Nicholas Kline

Strategic Sourcing Manager
Toyota Motor Sales

Nick Kline is currently Strategic Sourcing Manager for Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc. with 20 years of professional procurement experience. His team is accountable to the Scion, Toyota and Lexus brands for delivering strategic sourcing initiatives on media, creative agencies, experiential, PR agencies, production, and digital.

Prior to working with Toyota, Nick held a similar position with Nissan Europe and Nissan North America with the Renault Nissan Purchasing Organization. His responsibilities included finding and exploiting domestic, regional and global strategic sourcing opportunities between Renault and Nissan. These initiatives included CRM programs, media, agency fees, advertising production and a wide range of indirect G&A expenses.

He started his career buying lumber, steel and other raw materials for the recreational vehicle industry. Within a few years he pivoted to support an internal service division that imported, warehoused and distributed direct parts. As the US industry transitioned from manufacturing to a service based economy, Nick leveraged his international procurement experience to support offshoring and outsourcing service engagements in the IT/IS and Finance space.

Nick holds a Master’s degree from Pepperdine and a Bachelor’s degree from University of Cal Poly Pomona.

Check out the incredible speaker line-up to see who will be joining Nicholas.

Download The Latest Agenda

Day 1: Monday, November 16, 2015

Monday, April 11th, 2016

11:45 Agency Selection: The RFP, The Brief, and the Pitch

Successful agency management encompasses the entire lifecycle of the client agency relationship. From the selection of the right agency, based on their proven capabilities, to the development of the agencies Scope of Work, understanding the true cost and resource mix of the agency. It continues by ensuring that the briefing process provides the agency with the best information to produce the best work and a formal performance evaluation of the overall client agency relationship. But how involved should procurement be, and what should they be looking out for? This workshop discusses:

Looking at should-cost rates, and comparing it against agency data
What an agency expects from a potential client at a pitch meeting
Understanding marketing’s needs—the right agency might not be the cheapest
Ensuring the pitch is perfect – if you get the pitch wrong, the relationship will be rocky
Consequences for briefing poorly
Best practices for agency RFPs
Maximizing the opportunity with full service agencies
Agency cost management expectations/practices