Negotiating Salesforce Support Fees and Packages: How to Get Discounts or Extra Value on Premier and Signature Support
Why This Topic Matters
Salesforce’s premium support plans, Premier and Signature Success, can quietly add a significant burden to your IT budget.
These plans often cost an additional 20–30% of your net license fees (or more for Signature), which can amount to tens of thousands or even millions of dollars for large enterprises.
Yet many organizations fail to fully utilize the additional services they’re paying for. Read our complete guide to Salesforce Support and Success Plans.
This misalignment leads to underused entitlements (like unused advisory hours or training credits) and a drain on the budget with little ROI.
Negotiating these support fees isn’t just about saving money – it’s about ensuring the support level matches your needs and extracting maximum value for every dollar.
Forward-thinking CIOs and procurement leaders are questioning the status quo, pushing back on vendor pricing, and finding creative ways to get more value or pay less for Salesforce support.
In short, premium support is not a fixed cost – it’s a negotiable element of your Salesforce deal, and savvy enterprises treat it as such.
Understanding Salesforce Support Packages
Salesforce offers multiple support tiers (also called Success Plans) tailored to different needs. It’s crucial to understand what each includes and how Salesforce positions them:
- Standard Support (included): This basic level is included with all licenses at no additional cost. It provides online case submission, access to help articles, and community forums. However, response times are slow (no guaranteed quick SLA), and support is typically limited to business hours for non-critical issues. There’s no developer support (Salesforce won’t troubleshoot your custom code) and no proactive guidance. Salesforce positions Standard as sufficient for smaller deployments or those with strong internal admins who can solve most issues themselves.
- Premier Support (premium, add-on): Premier is the most common paid tier for enterprises. It offers 24/7 support with faster response SLAs – often a 1-hour response for critical P1 issues and quick attention around the clock. Premier includes developer support, meaning Salesforce will help troubleshoot custom code and integrations (a big plus for highly customized orgs). It also unlocks “Accelerators” and coaching sessions – one-on-one consultations with Salesforce experts on specific topics (for example, optimizing your dashboards or improving user adoption). Additionally, Premier customers get health checks and proactive recommendations to optimize their Salesforce usage. Salesforce’s list price for Premier is about 30% of your license cost, which is a hefty surcharge – so they pitch it as essential “insurance” if Salesforce is mission-critical to your business. In reality, that 30% is often negotiable, and many enterprises secure Premier for less or bundle it into deals (more on that later).
- Signature Support (top-tier, custom pricing): Signature Success Plan is Salesforce’s elite support offering for large, business-critical customers. It provides a designated support team and a named Technical Account Manager (TAM) or Success Manager who is familiar with your system. Signature includes the fastest response times and even more proactive services – for example, real-time monitoring of your Salesforce org, priority case handling, release planning assistance, and sometimes on-site support for big events like major go-lives. Essentially, Salesforce becomes a close support partner in your operations. Pricing for Signature is not published – it’s often negotiated on a case-by-case basis. It might be structured as a fixed fee or as a higher percentage of your spend. Salesforce will typically only offer Signature to its largest customers (think Fortune 100 firms or those running Salesforce across thousands of users and multiple clouds). They position Signature as necessary for “zero downtime” tolerance environments. The cost is steep, but Salesforce representatives may justify it by saying, “An hour of downtime could cost you millions, so this support pays for itself.” In practice, like Premier, Signature’s price can be negotiated down or packaged into a bigger agreement if you know how to ask.
Understanding these tiers is critical because it sets the stage for negotiation. Recognize that the Standard is included and might suffice if you have a capable internal team.
Premier offers valuable services, albeit at a high list price, and Signature is the deluxe plan, often sold based on the promise of avoiding downtime.
Knowing this, you can determine the level you truly need and then focus on obtaining it at the right price or with added value included.
Read about Salesforce Service Credits for Downtime.
Common Enterprise Scenarios
To illustrate why negotiating support fees and packages matters, consider a few real-world scenarios (anonymized from enterprise experiences):
- Overpaying for Underutilized Premier: A global manufacturer was paying for Premier Support on all its Salesforce products – an annual six-figure sum that accounted for 25% of their license cost. Yet, an internal audit revealed that they logged only a handful of support cases per year and rarely took advantage of the included training or Accelerator sessions. Essentially, they were paying for peace of mind but not using most Premier benefits. This is common – companies buy Premier “just in case” but don’t utilize its features fully. The result is wasted budget. Such organizations can push to downgrade to Standard support (saving that 20–30% premium) or use this data to negotiate a steep discount on Premier in the future. In this company’s case, at renewal, they threatened to downgrade to the Standard plan. Salesforce responded with a 50% discount on Premier to retain them as a support customer, and the company also instituted a plan to actively utilize the support services they were entitled to.
