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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"What do you do if they refuse to pay next month?" Mostly they don't; they slow roll invoices and a SaaS company leisurely attempts to convert invoices to money. If they outright refuse to pay, cool, businesses gonna business. Really clear no regret decision at that point.
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Replying to @patio11
What about in consulting? I've seen things like: we can only pay half on invoices until [external thing happens], including previous invoices Say no, you're on a list of vendors they'll pay if/when they can. Say yes, you're doing more work for low rate but more likely to be paid
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*shrug* Negotiations are negotiations. I don't think I'd agree to work at half rate. I think I could be flexible on payment terms for a favored client. I think if I routinely ran into that I'd perhaps rethink client qualification practices, deposits, etc.
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Replying to @patio11
Not always so easy. Example - I know of a company that had a contract with a large government entity. 10 developers on a year long project. After a year of payment, they stopped paying for internal reasons "that we're going to fix any minute". They were net+tons.
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I know a contractor stiffed by the feds for +$15k because the Trump appointee decided not to honor and pay out any contracts signed by Obama appointees. What are you gonna do? Sue?
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