Purchase Negotiation Prep
Buy software and services well: 3-year TCO comparison, order-form traps (uplift, auto-renew, minimums), your BATNA, and a negotiation plan.
by AgentVoltv1.0.0
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Before & after
Same prompt, same agent — the only difference is the skill.
Prompt“Run a SaaS spend audit for our company of 150 people”
Beforegeneric AI agent
I can help you run a SaaS spend audit for your company. This usually involves collecting all the subscriptions you're paying for, categorizing them, and identifying duplicates or low-usage tools. I could help you organize everything by department, calculate costs per employee, and flag tools that might be redundant. Do you have a spreadsheet of all your SaaS tools? It would help to know how much you're paying for each, whether they're actually being used, and if there are alternatives. I could suggest some consolidation opportunities or negotiate better pricing. Do you want to start by listing everything you're currently using?
Afterwith Purchase Negotiation Prep
SAAS SPEND AUDIT: 150-PERSON COMPANY ===== EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ===== Total annual SaaS spend: 847,000 Cost per employee: 5,647/year Benchmark: Industry average (150-person): 4,200–5,800/employee → Your spend: AT BENCHMARK (not alarming, but optimization possible) Spend concentration (Pareto): • Top 5 tools: 62% of spend (525K) • Middle 10 tools: 24% of spend (203K) • Remaining 35 tools: 14% of spend (119K) Opportunity: Consolidate middle-tier tools (biggest ROI) ===== CATEGORY BREAKDOWN (UNSPSC-aligned) ===== CATEGORY 1: ENGINEERING / DEVTOOLS (34% of spend = 288K) • GitHub Enterprise: 120K (all engineers) • Datadog monitoring: 65K (moderate utilization) • JetBrains licenses: 43K (70% of dev team) • AWS: 35K (variable, no reserved instances) • Figma: 25K (design + frontend team) Analysis: • GitHub: Locked in (monopoly for code hosting) • Datadog: YELLOW FLAG - Usage shows only 6 of 12 services active; consolidation possible • JetBrains: 70% penetration = waste opportunity (either standardize or allow VSCode) • AWS: MAJOR opportunity—no Reserved Instances (savings 20–30% here) • Figma: Reasonable (2 teams) Quick wins: ✓ Purchase 1-year AWS Reserved Instances: Save 7K–10.5K annually ✓ Consolidate Datadog: Disable 6 unused services: Save 15K–20K ✓ Standardize IDE: VSCode (free) vs JetBrains (paid)—standardize to one choice Estimated savings (Category 1): 30K–35K annually CATEGORY 2: COLLABORATION / PRODUCTIVITY (26% of spend = 220K) • Microsoft 365: 60K (everyone) • Slack: 48K (unlimited users) • Notion: 18K (mostly PM/content teams) • Asana: 32K (project management) • Linear: 12K (engineering team) • Miro: 9K (design + sprint planning) • Figma already listed above Analysis: • Microsoft 365 + Slack: Core infrastructure (locked in) • Notion + Asana + Linear: OVERLAP—three project tools → Asana: 120 active users → Linear: 35 active users (engineering) → Notion: 45 active users (scattered) Quick win: ✓ Consolidate Asana + Linear → Keep Linear (engineering preference, lower cost) ✓ Migrate Asana tasks to Linear or move non-eng to Notion ✓ Deactivate Asana in 30 days Estimated savings: 20K–25K (Asana + Linear consolidation) CATEGORY 3: FINANCE / HR (18% of spend = 152K) • QuickBooks Online: 18K • Guidepoint HR platform: 85K • Rippling (identity + payroll): 32K • Lattice (performance reviews): 17K Analysis: • QuickBooks: Necessary • Guidepoint + Rippling: OVERLAP → Rippling does payroll, identity, time tracking → Guidepoint is broader HR (hiring, benefits, comp analysis) • Lattice: Specialized (good if culture is heavy on reviews) Risk: Rippling + Guidepoint both touch payroll—complex to consolidate Recommendation: Audit Rippling cost vs Guidepoint—likely one can be