Objection Jeopardy

Platform

100

Why don't you track license usage? 

• Tracking license usage is not something Vendr actively focuses on. It’s extremely difficult to accurately track true license usage without involving the supplier, it’s also rare that much can be done about it until time of renewal.
• We approach things with a commercial focus, we prioritize savings. Suppliers will rarely reduce contract value mid-term, so we don’t find real-time utilization metrics to be actionable until you exceed your contracted limit or decide you want to add a bunch more users.
• Vendr knows the right questions to ask your supplier to get a comprehensive usage report, and knows how to leverage the lack of utilization in negotiations.

200

I already use Zip why would I use Vendr too?

• Uploading your contracts to Vendr allows us to analyze your contracts and provide recommendations on how you should approach your renewals and new purchases. We can also help you keep track of when things are coming up for renewal through renewal reminders.
• Using Vendr “Agreements” is valuable because:
  1. We’ll know which suppliers you’d like us to help with over the next 12 months.
  2. We can do preliminary price checks to see which ones have the most room for improvement OR so we can determine which ones we have the most data coverage for and collaborate which 35 contracts we’ll be assisting with.
  3. We can send you reminders 90-120 days in advance to kick these off (separate from all of your other renewals you’ll be handling internally)
  4. We can determine which ones we’ll be getting competitive quotes for.
  5. Having your contracts loaded in Agreements will allow us together get organized and give us enough runway to drive the best outcome.

300

I don't have buy-in from the top to use Vendr. 

Anyone is able to quickly leverage our price checker to ensure they are getting a fair price.  It’s fast, easy, and doesn’t require anything beyond what’s available to an individual. That said we’d love to connect with your executive decision maker directly to showcase our value.  Can we connect them directly with our leadership team to ensure we are aligned?

400

The Product isn't meeting my expectations. 

I would suggest you leverage Contract Analysis in this case. If the platform is not meeting your expectations and you’re not getting value, we’d love to try to provide value in this way for the remainder of the contract term. It’s a super low lift, and it’s the most popular feature amongst our customers.

Negotiation and Value

100

Vendr adds more steps into the process for my team. 

• Vendr does not want to make things more complicated for our customers. The first thing we should look at is the process and when you are bringing Vendr in. Is this early or late in the process? How much headway are you giving? This could be the reason behind this friction.
• There are many ways to engage with Vendr: Self service, SaaS advisory, Background support, supplier facing… we need to make sure this is married to the needs of your stakeholders.

200

I feel like Vendr doesn’t push hard enough

The best outcomes are achieved through having ample runway and making the deal truly competitive. Let’s take a look and see if the stakeholders are allowing us to do this (see reporting).” Let’s take a look at your runway compared to most customers.

300

Vendr’s savings calculations are wrong and should be based on the difference between the previous year’s contract value and the new contract value.

Any Vendr negotiated savings will be calculated as per our contract language (option to include/reference customer’s contract). We have done it this way since the very beginning for every customer with no plans to change this in the future.

Providing an example for illustrative purposes:

If a renewal quote is $30k and we negotiate this to $25k then our negotiated savings is $5k. Your previous contract value could have been a $28k contract, but the renewal price would be $30k. We use the renewal price/quote as our baseline, not the y1 price.

We do have some customers who calculate savings alternatively to how we do it (similar to you) and you are welcome to track this yourself! We can support this in Vendr via our custom properties on the agreement level and I'm happy to show you how.

If you have questions about a specific deal that we helped negotiate we can definitely discuss in more detail with the consultant. If there is more visibility required from members of your team throughout the negotiation I would recommend adding them to the workflow and/or looping them into the conversations with our consulting team throughout the negotiation.

400

We do not see value in Vendr unless a company is scaling or is new (we have stagnant or decreasing growth)

Many of our customers buy and stay with Vendr year over year to save costs and save time. In an environment when your org may be decreasing in size or reducing overall costs, Vendr can help. We can save you time by taking negotiation off of your hands, help you get visibility into what you are spending, and drive savings to save you $. This time is the ideal time for Vendr to help

Contracts and Contract Analysis

100

What do you do with my contracts/data?

In terms of the data, all contracts are analyzed in accordance with the terms of the contract we have together. This means that the data will always be anonymized, de-identified, and/or aggregated and only used specifically for the services that Vendr provides. This is a key part in terms of how Vendr is able to operate and add value to our customers including yourself.

200

I didn’t find the contract analysis to be helpful..

