Negotiating user licenses
Summary
Smaller nonprofits face challenges with rising Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud license costs, but there is a crucial opportunity to negotiate pricing before signing contracts. Leveraging the pre-signing phase can secure fixed prices, controlled annual increases, and consistent pricing for additional licenses. Salesforce teams working with nonprofit clients should proactively negotiate license terms to better manage costs and contract flexibility.
Takeaways
- Negotiate user license prices before signing the commercial agreement.
- Fix license prices for a set number of years to control costs.
- Limit annual price increases to a capped percentage.
- Ensure additional user licenses are priced the same as existing ones.
- Leverage the pre-signing period as a unique negotiation advantage.
I’ve been discussing the price for user licenses with a fellow reader. The context is that smaller nonprofit organizations are finding it harder to justify the increasing prices for Salesforce’s Nonprofit Cloud. This may not be well known, but before an organization signs a commercial, they are in a position of significant leverage. This leverage will not be as great in any other situation. So it’s important to take advantage of this precious moment. Here’s some starting language you can use with your Salesforce AE. “We’ll start with x user licenses. The price for these licenses must be $x and fixed for x years. After year x, we accept a maximum annual price increase of x%. In addition, if at any time we need to purchase additional licenses, they will be at the same price as the existing licenses.” The takeaway Negotiating the price for user licenses should take place before signing a commercial agreement.