_{How to Expense Procurement Soft Skills Mastery (or anything you think will add value to your career).}

1. Notify your manager early.

Give your manager a heads up to signal your interest and prepare the ground.

Here’s how casual this conversation should be positioned.

“Hey boss! I just saw a Procurement Soft Skills Mastery course, and I think it’d be really useful for our work.

Can I send you the details?”

Here’s what any decent manager or leader should to be saying to that.

“Oh…sure!”

(Hint…if they stutter or splutter or something similar, it’s a sure sign you’re in the wrong environment to develop. See this as a data gathering exercise for your own career).

…or send your manager a quick message.

“Hey boss, I just saw this Procurement Soft Skills Mastery course given my that fellow who calls himself the Procurement Protagonist. He’s worth following on LinkedIn didn’t you know? Can I send you the details?”

COPY THE TEXT ABOVE - I dare you!

2. E-mail your manager.

Hey boss,

There’s a Procurement Soft Skills Mastery course.

Registrations end on Friday 11th October, so we’ve still got time for approval process and I’d like to join.

It’s a Procurement Soft Skills Masterclass that helps Procurement professionals like me to master their Soft Skills (EQ) and supercharge their Procurement career. It’s just £1000 and the reviews are crazy good.

There are alumni from some major companies like CAE, Lego, Co-op, Amazon.

The course is packed with practical tactics and tools (like Procurement frameworks and templates) that I can use for our work.

It’s a self paced course so I can take it in my own time and will take me just 10 weeks to complete (1-3 hrs/week).

I’ll get access to group coaching with a select cohort of Procurement pros too and 1-1 time with Tom.

In short, it’ll help us increase our Procurement impact, drive compliance and delight our stakeholders if I can take this course.

Tom Mills is well-known in the industry and all the details of students who have benefitted from this course are here: Join the Autumn cohort of PSSM.

Is it OK to expense this? P.S. should we offer it to the team? (I know someone who could really benefit)

Thanks for considering this.

3. Follow-up after 3 days

Your manager is a busy person? Reply with this reminder if you haven’t heard back from them:

“Hey boss, have you had time to look at the Procurement Soft Skills Mastery course I sent you?

I really believe it’d help us improve our Procurement skills.

Here’s the link: Join the Autumn cohort of PSSM.

P.S registration end on 11th October, or when the limited spaces are taken so we’ve got time if we can decide fast.

And some final thoughts on this:

• if you don’t ask you don’t get. See this as practicing your negotiation skills

• most businesses have untapped learning and development budgets for things like this and it’s at this time of year there’s a realisation the budget hasn’t been spent

• a good company or boss will consider a £1000 investment like this a ‘no brainer’. Put it this way, even if they can’t afford it now, if they’re serious about your development, they should be putting a placeholder in for you for next year.

• the only person who is really going to develop your career is you. See this as an opportunity to take charge.