• Can we pull up a recent Contract Analysis and review it together so I can get more feedback?
  • The quality of these can differ based on the data coverage we have for your particular SKU’s, but our data coverage and specialists should be able to provide high-quality deliverables for about 75% of your SaaS Suppliers.
  • In some cases, you may have the best price. We’ll validate that for you and also share ways that you could create leverage to further improve it.
  • For obscure suppliers, we provide data on their more popular competitors.
  • Leveraging the right competitors with runway is typically the best way to create the most leverage. In the Contract Analysis, we tell you who those are, what they cost, and offer to get you competitive quotes.

300

I don’t want to give you my contracts

• Dig into the why on this.  (Also, please flag to your manager asap)
• Ultimately the customers that get the most value with Vendr share their contracts with us. Give an example such as: Recently a customer of mine saved X on their contract as we could tell them about hidden SKUs from a supplier. Are we able to try a few and see the outcomes?
• The way Vendr provides value is by analyzing your contracts. Without contracts, you won’t get the full return on your investment. Let’s start with one contract Analysis so I can show you the power of what our team can do.

400

Why does the potential savings number at the top of the Renewals page not match the savings insight on each individual contract level?

The number at the top of the renewals page is an aggregated estimated range of potential savings while the savings insight on each agreement is supplier specific based on our data.

Competition

100

We have a procurement team that handles this.

Perfect, most of our primary users are procurement leaders. Our mission is to enable your procurement team with as much data as possible heading into negotiations to ensure maximum savings.

200

We already use Gartner/NPI for data.. how is this any different?

Vendr is a faster way to get insight into more suppliers at scale. Gartner is a great use for your key suppliers, but their reporting often takes weeks to compile and return. Use Vendr for your entire tech stack, get benchmarks instantaneously, and access live consultation within 5 minutes via our chat function.

300

How do you compare to different SaaS Management solutions?

• We are not a true SaaS Management solution. We don’t provide full SAML features like utilization tracking, license provisioning and deprovisioning, etc.
• Our SaaS Management is macro level, and meant to highlight financial details and opportunity timelines. We’ll surface renewal dates, spend totals, agreement ownership, and savings opportunities that you can utilize in your procurement and negotiation strategy.
• The level of visibility we provide is meant to give you visibility into what you own, what you pay for it, and when you should start negotiating

400

What is Vendr’s business model and how do you make money?

• We build awesome procurement tools and give limited functionality away for free, and we help companies negotiate new purchases with their suppliers for free.
• This helps grow a giant SaaS pricing dataset, keep the data fresh, and makes it super valuable to our premium intelligence customers.
• We make money through our premium subscriptions and through our marketplace offering.

Pricing

100

No savings guarantee!?

• A Savings Guarantee can undervalue the user’s role and create friction due to the complexities of SaaS savings calculations.
• Savings should align with your team’s goals, as they reflect your actions, not ours. We provide tools and data, but achieving ROI depends on how effectively you engage and follow our advice.
• We initially offered a Savings Guarantee when we lacked data proof, but with 400k transactions and published results, we no longer need it.
• These guarantees are typically pro-rated "Money Back Guarantees" and won’t cover wasted time or missed savings due to blind spots in their data.

200

How do I present this renewal to leadership with no Savings Guarantee?

• Premium Intelligence: Typically companies at this stage realize they are overpaying for SaaS, and have identified the need for benchmarking data and access to category pricing specialists. We’ll show our data coverage across your stack, and provide a proof-of-value (contract analysis).
• Supplier facing: Typically companies at this stage have realized that it’s either not worth their time, don’t have the time or don’t trust that their team will dig deep for savings with their suppliers. That’s our job. So we can help you estimate the time to value, show the data coverage across your stack, and provide a proof-of-value (contract analysis)
• Recently we had a large company use a scorecard to evaluate the Proof of Value and I can share that directly with you if you want to use it as a template. My only ask is that you share our score with us : )

300

How are we supposed to show ROI?

Let’s go through our top five upcoming renewals, discuss each of them, and identify the best one to utilize for a proof of value. We’ll then have our SaaS consultant team analyze your SaaS agreements, configure an in-depth analysis, and we’ll reconnect to review it live.

400

What is the impact of Vendr’s services in year 2?

• Folks renew with Vendr year after year for a few main reasons:
  • SaaS is an ever-changing landscape. New suppliers frequently enter the market, and more established brands often acquire and build new products. SaaS companies change their pricing models and rates every two years on average. So there should ALWAYS be a need to take a data-backed approach. Your renewal scenarios will change with each supplier, and we expect you’ll continue to see even more value in Vendr over time as we continue to invest and innovate for SaaS buyers.
  • OPTIONAL: Time savings. Whether you’re 1) utilizing our platform to centralize your tech stack, automate approval workflows, and leveraging our data to crush your negotiations yourself, or 2) Having us buy your SaaS for you-utilizing Vendr will always be faster, more efficient, and more effective that buying SaaS manually with siloed processes and limited data to support your negotiations.