- Last-Minute Upgrade with No Leverage: A large e-commerce firm initially stuck with Standard support to save money. Unfortunately, when a critical outage hit during a holiday sale, they found themselves waiting in line for responses. Panicked, they reached out to their Salesforce rep demanding immediate help. The rep’s solution? Upsell them to Signature Support on the spot (at full price) to get a dedicated team assigned to their case. With revenue bleeding from the outage, the company had little choice but to sign a pricey support upgrade mid-term. They resolved the issue faster, but at the cost of an unbudgeted expenditure. This scenario shows that if you wait until you’re in a crisis, you have zero negotiating leverage – you’ll pay list price for emergency support. The lesson: if your Salesforce usage is critical, negotiate the right support level before a disaster strikes, and do it as part of your planned contracts, not in desperation.
- Bundling Support into a Big Deal (Getting It “Free”): A multinational enterprise was expanding its Salesforce footprint significantly – adding Marketing Cloud and Tableau on top of Sales & Service Clouds in a new 3-year agreement. The projected spend was massive. The savvy procurement team used this as an opportunity to demand premium support as a value-add. In negotiations, they said, “At this spend level, we expect Premier Support to be included at no extra cost.” They also shared benchmarks showing other vendors, including premium support in enterprise deals. Salesforce, keen to secure the multi-cloud sale and meet its target, agreed to waive Premier Support fees for the first year and offer a deep discount thereafter. In effect, the company received a high level of support nearly for free as part of the package. This scenario isn’t an anomaly – if your deal is large enough or you’re expanding your Salesforce usage, you absolutely can ask for complimentary or heavily discounted support as a sweetener. Salesforce might not volunteer it, but they often have the flexibility to bundle support if it secures a big contract.
These scenarios illustrate the spectrum, ranging from overpaying blindly to reacting late and paying a premium, to proactively negotiating and saving significantly.
The goal is to be in that last category, treating support as a negotiable element and leveraging your position so that you either don’t overpay or gain extra value (such as free services) for the same spend.
Read about Salesforce Support Tiers.
Strategies & Best Practices
How can enterprise buyers tilt the support equation in their favor?
Here are strategies and best practices to negotiate Salesforce Premier/Signature support for maximum value:
- Align Support Talks with License Renewals and Purchases: The timing of your negotiation is critical. Always negotiate support fees or upgrades alongside your main license renewal or expansion discussions – not as a separate afterthought. When Salesforce is eager to close a deal (especially at quarter or year-end), they’re more willing to throw in concessions. Tie your support requests to the bigger contract: e.g., “We’ll renew for three years, but we want Premier Support included for all products in that price.”
- Bundle and Leverage Multi-Cloud Deals: If you’re adding new Salesforce products (such as Sales Cloud, Service, and Marketing), bundle your negotiations to cover everything, including support. A multi-cloud, multi-year deal gives you leverage to say, “Given our significant investment across Salesforce’s portfolio, we expect premium support as part of the value.” Salesforce often prefers to sell an integrated package – use that to get support fees reduced or waived as part of the bundle.
- Use Data to Justify Your Request: Enter negotiations with a ROI analysis and benchmarks. Show Salesforce sales teams any evidence that Premier support wasn’t fully utilized in your last term or that your internal metrics don’t justify the full cost. For instance, “We only used 5 of the 20 accelerator sessions last year – we need a lower price or we’ll drop down a tier.” Also, leverage industry benchmarks: if you know peers or competitors got a better deal (e.g., another company got support at 15% of spend instead of 30%), bring that up. Salesforce hates to lose on pricing optics when confronted with market data.Additionally, compare the cost of Premier support to alternatives: “For what we pay in support, we could hire two additional certified Salesforce engineers. Can you show us why this is a better investment?” This kind of positioning puts pressure onSalesforce to either improve the offer or risk you opting out.
- Be Willing to Walk (or Downgrade): A classic negotiation tactic – be ready to say “maybe we don’t need this at all.” If Salesforce believes you might stick with Standard support (or even use a third-party support partner for admin help), they’ll be more inclined to negotiate. Make it clear that you’re not automatically signing up for Premier/Signature each year. For example: “Our default will be Standard support next term due to budget cuts; convince us what Premier is worth – perhaps via a better rate or a trial period.” This places the onus on them to add value or risk losing the support revenue.
- Ask for Redlines That Protect You: Don’t just accept the boilerplate order form for support. Propose contract language to safeguard costs and ensure value. For instance, you can add terms like: “Support fees shall remain at x% of net fees for the renewal term, with no additional increases,” or “Premier Support for up to N users is provided at no additional charge as part of this agreement.” If you negotiate free or discounted support, ensure it is explicitly documented in the contract or amendment. Also, consider adding a clause that if you upgrade support mid-term, it will be at a prorated, discounted rate you agreed upon, not the list price. By redlining these points, you avoid surprises such as an automatic hike to the full list price at renewal. Salesforce may push back, but even getting a cap on support fee increases or a guaranteed discount in writing is a win for you.
- Tie Support Concessions to Outcomes: Another tactic is to negotiate for value-added extras in support rather than pure discounts. For example, “Include an extra 100 hours of Salesforce consulting services or a dedicated support engineer during our peak season, as part of the Signature plan.” This way, if Salesforce is reluctant to cut the price, they might be willing to add services or resources to sweeten the deal. It never hurts to ask: “We need more than just the standard Premier features at that price – how will you ensure we’re successful? Can we have a named support contact? Additional training for our staff? Quarterly architecture reviews?” Make them commit to tangible value.
