issued on:
April 7, 2025
author:
Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt

TLDR: Don't try to win the negotiation today. Try to win the series of negotiations across the lifetime of the customer.

Monday Price Point:​


At the enterprise level or at any larger ACV most pricing negotiations have several elements, such as:
1) Price paid
2) Length of contract
3) Terms of renewal
Most SaaS vendors focus on '1' and sacrifice '2' and '3'.
So they would prefer:
A) $100K a year for 3 years and a 10% cap on renewal, subject to agreement.

Over:
B) $85K a year for a 1 year contract with auto renewal.

This is the likely outcome of the two contracts over the next 6 years:
A) $100K +$100K +$100K +$110K +$110K +$110K = $660K
B) $85K +$100K +$115K +$130K +$145K +$160K = $735K

So a +11% total revenue and a +45% end-state ACV, which is also going to be a +45% contribution to enterprise value. Also: NRR on A is 102, while NRR on 'B' is 114.

This naturally assumes that your product is delivering value and that the customer is happy with the purchase.

But if that is the case, then a 10-15% annual increase in pricing is not extreme.

And yes: it requires you to renew the account every year, but an annual renewal with a good contract, that allows you to tell the customer what the new price is and their only formal response is to cancel, is far superior to a Mexican standoff every 3 years triggered by the "subject to agreement"-language.

Two reasons this short sightedness happens:
1) Time: it takes 5 years for the above 'B' structure to net more cash than 'A'.
2) Incentives: most sales rep commission structures are laser focused on '1' and provide a lot of wiggle room on '2' and '3'

No surprise: the short-term price-now strategy wins short term, while the long-term strategy wins in the long term.

How to do it:

Do not sign multi-year contracts unless you are forced to (e.g. tenders).​
Instead do 1 year contracts with an auto-renew function where you unilaterally determine the price at each renewal.​

Use this language:

"Look, we're going to keep developing this solution every year to solve your problem better and better. For that reason we don't know what the product will look like 3 years from now, which is why it doesn't make sense for either of us to agree on a price today.

Further: if you locked us in on a price now, you would just incentivise us to take all new functionality and try to sell it to you as add-ons instead of just including it in the existing product. This just creates complexity for everyone and forces us to spend time on conversations and developments that create no value.

Instead, we will provide fair pricing to you by always giving you the price that we can sell to new customers, that don't have any lock-in or sunk cost in the product."

SaaS is naturally a long game - so play long.

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We can't help you tinker with your pricing. But if you're ready for a redesign, connect with us.

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