Michael Fertman offers advice on how to approach clients who demand a cut in fees from lessons learned through the 2008 crisis.
Lessons from managing $500M in ARR through the 2008 crisis
This is a companion to “Winter Is Coming: A CEO and CMO Guide to Seizing Share While Others Freeze.” If that piece was about playing offense with your brand, your messaging, and your partnerships, this one is about playing offense with your pricing.
What would you do if your two biggest customers called today, asking to cut their contracts by 30% each?
Depending on your size and stage, that could represent anywhere from a 5% to 30%+ hit to topline revenue. Boom. Just like that.
That’s what it was starting to feel like for my $500M SaaS Subscription team at Dun & Bradstreet on October 1, 2008. The moment our 1,000-person sales force started directing their attention to Q4. It was a bloodbath. In the tsunami that was the 2008 financial crisis, my company’s customers started really feeling the downturn heat in Q3. We felt it immediately after.
If a downturn arrives, this could be you. This piece is your pricing playbook for when those calls come, and how to turn them into leverage instead of losses. Because when those calls come, your answer doesn’t just reflect policy — it reflects your belief in the value your team delivers. That’s what this piece is all about.
This Only Applies If You’re in the Enterprise Game
These strategies apply to complex enterprise contracts — $250K, $500K, $1M+. Not transactional SaaS. Not $199/month subscriptions.
Enterprise deals are multi-product, multi-team engagements with flexibility in scope, structure, and value creation. That complexity is where your leverage lives. You can shift product mix, expand access, adjust terms and still hold pricing power.
If the only thing your company can “give” is more usage of a single product, this playbook doesn’t apply. These moves are about giving to get. You earn flexibility, term, and growth by delivering value across the full relationship, not by trimming line items.
Key points include:
- Identifying high-utility, low-marginal-cost levers
- Absorbing adjacent spend
- Reversible concessions
Read the article, When Your Two Biggest Customers Demand 30% Cuts, on LinkedIn.