There is an awkward version of the testimonial ask that no template prepares you for: the account is healthy, the renewal signed, the invoices paid on time — but the only person who ever replies to you works in procurement or accounts payable. They are pleasant, responsive, and completely unable to tell you why your product is good, because they have never opened it. When you send them the standard "would you be willing to share a few words about your experience," you get either silence or a polite, generic line that reads exactly like what it is: a courtesy from someone with no experience to describe.
This is a specific failure, and it has a specific fix. The problem is not that procurement contacts refuse to help. It is that you are asking the wrong person for the wrong thing. A billing or procurement contact is a gatekeeper — their job is to manage the commercial relationship, not to use the product — and a usable testimonial has to come from someone who has actually felt the value. The move is not to squeeze a quote out of the gatekeeper. It is to use the gatekeeper to reach the user, and to give the gatekeeper a role they can actually play.
Why the gatekeeper can't give you a testimonial
Understanding why the direct ask fails tells you exactly what to do instead. A procurement or billing contact usually cannot produce a good testimonial for three structural reasons:
- They have no experience to report. A testimonial is a first-person account of value received. Someone who processes your renewal but never touches the product has nothing concrete to say, so anything they write will be vague by necessity. And a vague testimonial is worse than none — it reads as filler, and the same problem shows up whenever the source is too far from the value, as covered in what to do when a customer gives you a vague testimonial.
- They are optimized for risk, not advocacy. Procurement's job is to protect the company from bad commitments. Publicly endorsing a vendor is, from their seat, an unnecessary exposure with no upside to them personally. Asking them to be the public face of the account cuts against their entire function.
- They may not have the authority to speak. Even a willing billing contact often cannot approve using the company name or logo — that decision usually sits with marketing, communications, or legal. So even a heartfelt line from them can stall on approval, the same way any endorsement can, which is why packaging the permission cleanly matters as much for them as for anyone else.
None of this means the relationship is a dead end. It means the gatekeeper is a router, not a source.
Reframe the ask: use the gatekeeper to find the user
The goal of your first message is not a quote. It is a warm introduction to the person who has one. Procurement contacts are generally happy to make an internal connection — it costs them nothing, it makes them look helpful, and it moves your request off their plate. Ask for the handoff explicitly.
A message that works looks like this:
"Quick favor — we're putting together a few short customer stories, and yours is exactly the kind of account we'd love to feature. You'd be perfect to point me in the right direction: who on your team actually uses [product] day to day? I'd love a quick intro so I can ask them about their experience — I know that's not really your side of things."
Notice what this does. It flatters the account without pretending the billing contact is a user. It names the real target ("who actually uses it day to day"). It gives them the easy, low-risk action they can take — an introduction — instead of the hard, high-risk one you originally asked for. And the closing line ("I know that's not really your side of things") signals that you understand their role, which lowers their guard.
If they hesitate to introduce you, offer to draft the intro email for them so all they have to do is forward it. Removing the work is often the difference between a handoff that happens and one that quietly dies.
Give the gatekeeper a role they can actually play
Sometimes procurement genuinely is your best or only channel, and the introduction stalls. In that case, do not abandon the contact — give them a task that fits their function. A billing or procurement person cannot speak to product value, but they can speak credibly to things they do experience:
- The buying and renewal experience. "Renewals with [vendor] are painless — pricing is transparent and there are no surprises at contract time" is a real, first-person statement from procurement, and it is genuinely persuasive to other buyers evaluating you. It is a different testimonial than a user's, aimed at a different reader, but it is authentic.
- Vendor reliability and support responsiveness. "In three years we've never had a billing dispute or a support escalation that wasn't resolved quickly" is exactly the kind of thing a procurement audience trusts, and it comes from the one person qualified to say it.
- The internal case for the purchase. A procurement contact can sometimes describe why the company keeps renewing — consolidation, cost predictability, low switching risk — which is a buyer-facing angle a user rarely articulates.
The rule is to match the testimonial to what the person actually knows. Do not ask procurement to praise a feature. Ask them to vouch for the parts of the relationship they own. A quote that stays inside the author's real experience always reads as true; one that reaches beyond it always reads as scripted.
Handle attribution and permission cleanly
Whether you reach a user through the introduction or use a procurement quote directly, the person's role and authority to speak have to be nailed down, and this is where accounts with a procurement-heavy contact most often stall. Two things to get right:
First, attribute to the right role. A procurement contact's endorsement should be labeled as such — "Procurement Lead, [Company]" — not dressed up as a user quote. The attribution is part of the credibility: a buyer-experience quote from a procurement lead is more believable to another buyer precisely because the role fits the claim. Getting the title and company name right requires its own permission step, which is worth handling deliberately rather than assuming, as laid out in how to ask permission to use a customer's job title and company name in a testimonial.
Second, anticipate the approval path. Accounts where your only contact is procurement or legal-adjacent are exactly the accounts where a testimonial is most likely to route through a legal or communications review. Do not let that surprise you. Package the request so approval is a quick check rather than an open-ended decision — the same discipline that keeps any enterprise testimonial from dying in review, described in how to get a testimonial approved by a customer's legal team. Bring the finished, bounded quote and the exact placement to the review, not a request to "think about it."
What to do when the introduction never comes
Sometimes procurement will not introduce you and will not give a quote of their own. When the channel is genuinely closed, do not force it — spend the energy where a testimonial actually lives:
- Find the user through another door. Check whether anyone from the account has engaged with your product's in-app prompts, attended a webinar, replied to a support thread, or connected with your team on LinkedIn. The daily user often exists in your own data even when procurement is the named contact.
- Watch for a public mention. Users of your product sometimes surface in conference talks, community posts, or reviews without procurement ever being involved. A voluntary public mention is a testimonial waiting to be asked for.
- Wait for a natural trigger. A successful onboarding, a support win, or a measurable result creates a moment when the actual user is glad to talk. A procurement-only contact today does not mean a procurement-only account forever.
The takeaway
When your only contact is procurement or billing, stop asking them for a testimonial they cannot give and start using them for the thing they can do: introduce you to the user, or vouch for the buying and renewal experience they actually own. Match every quote to the author's real experience, attribute it to the role that makes it credible, and package any approval as a quick check rather than an open decision. A gatekeeper is not a dead end — handled right, they are the shortest path to the person who has a real story to tell.