SaaS Vendor Negotiation
Proptech vendors rely on your inertia. They know that migrating a 100-agent brokerage to a new CRM is painful, so they increase prices 10% every year.
As a Fractional CTO, part of my job is vendor procurement and negotiation. Here is the playbook for fighting SaaS bloat.
The 90-Day Playbook
- Audit Utilization: Run reports on active user logins. If you're paying for 100 seats but only 42 agents log in weekly, you are over-provisioned. Use our Adoption ROI Calculator.
- The "Credible Threat" of Churn: 90 days before renewal, request a full data export. Mention you are evaluating an internal build. This triggers their retention team.
- Negotiate Implementation Fees: If you are switching vendors, implementation fees are entirely fabricated. Refuse to pay them, or demand they are credited back against month 1-3 SaaS fees.
- API Access Clauses: Never sign a contract that charges extra for API access or rate-limits you artificially to force an upgrade. Data access is a right, not an add-on.
Stop paying retail for enterprise software. Hire a CTO to negotiate for you.