Account teams, roadmap pressure, partners, and the annual calendar. Three knowledge checks along the way, and 4 clips from a senior licensing analyst.
This is a taught session, not a talking head. The instructor works through analyst grade slides, and three times the video stops on a question with four options on screen. Pause, commit to an answer, and the next slide explains which option is right and why each of the others is wrong. 4 times in the session the frame splits and a senior licensing analyst gives the view from inside real SAP negotiations, and the instructor picks the clip apart when the slides return.
The full narration of this session, section by section, for reading and reference. Guest analyst clips are marked.
Welcome back. Session twenty nine, running the relationship. Last session covered the renewal, which is roughly three months of a three year term. Today is about the other thirty three, because that is where the next renewal is actually decided. Everything you will need when you sit down, the usage history, the internal agreement, the relationships that get you told things early, is either accumulated during those months or it simply does not exist. So today: how the account team is structured and measured, handling the steady flow of roadmap pressure, why implementation partners set your consumption for years, the internal relationships that matter more than any tactic, and the four fixed points a year. Three knowledge checks. Let's begin.
Five objectives. First, work the years between renewals, since a three year term is thirty three months of relationship and three of negotiation. Second, read the account team: who they are, how they are measured, and what that predicts about their behaviour. Third, handle roadmap pressure, meaning the steady flow of new products, each with a reason to buy now. Fourth, position partners properly, because implementers shape your licence consumption and they are not your licensing adviser. And fifth, run an annual calendar of four fixed points that keeps you permanently close to ready.
So, the years between renewals, and where the next negotiation is actually decided. Data accrues, because usage history, adoption trends and consumption slopes only exist if somebody collects them. Scope drifts, with products added, populations grown and definitions reinterpreted, quietly. Relationships form, both with the account team and inside your own business, and both matter later. And habits set, because what your organisation treats as normal becomes what you have to defend. Let me put the objective plainly.
Guest analyst clip.
So the question is not how to negotiate well every three years. It is how to run an estate so that the negotiation is largely settled before it starts, which is a much less dramatic skill and a considerably more valuable one.
Right, who is who on the account team and what each is measured on. The account executive is measured on new and expanded revenue in the current period, which means genuine urgency at period end and steady pressure to add products. Customer success or adoption is measured on usage and renewal risk rather than new sales, which often makes them your best source of honest usage data. The solution engineer is measured on technical fit and winning the evaluation, and will tell you what a product actually does in real detail. And renewals is measured on retention and uplift on the existing base, so their job is your base and you should expect firmness rather than flexibility. None of this is adversarial. Knowing how somebody is compensated is simply knowing which conversations they can help with and which they cannot.
First knowledge check. You want honest data on how much of your estate is actually used. Who is most likely to help? A, the account executive. B, the customer success or adoption contact. C, the renewals manager. D, their regional executive. Pause here and pick an answer before you continue.
B. Adoption roles are measured on usage and renewal risk rather than on new revenue, so surfacing low adoption is part of their job rather than a threat to their number, and they frequently hold better data than you do. A has an interest in the estate looking well used and growing. C is focused on protecting the existing base. And D is too distant from the detail and will refer you back down anyway. Use B early and often, and remember that what you learn is visible to them as well, which is fine as long as you know it.
So, roadmap pressure, which is a steady flow and every item has a reason to buy now. New products arrive constantly, each with a launch, a briefing and an early adopter price that expires. The pitch goes to the business rather than to you, because the business is where the enthusiasm and the budget live. Early pricing is real and it is a hook: genuinely cheaper, and it also sets a floor you will renew from later. So ask the four family questions from session twenty: what makes the number rise, who can make it rise, what makes it fall, and is it flat or metered. And ask about the pilot exit, meaning what happens if it does not work, because if nobody has an answer to that then it is not a pilot, it is a purchase with a softer name.
Guest analyst clip.
So, design decisions are licence decisions: environments, refresh rates and licence types, all chosen during delivery. They are measured on delivery, on time and working, and nobody is measured on what it costs to run for three years. And their advice is not independent, because many partners hold their own commercial relationship with the vendor, which is entirely normal and worth knowing.
So put licensing in the statement of work, with the consumption implications of the design documented as a deliverable. And review the design commercially, one hour before build, which is comfortably the cheapest hour in any implementation.
Second knowledge check. An implementation partner proposes an architecture. What should you add to the process? A, nothing, architecture is a technical decision. B, a documented view of the licensing and consumption implications, before build. C, a second partner to review the first. D, a fixed price contract to cap the cost. Pause here before you continue.
