How to use this. The numbered blocks follow the twelve briefings. If a renewal is already on your desk, start at block 8 and work outward, then come back to block 4 before you agree any AI number. If your renewal is more than nine months out, start at block 1 and run the whole runway.
01 · Understand what changed
- Read your current order form and list every SKU on it. Legacy tiers went end of sale on 1 July 2026, so anything not named Foundation, Advanced or Prime has to be mapped.
- Ask for the proposed migration mapping in writing, line by line, with the current entitlement beside the proposed one.
- Treat every changed line as a negotiable item rather than a translation. A mapping is a renegotiation wearing an administrative hat.
- Check where ITOM, CSM, change and problem management land in the new tiers, because the tier floor moved for several of them.
02 · Put their calendar beside yours
- Their fiscal year ends 31 December. Quarters close at the end of March, June, September and December. Any advice naming a June year end is wrong.
- If you are aiming at their year end, target a signature between 15 and 22 December. Treat any date after 2 January as a first quarter deal.
- Send the escalation question in writing: what is the deal desk approved rate for a flat uplift, right sized fulfiller renewal at our volume?
- Know the ladder before you push: 3 to 5 percent with the rep, 8 to 12 with the manager, 15 to 20 at regional deal desk, 20 to 30 and beyond at global deal desk or VP.
- Expect a 5 to 10 point reserve held back for period close. It is released against a reason, never against a comfortable deal.
03 · Price the four assets you own
- Decide in advance which you will give: first time agentic AI buyer status, a five or more AI product attach, a documented production agentic deployment, and the reference logo.
- Price each in pool size, capped unit rate and rollover rather than in discount points.
- Never let the four be bundled into one headline number. A bundle is where three of the four get taken for nothing.
- Condition the reference: annually renewable rather than evergreen, one named quote a year, analyst calls capped at two a quarter, and triggered only once the deployment is live.
- Hold the Prime question open until you have counted the people who would genuinely build or operate autonomous agents.
04 · Read the consumption meter
- Get the bundled assist pool stated in absolute annual units per tenant on the order form, not by reference to documentation.
- Get the overage rate in dollars per assist, and hold it for the whole term.
- Confirm in writing whether sub production and development instances draw on the same pool as production. They do by default, and it is what exhausts pools without a production user noticing.
- Weight your forecast by action size: agents burn 25, 50 or 150 assists per action, and agentic workloads run 5 to 10 times a single interactive prompt.
- Stop forecasting from seat counts. The pool depletes by actions, and actions scale with automation, not headcount.
05 · Size the AI before you sign
- Run a pilot of 50 to 150 fulfillers across two or three product areas, validated inside 90 days, before the quote arrives.
- Instrument it for one number: credits per resolved interaction, split by capability so you know which workflows are cheap.
- Build the forecast from four inputs: prompts per active user at realistic adoption, agent tasks times action weight, the non production load, and the ramp.
- Size the committed pool at the 75th percentile of trailing 90 day consumption. Not the peak, not the average.
- Roll out in waves: one workflow, then a two product pilot, then breadth. Target 50 to 60 percent of the licensed population in year one.
- Put brakes on each wave: a credit ceiling with a named owner, weekly consumption reporting, and throttling to non AI steps when a wave passes budget.
06 · Avoid the five lock-ins
- Refuse uniform Prime. Counter with a blended tier model plus documented swap rights.
- Do not let bundling end the AI conversation. If your team can quote the tier price but not the pool size or overage rate, you have priced the sticker and skipped the engine.
- Get a per pillar rate card into the order form so removing a pillar later cannot reprice everything that remains.
- Do not over commit the credit block. An unused pool today becomes the baseline for tomorrow, and unused credits forfeit without rollover language.
- Never accept the migration mapping as a formality.
07 · Read your own estate
- Define active as worked a record in the last 90 days: created, updated, resolved or approved. Logged in and did nothing is not usage.
