Sourcing in practice | Session 13

Should-Cost: Negotiate the Cost, Not the Price

Every quote is a story about what something costs, told by the person who profits from it. This session builds your own version: the five layer cost breakdown, the clean sheet assembled from four sources starting with your own paper, the supported target priced over the full term, and the three rules for using the model in the room. With briefings from the advisory desk. Recorded August 2026.

The first two minutes play for everyone. The full session is available on request with a work email.

What this session covers

Negotiating down from the vendor's number means the vendor set the anchor, and everything after that is gravity. Should-cost work flips the table: you build an independent, defensible view of what it costs to deliver the thing, and you negotiate up from that.

Live on the sample workspace, the model assembles from paper: the invoices read as a cost record with every line checked against the contract behind it, then the scenario desk turning components and market evidence into a supported target over the full term, with the reasoning attached.

Between the segments, the advisory desk defines should-cost precisely and explains why credible beats perfect, builds the clean sheet from four sources when the supplier will not help, and lays out the three rules for bringing a cost model into the room: questions before conclusions, solid lines shared, and a gap framed as structure.

Agenda