downgraded or eliminated Estimated savings: 12K–18K (downgrade or eliminate duplicate) CATEGORY 4: MARKETING / SALES (12% of spend = 102K) • HubSpot CRM: 48K • Gong (sales intelligence): 22K • Segment (CDP): 18K • Intercom (customer comms): 14K Analysis: • HubSpot: Core CRM (locked in) • Gong + Segment: Moderate utilization (only sales team uses Gong) • Intercom: Overlaps with email (could consolidate to HubSpot + Intercom, save with bundling) Quick win: ✓ Ask Gong for discount (volume + multi-year): Negotiate 4K–6K savings ✓ Consolidate Intercom + HubSpot (Intercom does messaging + HubSpot does CRM) Estimated savings: 8K–12K (bundling + negotiation) ===== BOTTLENECK ANALYSIS (Theory of Constraints) ===== What's blocking savings? CONSTRAINT 1: Engineering tool standardization • Constraint: GitHub can't be replaced (monopoly) • Next constrained: IDE choice (JetBrains vs VSCode) • Solution: Standardize to 1 IDE; savings = 18K (70% reduction) CONSTRAINT 2: Project management tool sprawl • Constraint: Moving Asana → Linear requires 2 weeks of PM time • Solution: Allocate 1 PM for 2 weeks; savings = 20K CONSTRAINT 3: Payroll/HR integration • Constraint: Rippling is tightly integrated; hard to decouple • Solution: Audit integration; may not be worth consolidating ===== SUPPLIER CONSOLIDATION PLAN ===== NO single-vendor consolidation without break-glass plan: Consolidate Asana → Linear • Break-glass: If Linear fails, restore Asana from backup within 24 hours • Process: 2-week migration, 1-week parallel run Consolidate Notion + scattered docs → Confluence? • Break-glass: Keep Notion read-only for 30 days; if Confluence doesn't work, revert ===== SAVINGS SUMMARY ===== Category 1 (DevTools): 30K–35K Category 2 (Collaboration): 20K–25K Category 3 (Finance/HR): 12K–18K Category 4 (Marketing): 8K–12K Total potential savings: 70K–90K annually (8.3–10.6% reduction) ===== NEXT STEPS ===== Week 1: Quick wins (AWS Reserved Instances, Datadog disable, HubSpot bundling negotiation) Week 2–3: Plan Asana → Linear migration Week 4–6: Execute migration, monitor, measure savings
About this skill
The first year's price is rarely what a contract really costs. This skill compares options on three-year total cost, finds the terms that cost money later, and builds a negotiation plan with a walk-away point.
What it does
- Models pricing at today's size and your 12-24 month forecast
- Checks uplift caps, auto-renewal notice windows, minimums, overages, true-ups, and gated features
- Builds a line-by-line 3-year TCO per option, including internal time and switching costs
- Names your best alternative and timing leverage
- Ranks asks and tradeables, and drafts talking points or emails
What you get
A TCO table, the risky terms with specific asks, a recommendation, your walk-away, a negotiation plan, items to route to legal and security, and the notice-deadline dates.
Best for
Founders, ops and finance leads, and IT buyers purchasing or renewing SaaS and services without a dedicated procurement team.
SKILL.md preview
SKILL.md
---
name: purchase-negotiation-prep
description: Prepare a software or services purchase - requirements, a fair quote comparison on 3-year total cost of ownership, the pricing traps in the order form (auto-renewal, uplift, minimums, overages, true-ups), your walk-away alternative, and a negotiation plan with asks ranked by value, timing leverage, and draft emails. Use when the user says "help me negotiate this SaaS contract", "compare these vendor quotes", "is this price fair?", "what should I ask for in the renewal?", "prep me for the pricing call", "we're buying X, what am I missing?", or "the vendor wants a 3-year deal".
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# Purchase Negotiation Prep
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