Negotiating with Salesforce - Seven things you need to know about how Salesforce looks at a deal
Salesforce is good at negotiating. So your chances of getting a good deal are enhanced by understanding how they look at a deal and their goals. Your Salesforce Account Executive will lead the team you are negotiating with, in close coordination with his or her manager. This team is your path to getting the best overall deal. And while they are trained to maximize Salesforce revenue, they won’t get paid unless you make a purchase. So if you ask the right questions, and provide information that can help them get to a discount level you are comfortable with, this is the win-win situation all are striving for.
The remainder of this article provides some guidelines and background that will help you to get there.
1. Salesforce sales teams earn commissions on incremental revenue
Account Executives (also called “reps”) and their management are paid based on incremental revenue, not total revenue. If you don't buy additional licenses (or spend additional money), they don't earn commissions. More specifically, if your total spend this year is not more than last year’s, they don’t earn commissions this year. They are indifferent to whether you purchase licenses for more users, add-ons licenses for existing users, or you swap out one type of license for another, as long as the total spend is more. This is actually a good thing for the customer because it gives you more leverage and allows you to adjust your purchasing to your needs.
2. Salesforce AE’s are paid when the deal is signed
SF reps and management are paid in advance for the 12-month value of whatever you are deploying now. While they will ask for a longer contract such as three or five years, they are open to a shorter term, since most, if not all of their commissions are based on first-year revenue only. This varies from year to year, but the first year is always more important.
3. Timing matters
Salesforce's fiscal year ends in January. While this may seem strange, it is actually quite intentional. They can work with a customer the entire year to justify a new purchase, and wait until that customer's new fiscal year starts in January when the budget becomes available. And since the sales team gets paid on an annual quota they are quite happy with January deals. This often leads to very large February commission checks!
But it's not only the end of the year that matters, as management and reps are often encouraged through bonus payments to close deals at the end of a quarter.
Customers can take advantage of this quarter and year-end effect by asking for and often getting discounts that would otherwise not be available.
4. Discount authority is distributed
There are many articles in the public realm indicating that the rep has no power, and all of the decision-making lies with a special team that has the authority. This is not quite correct. Your rep has access to a discount/approval matrix indicating what level of discount is available, by license and quantity, and what organizational level is needed to approve it. They know how much of a discount they can get approval for, and whom they need to get that approval from.
In general, each level of management has a specific level of discount they can approve. So for example, for a given size deal, your rep may be able to offer you a 10% discount without additional approval. His manager may be able to approve an additional 5%, and each level of management above can offer some additional discounting. The special approvals team is involved only when a deal requires additional discounting, beyond what a given size of deal and management level can approve. A good rep knows how to work this structure, and will do so to get you the best deal they believe they need to have to get your signature.
So while the rep doesn't necessarily have the authority to grant you the discount you might want, they are your advocate and absolutely control the path to get you a better deal. So keep pushing and asking for more - as you get closer to year-end or quarter-end, more of the management will be interested in helping your rep get you a bigger discount. And it is highly likely that your rep’s manager (Salesforce calls the first-line sales manager a “Regional Vice President”, or “RVP”) is fully knowledgeable about every deal, so going above the rep does not necessarily get you better discounts.
5. Discounts depend on both deal size and customer size
Larger deals and larger customers generally get larger discounts. The combination of order size and customer spend leads to the discount they might offer you for a particular purchase. For example, a $100k purchase from a customer spending $2M annually will likely get a larger discount than that same $100k purchase from a customer spending $500k annually.
Conversely, a $2M customer making a $10k purchase may get a larger discount than a $100K purchase made by a new customer.
While deal size determines the discount level, customer size determines where the discount level for the deal starts.
6. Consolidating purchases increase your discount
Salesforce loves it when you make lots of little purchases. Each one is considered as if it were the only purchase you are making, and thus separate individual purchases lead to higher overall spend (see #5). When you are about to make a purchase, be sure to consider if any other groups in your organization are doing the same, as well as purchases you might be making in the short term future. If you can consolidate the orders into a single request, your deal size goes up, and your discount level will likely improve.
7. Consider near term future demand in your current purchase
As an extension to the previous point to consolidate your purchases, this can be extended to include purchases that will likely be made in the next few months or even the next year. Providing this to the account team will allow them to provide several options to you, and you will be able to see larger discount levels that might be available to you. This will likely include making the full year’s purchase upfront, which will lower your cost per license, but potentially increase your short-term spend.
The downside of advancing purchases before you need them is that there will be licenses that are unused for part of the contract term. You can then compare which is better for you, both in the short term and the long term, since your renewals will start from a lower price per user. You may find that even though some licenses are unused for a time, your overall cost is lower, especially when you consider the cost of several years in the future. Most good account teams will be able to provide you sufficiently better deals to make this worthwhile for you to make the purchase up front. And since you have already paid for the licenses, the faster you can deploy them, the more you will benefit, without incurring additional costs.
Bonus - Not all licenses need to be activated concurrently
Let's say you are planning on deploying 900 licenses in the next 12 months, with a schedule of 300 in month 1, 300 in month 4, and 300 in month 7.
You will almost always get a better price if you purchase all 900 at once, rather than 3 purchases of 300, but you will end up with licenses that you are paying for and not using for some of this time. Conversely, if you make three purchases, you are not paying for anything prior to actually deploying them, but the cost per license will be higher.
A better option is often available that combines the best of both. You can agree to purchase the 900 licenses in a single order but delay the activation dates for the licenses you will not be activating in the next few months. Your order form will have three line items, one for each activation date. But since your discount will be based on the full 900 license purchase, they will all be less expensive, and you are not paying prior to when you need them! Salesforce calls this a “staggered deal” structure.