B. Architecture decisions set consumption for years, and they are cheap to change on paper and expensive to change once built, so a documented view before build is the intervention with the best return in the entire delivery. A is the assumption this whole course argues against. C adds cost and a second opinion on the same question, without addressing whether anybody is asked about running cost. And D caps the implementation fee and does nothing about the licence consumption the design creates, which is usually the larger number by some distance.
Now, your own organisation, and four relationships worth more than any vendor tactic. The platform owner, who knows what is deployed and why, and will tell you before it appears on an invoice. The business sponsors, who will be asked to defend their licences and who you need agreeing early rather than late. Corporate development, so a transaction reaches you during diligence rather than at announcement. And finance, who see the invoices and will notice a line moving before you do. Let me say what makes those relationships work, because it is not authority.
Guest analyst clip.
The information flows toward people who help and away from people who audit. That is the whole mechanism, and it decides whether you find things out in month two or in month eleven.
So, the annual calendar. Four fixed points and the estate stays ready. Quarterly, the numbers: users, consumption, capacity and adoption, one page, same format every time, because the format being identical is what makes the trend visible. Twice a year, the reviews: the AI line review and the role review, with the business owners present. Annually, the contract read: order form, referenced versions, notice date, and what changed this year. Annually, the relationship review: what you were sold, what you bought, and what it delivered, written down. And then nine months out the renewal starts, and because of the four above it starts from a position rather than from nothing.
Five failures. Contact only at renewal, so three years of silence and then a difficult conversation with people who do not know you. The business buys directly, with products agreed in enthusiasm arriving at licensing as a signed commitment. The partner sizes the estate, so an architecture chosen for delivery speed and paid for over three years. No internal relationships, so you find out about everything last, from a document rather than from a person. And the calendar exists on paper, meaning four review dates in a diary that nobody has attended since the first one.
Last knowledge check. What most reliably improves the next renewal? A, a tougher negotiating stance. B, quarterly measurement and internal relationships during the term. C, changing account teams. D, a better benchmark report. Pause here and pick an answer before you continue.
B. Everything that makes a renewal go well is either accumulated during the term or absent at the start of it, and no amount of skill in the room manufactures a usage trend or an agreed business position in the final weeks. A changes the temperature rather than the position. C occasionally helps and is not something you control, and the new team inherits the same account history anyway. And D is one input among several, and it is a document rather than a position. Let me finish with what good actually looks like.
Guest analyst clip.
So, the estate running properly between renewals. You know the numbers: current, quarterly, in one place, without having to ask anybody for them. Nothing surprises you, so new products, new populations and new consumption reach you before the invoice does. The business talks to you early, because you have been useful rather than obstructive, consistently and over time. The account team is worked with professionally, without hostility, and without volunteering anything they do not need to know. And the renewal is dull, which is the objective, because drama in a renewal is simply what preparation looks like when it is missing.
Three sentences. A three year term is one negotiation and thirty three months of ordinary relationship, and almost everything you will need at the next renewal is either accumulated or lost during those thirty three months rather than won in the room. Know how each person is measured, because it tells you which conversations they can help with, and remember that implementation partners set your consumption for years while being measured only on delivering something that works on time. And run four fixed points a year and build the internal relationships that make you the person people tell early, because a dull renewal is the objective.
Homework before session thirty, about ninety minutes, and this is the last homework of the course. One, name your account team: each role, each person, and when you last spoke to any of them. Two, find your adoption contact, and if you do not have one then ask for one, because it is a free and genuinely useful relationship. Three, check the partner statement of work for whether licensing implications are a deliverable, and they usually are not. Four, put the four dates in the calendar: quarterly numbers, the two reviews, the contract read and the relationship review. And five, list your internal four and note the gaps honestly.
Five guides, all on redresscompliance dot com. Salesforce continuous optimization covers the between renewals operating model run properly. Salesforce licence optimization covers the quarterly rhythm and who owns each part of it. The Salesforce vendor management guide covers managing the relationship across the whole term. The Salesforce overspending report shows where the money goes when nobody is watching between renewals. And the Salesforce licensing knowledge hub collects the full reference set in one place.
That is session twenty nine. The thing to take away is that the renewal is the visible part and the thirty three months before it are the part that decides the outcome, so the work is a calendar and a handful of relationships rather than a negotiating technique. Next time is the capstone: one Salesforce estate, end to end, running everything in this course against a single organisation from first measurement to signed agreement. See you then.