- Produce the behavioural split by business unit. Expect roughly 55 percent active, 15 percent approver only, 20 percent dormant, 10 percent light.
- Calculate cost per active fulfiller, never cost per licensed fulfiller, and take that number into the room.
- Apply the thresholds and stop debating: under 65 percent consumption is a rightsizing candidate, under 35 percent is a cut.
- Build three tables before any meeting: entitlements contracted against deployed, the behavioural split, and consumption against every committed pool with a trailing 90 day trend.
08 · Work the runway backwards
- Month 12: the consumption review and the estate read, while you still have time to change the numbers you do not like.
- Month 9: the competitive assessment, funded and named. A funded pilot with a named competitor moved 15 to 30 percent; generic alternative language moved fewer than one negotiation in five.
- Month 6: benchmarks, your target price, and the clause set, all written before their proposal lands and becomes the anchor.
- Month 4: the deal desk question in writing, early enough that the answer arrives before the formal proposal is built.
- Month 3, or whatever your notice window says: serve notice or confirm the date with a named owner. Auto renewal fired silently in 7 of 10 contracts reviewed.
- Renewals opened 9 to 12 months out absorbed about half the increase of those opened inside 60 days.
09 · Build real leverage
- Write down one walk-away you could genuinely execute on Monday, name it, cost it, and get an internal sponsor to agree it.
- Choose from the three that are actually executable: scope, meaning move or decline one workflow; growth, meaning withhold the forecast expansion; and timing, meaning let the deal cross their quarter end.
- Remember the asymmetry: a 98 percent renewal rate means your churn is not budgeted at account level, so a single at risk account is an exception that must be explained upward.
- Use the AI push. Their adoption metrics are publicly committed, which gives you leverage even when your core platform position is weak.
- Plug the three leaks: public internal enthusiasm, a passed notice date, and a late start.
10 · Negotiate the clause set
- Annual uplift cap written as a not to exceed percentage on total order form value, not on unit price.
- Renewal cap, so the term after this one starts from a bounded number.
- True up at anniversary at the contracted rate, not continuously and not at list.
- True down band at renewal of 10 to 20 percent of quantity without penalty.
- Swap rights of 15 to 25 percent of committed ACV per year, so the blended tier model survives a changing estate.
- A written fulfiller definition: what counts as fulfiller activity, whether approval only counts, whether read access counts, whether shared operational accounts count.
- The four AI terms: pool in absolute annual units on the order form, a capped dollar rate per assist held for the term, rollover of unused credits, and an annual ceiling on total consumption spend.
- The quiet four: co-terming, a price hold on additional quantities at the contracted rate, an extended notice window, and the per pillar rate card.
11 · Handle the plays in the room
- Price the pull forward across the whole combined period. Surrendering months you already paid for typically lands as about a 4 percent increase wearing a discount.
- Own the auto renewal date. There is no tactic here, only a date and a named owner.
- Close the tier drift gap: require every tier assignment change to be listed line by line and agreed rather than applied. Drift carries 20 to 40 percent of the increase past every cap.
- Answer the standard uplift with a question rather than indignation: which band is this, and what determined it? Observed bands run from 7 to 20 percent depending on segment and mix.
- Be calm, evidenced and slower than they would like. Never negotiate against a deadline you did not set.
12 · Run it as one negotiation
- Send the clause set before their first proposal, framed as the shape of a deal you can sign quickly. Terms introduced early are drafting instructions; the same terms after a quote are objections.
- Decide in advance which three clauses you will not give up, because you will be asked to choose.
- Appoint one owner and one voice internally, and route every commercial question through that person.
- Complete the internal right sizing before the vendor conversation opens. Reductions already agreed are facts you present; reductions still being argued are concessions you ask for.
- In the final week, read the order form against your clause set line by line, refuse the late add, and confirm the pool size, the overage rate and the rollover language are all on the paper.