January 27, 2021
Take advantage of all of the data G2 Track Essential provides ahead of a software negotiation, for free.
There are times in life where you walk into a room ready to negotiate.
Whether it’s when you’re negotiating the price of a new car you’re interested in or talking to your manager about your salary increase in the new year, you'll need to flex your negotiation skills.
Whatever the case may be, it’s important to do your research before negotiating. In this case, maybe you’re preparing to have talks with your vendors regarding a software contract. For that, you need the data that awaits you within a SaaS management tool like G2 Track.
If you’re about to start the software negotiation process at your organization, you need to know the ins and outs of what to be prepared with ahead of time, the details that often go missed, and the mistakes that are often made. This is why you need to learn why G2 Track is your must-have tool to be armed with during negotiations.
Before you can begin negotiating a software renewal, there are specific details that you should be aware of. Let’s go over every detail you and your team should be caught up on ahead of the negotiating meeting.
of software contracts have an auto-renew clause and a notice period for cancellation between 30 and 90 days.
When you take a deep dive into the details of a software contract, there are certain details that people tend to miss.
For instance, always take the time to note any contractual language that references the price and whether or not it can be increased as time passes. Find out if the price can be increased and if there’s a range of an acceptable increase. This clause is often hidden toward the end of a contract, so be sure your team pays special attention to the context surrounding price increases.
You should also make sure your team takes the time to look at the renewal length term. It’s common for many teams to assume the renewal term is only for one year, regardless of how long you signed the initial agreement for. If you sign for a three-year term, it may renew for three more years instead of one. If this detail goes missed, you could be stuck using a tool for longer than you'd like.
Another contract detail that not only goes missed but your team may forget to bring it up during negotiation is whether or not your team can get a better price if you sign for a longer term. Negotiating price is all part of the process, so don't forget to ask before signing.
Finally, you don’t want to miss out on the opportunity for access to the newest versions of the software you’re paying for. Tools within your tech stack may renew on their own, but not for the latest and greatest versions. If there’s a newer version of an on-premise application that your team is using, see if it’ll be automatically part of your stack or if you’ll need to pay an extra fee for it.
Aside from proofreading, be sure that you’re going over every pertinent information in your contracts. Keep an eye out for these details ahead of the negotiating process so nothing slips through the cracks.
In addition to details going missed, there are other mistakes that are often made during the process of negotiating a software contract.
Consider what it means to be a smart negotiator. A smart negotiator will always ask for multiple options – especially when it comes to the price. When negotiating, it’s common to want more insights regarding price and you may ask for pricing ranges for one year, three years, and five years.
Depending on how much the vendor reveals during this conversation, you may be able to get a better sense of their pricing floors. When you have this information, you know what you can try to negotiate down to.
Additionally, it’s often a mistake not to ask about add-ons within your contract. For instance, let’s say your team is interested in Software X, which is listed as $5 a user. The vendor said that if you buy 1,000 licenses, you can instead have them for $2 a user. What would happen if you call back in six months asking for more users? Will they be sold to you at $5 or $2? Because a volume discount is often not in the contract, be sure to ask about add-ons.
One of the great things about using a SaaS system of record like G2 Track is that it simplifies all the data you need before going into a software negotiation.
In the easy-to-read dashboard, your team has every last detail you’ll need.
For instance, unsure when a contract is set to renew? Just click on one of your SaaS applications and you can see the start and end date of each of your contacts. You’ll also see if it auto-renews on its own, if you’ve switched the renewal reminder to “On,” and who the owner of the contract is.
Want an overall view of your SaaS applications? G2 Track can give you that too, as it’s easy to see how many contracts you have scheduled to renew in the upcoming months.
To get down into the real details of how your team feels about each SaaS tool, there’s the sentiment hub. Once you send out the pulse survey, this dashboard will provide you with the Net Promoter Score of every application.
To put it simply, every last detail you need to be armed with walking into a software negotiation process awaits within G2 Track. Without this data, you could wind up overspending and with far too many licenses than your team will ever use.
Thanks to G2 Track, you can be sure your software negotiations always go as planned. You’ll be prepared with the necessary data to help you spend money on only what is absolutely necessary for your team to succeed, so nothing goes missed and no mistakes are made. Without G2 Track, you might as well be going into negotiations blind.
Ready to be fully prepared ahead of your software negotiations? Let G2 Track Essential help you negotiate with confidence, for free.
Mara Calvello is a Content Marketing Manager at G2. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Elmhurst College (now Elmhurst University). Mara's expertise lies within writing for HR, Design, SaaS Management, Social Media, and Technology categories. In her spare time, Mara is either at the gym, exploring the great outdoors with her rescue dog Zeke, enjoying Italian food, or right in the middle of a Harry Potter binge.
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