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3 Strategies to Elevate Your Software Supplier Relationship
Over the years, our TNG client family has requested more and more guidance related to managing and elevating their commercial supplier relationships. Within this article, you’ll find our top 3 proven strategies to transform IT supplier relationships from tactical to strategic.
Strategy #1 – Control the Flow
When we say “control the flow”, we’re referring to conversation, meeting, and engagement flow.
When prospective clients reach out to TNG, they almost always have the complaint that the supplier knows more about the “needs” of their organization than they do. This most typically is due to the internal lack of time and/or resources to focus on a specific supplier or digital capability. On the other hand, the supplier’s sales team is laser focused on opportunities to grow their business inside of your organization. Immediately, this creates an unfair environment for all parties involved.
You may be thinking that this only creates an unfair advantage for you, the customer. Well, in most situations that’s true. However, it should also be noted that in some circumstances, the supplier’s sales team may be operating with good intentions and simply answering your internal stakeholder’s demand for attention. In short, when one side knows more than the other, it creates an uncomfortable situation for at least one party.
As our team brings 100+ years of collective experience, we have seen just about everything. Most of TNG’s clients are very well-established companies that have $5 billion+ in annual revenue. These companies typically have a “center of excellence (COE)” and/or a “software asset management (SAM)” team. While the overall intent is good, we typically see only about 10% of our clients leveraging these teams of resources correctly.
What happens to the other 90%? Well, one of the most classic inside sales techniques is for a supplier’s sales team member to establish, chair, and/or participate in a COE with a specific focus on their software and its many digital capabilities. This type of group typically meets either monthly or quarterly and is sold as a way in which the sales team member can “inform” the COE/SAM team members of the “demand” coming from inside of the organization. The reality is that the “demand” is often created by the sales team member who has been pushing a land-and-expand strategy inside of the organization.
The easiest way to not only level the playing field with your software suppliers, but also elevate the relationship from tactical to strategic, is to set up strict governance around the overall engagement. Every supplier engagement is slightly unique, but we recommend focusing on the following core tenants:
- Focus your efforts on your Top 10 software suppliers.
- Develop a steering team of executive IT leaders that are in control of the Digital Capability strategy for your company.
- Develop an internal COE for each of your Top 10 suppliers. The size and scope of them should proportionally match the importance of the supplier’s impact on your business.
- Identify and assign clear roles & responsibilities for each employee team member that is part of their performance objectives.
- Do not allow supplier sales team members to be a member of the core team but rather serve as an invited guest on a routine cadence.
This is about the time where traditional sales team members will indicate that this approach will slow down process, innovation, growth, etc. The reality is quite the opposite when properly set up and managed. The primary outcomes you want to achieve are the following:
- Shift the communication paradigm from outside-in to inside-out. This allows the company to ideate, contemplate, and organically socialize a software roadmap (vs. constantly asking the supplier for a list of their asset inventory).
- Share information with suppliers only when it has been fully vetted and approved as a sanctioned project or approved proof of concept. If done properly, this drastically decreases the chance of duplicate purchasing, split requirements, and/or random unwarranted proof of concepts (that usually turn into shelfware) around the enterprise.
- Allow everyone to be more efficient and structured with their time by eliminating the need for follow-up meetings, etc. In other words, engaging suppliers only after decisions have been made internally by the COE will enable the COE to be treated as a true authoritative entity vs a “check the box” exercise.
- Provide opportunities for suppliers to suggest innovative solutions in a fully committed environment.
We find that our TNG clients save an average of 26% annually by deploying this strategy alone (with our help, of course).
Strategy #2 – Manage Upwards
Anyone who knows the basics of selling understands that the easiest way to make a sale is to identify and influence the decision-maker directly. For large enterprise sales teams who are managing multi-million-dollar contracts, that decision-maker is very often an executive leader within the company. Far too often, we find that organizations provide unfettered access to executives without reason. This, in short, usually enables a very unhealthy and complacent comfort for the supplier sales team that (if not properly managed) rarely produces intrinsic value for the company.
By far one of the most effective ways to elevate your supplier relationship is to set up strategic business discussions between company and supplier executives. The key here is to establish equal representation on both sides and ensure there is proper attention and respect established between both companies. Access to your company’s executives should largely be restricted to these meetings which, where possible, should be set up by the COE/SAM teams mentioned in Strategy #1.
Subsequently, it’s important to know that you can leverage access to your executives to exemplify to a new supplier that any new proof of concept, tool, etc. will be given the highest level of attention and visibility. This means a lot for any supplier (new or existing) as it ensures the right eyes are engaged.
Strategy #3 – Set Realistic Milestones that are Mutually Achievable
Just as employees like to understand their performance objectives for each year, it has been proven by TNG that suppliers who understand what “great looks like” outperform those that are not given clear business objectives. Nearly everyone in the business world understands the concept of milestones; however, the implementation of the methodology is highly inconsistent.
One of the many mistakes companies make when establishing a milestone-based contract is they make the actual milestones either ambiguous or unrealistic. Both are equally as dangerous. Ambiguity allows everyone to be right and wrong at the same time. Unrealistic milestones, if accepted by the supplier, often induce unhealthy behaviors by those chartered with meeting or exceeding the same. It doesn’t take much to set a once “strategic” relationship on a path to implosion with either of these scenarios.
Establishing realistic milestones is important for your suppliers. Everyone, at every age, enjoys accomplishing a goal. It’s important to recognize this fact since at the end of the day, as this is a human reaction, and well, we’re all human.
To learn how to properly set up a milestone plan and/or implement any other strategies mentioned above that drive performance for both the company and the supplier, here’s a hint: It’s not just the supplier that has performance milestones!
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