the product being bought. For a software or services deal with a complex schedule of fees, rebates, exclusions and true-up clauses, that method—read the clause, quantify it, draft the replacement—takes the job Coulson describes in their benchmark post down to the clause level. Shrack also sells a fixed-price contract review as a fast deliverable, which suits a campaign that has to give the reader something concrete to run this week.
- Liam J.E Gerada: Liam J.E Gerada is the better choice when the spend line in question is payments and checkout rather than software, and the buyer wants a worked example of headline price against true effective cost. One post takes a single merchant, shows a quoted 2.9% plus 30 cents becoming a blended rate above 4.3% once cross-border assessments, FX spread, gateway fees, chargeback fees and downgraded interchange are added, and converts the gap into $1.54M a year. It names the published fee schedules behind the gap and gives the reader a five-minute diagnostic: total fees divided by total processed volume. That is the same close reading Coulson applies to a benchmark number, aimed at a different cost line. The second post argues that agentic checkout changes who reads the fee schedule, and why a per-transaction toll that is a rounding error at human volume becomes a real tax that gets engineered around. Choose Gerada when the campaign is about fee legibility and machine-driven purchasing, not supplier category management.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/