Benchmarking

Three questions decide every deal. What it costs, what peers pay, and where you rank.

Every vendor sits in the library, A to Z, Salesforce among them.

The contract step lists the facts behind the benchmark. None is on file, so the typed figures carry it, and a vendor quote can be uploaded here.

Research opens the Negotiator's Guide. On Salesforce, the uplift clause is worth more than the discount, and it is negotiated far less often.

The answers. The offer sits at fifty four percent off. Peers at this size land between fifty and seventy, midpoint near sixty. Below market.

The discount curve for this line, each reference deal placed by size and discount, flat or in three dimensions.

The ladder prices the next rung. Two points reaches At market, worth one hundred fifty one thousand over the term.

Comparable deals come ranked with yours among them, then the market at every size.

Sign at fifty four and you leave four hundred fifty four thousand on the table.

What if lets you move the deal. Test an ask at sixty five and the rank climbs to Good, with every price below it following.

Sensitivity prices each figure at every term. Press the midpoint at thirty six months, worth four hundred eighty six thousand, and the deal moves to it.

Every position on one scale, and what each should cost. The target at sixty five runs eight hundred eighty two thousand a year.

Negotiate opens on the vendor's year. Salesforce closes it on the thirty first of January, your window.

The asks you take into the room are yours to select, and every one you keep travels into the brief.

Talk it through with Camille, an AI negotiator for this vendor, or ask a human analyst to check it.

Report is where Vera writes the brief. Choose who reads it, executive, procurement or board, and the position to argue, floor, target or stretch. Press Write the brief, and she works from the figures on the sheet.

Three minutes later the brief is filed, ready in Word and PDF.

Open it in Vera. The position, the target at sixty five and why it holds, the ladder for the room, and what each position costs. The target saves eight hundred thirty two thousand against the offer.

Your discount, the peer range, your rank.