People have rather good intuitions for this when they're e.g. asking a bank CSR to waive an overdraft fee but they do not necessarily have the same intuitions when e.g. a client says "So, that money you think I owe you: can I pay you less than that, and later than you want it?"
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And indeed there are some circumstances where you *should happily agree* to a renegotiation against your narrow interests!
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"That sounds implausible." If you're a B2B SaaS, and a client either says cashflow issues or is transparently hitting all their vendors and asking to trade in their good customer brownie points for money, there is a really simple calculation in good times or bad.
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a) If I give the customer a month free, I am out either COGS for one month or revenue for one month depending on boring specifics. Upside: potentially account doesn't churn. b) If I don't, very high likelihood that they pay what they owe and churn immediately.
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So if you valued goodwill at literally zero—this isn't a relationship it is a vending machine—then this is strictly a math problem and under most plausible assumptions the answer to the math problem is "Comp them a month, put a note on the account, done in ~3 minutes."
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n.b. If you're a well-operated B2B SaaS company you long since have given your front-line CSRs the ability to authorize this accommodation on their own authority up to $X00 (minimally) because this is such a screamingly obvious call that it isn't worth Finance or management time.
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When I ran a SaaS company the standard language was approximately: "No worries, we're a small business too and know times can sometimes be tough. I've told the accountant to write off the X invoice in consideration of you being a good client. Best of luck and skill."
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Commentary: I don't actually have to get the accountant's approval for business decisions, and technically the interaction was "I pushed a button and it does what the accountant would expect it to do without paying him $600 an hour to examine a communication."
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And mentioning the "small business" part is not accidental, because I know you probably have a boss who has asked you to shake down all the vendors, and I expect you go back next month and say "I just wouldn't feel right doing it again."
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No, you're not. I can calculate to multiple decimal places over ~10 years what this costs. It's less than the budget for printer paper. All businesses know what the score is. Most nonetheless do not choose to defect. On this foundation civilization rests.
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