Contract negotiators have a natural tendency to assume that contracts for deals with lower cost and risk are non-negotiable.
We see this assumption play out for both vendors and customer. A customer may sign the order form as written, losing out on potential improvements because it didn't ask. A vendor may lock its standard terms without offering any concessions, even when faced with losing a potential customer.
But we still see smaller contracts with negotiated changes. Someone asked a question about this topic during our webinar on SaaS contracting fundamentals featuring speakers Tiffany Bui LeTourneau and Patti Barnard. The question focused on how vendors and customers manage negotiating small deals when the company needs to make changes for regulatory or risk exposure reasons.
Patti and Tiffany both responded with answers that reflected the reality we see in our negotiations. A small deal does not automatically mean there is nothing left to ask for. What determines whether a change happens depends in part on how each side frames its ask.
On the vendor side, Patti highlighted that companies shouldn’t rule out concessions in all cases based on deal size. Instead, she suggested they evaluate how much the deal is actually worth to the business before assuming there is nothing to give. There are concessions vendor can make that are scaled to that value. These may include a narrower SLA, a modest discount, early access to a coming feature, or simply better service. Those changes can go a long way and don’t require rewriting the contract itself.
Tiffany spoke to the customer perspective and explained how the best strategy for getting concessions from a vendor is to narrow the ask. She explained that a short, specific request tied to an actual need is easier for a vendor to say yes to than a full markup of its standard terms. That precise and limited change also shows the vendor exactly where the customer’s focus is, which makes the response also focused and limited. This alignment makes it more likely that the change happens and the deal keeps moving.
It was a reminder that negotiations of SaaS and other contracts do not follow strict rules. We don’t typically see customers agreeing to change terms for smaller deals, but it can happen.
Just because it is a small deal does not mean it is automatically a closed one. We just need to make more precise smaller asks that fit the circumstance and business objectives.