In essence, treat Salesforce support like any other contract component – plan your negotiation, use leverage, and don’t accept the first offer.
When Salesforce sees that you’re knowledgeable and firm, they are far more likely to bend on support pricing or add value to secure your signature.
Negotiation Levers to Pull
Enterprise IT procurement leaders have several powerful levers at their disposal to negotiate better support terms.
Keep these in mind when crafting your strategy:
- Volume and Spend: If you’re a large customer (hundreds or thousands of licenses, multi-million dollar spend), leverage that scale. Salesforce won’t want to lose your business or leave you unhappy. Use phrases like, “At our spend level, surely Premier support can be provided at a preferential rate (or included).” A large volume can justify a custom support deal – Salesforce may agree to a flat fee for support that equates to a lower percentage of your spend, especially if you request it.
- Multi-Year Commitments: Committing to a longer term (e.g., a 3-year renewal instead of an annual one) can be a bargaining chip. In exchange for the predictability of a multi-year commitment, ask for locked-in support pricing or discounts. For example: “If we sign a three-year deal, we need Premier Support at 50% off or fixed at $X for those years with no increase.” The promise of guaranteed revenue can get Salesforce to budge on the support fees.
- Co-Termination and Consolidation: Aligning all your Salesforce contracts to co-terminate at the same time creates one big renewal – a moment of maximum leverage. Salesforce reps know that if everything is on the table at once, you could potentially walk away or cut large portions of the deal. Use that to negotiate support across the whole estate. e.g., “We’ll co-term our Sales, Service, and Marketing Cloud renewals together; in return, we expect the Premier Success Plan to cover all of them for a single bundled price.” Co-termination also prevents Salesforce from picking you off product by product; you negotiate support for the entire platform in one go.
- Expansion (New Products or Upgrades): Whenever you’re expanding your Salesforce usage (adding new cloud products, upgrading editions, significantly increasing user counts), you have leverage. Salesforce loves growth. Use this moment to say, “We’ll add Product X, but we need an incentive – perhaps Signature Support at a deep discount as part of the deal.” Essentially, trade your expansion for their concession on support.
- Quarter-End or Fiscal-End Pressure: Salesforce, like many vendors, has quotas and is more flexible at the end of a quarter or fiscal year (Salesforce’s fiscal year ends January 31, for reference). If your renewal or deal can be timed to hit that window, you can push harder. For instance: “If you want us to sign this quarter, include two years of Premier Support at no charge.” Time pressure on the rep can translate into concessions for you.
- Competitive Alternatives (or The Nuclear Option): While there’s no true third-party “Salesforce support” equivalent (Salesforce is the only one who can fix certain platform issues), you can bring up alternatives for support needs. For example, some companies utilize certified consulting partners or managed services firms as their primary line of support, thereby reducing their reliance on Salesforce Premier. You might say, “We’re evaluating handling support via a third-party admin service or internally unless Salesforce’s offer improves.” It reminds Salesforce that the real alternative is you not buying their support at all. Additionally, in extreme cases where a company is considering migrating away from Salesforce (or at least threatening to do so), mentioning that you’re weighing other CRM vendors can make Salesforce more accommodating in all areas, including support. This is a delicate lever (you don’t want to bluff and sour the relationship), but if credible, it’s the ultimate leverage.
- Threat of Downgrade: If you’re currently on Premier or Signature, use the renewal to consider a downgrade. Even if you ultimately still need Premier, indicate that Standard support is on the table if economics don’t improve. Salesforce would much rather keep you on a paid support tier at a lower price than lose that line item entirely. We’ve seen enterprises say “We might drop to Standard to save costs,” and Salesforce responded by retaining Premier at a heavy discount or by offering a short-term free upgrade to Signature as a trial. The key is they won’t offer these unless you seriously consider walking away from paid support.
Using these levers in combination will strengthen your negotiation position. For example, a strategy could be: “We’re consolidating all our renewals (co-term) this December (quarter/fiscal end) and expanding our user count by 20%.
If Salesforce wants a 3-year commitment on that, we need Premier Support for all products at a 75% discount, and a clause capping any increase at renewal.” That touches on multiple levers (volume, timing, multi-year, expansion) in one ask – a compelling approach to extract value.
Avoiding Pitfalls
While negotiating, be mindful of common pitfalls that can undermine your efforts or lead to bad outcomes:
- Paying the Sticker Price for Support: The biggest mistake is accepting Salesforce’s list price for Premier or Signature without question. Many companies still pay the default ~30% of license costs for Premier Support simply because it was on the quote and they assumed it was non-negotiable. Don’t pay list price blindly. Everything is negotiable in large enterprise deals – including support. Always push back on the quoted percentage or fee.
- Buying Unneeded Bells and Whistles: Salesforce will tout the full array of support features (advisory hours, admin assist, dedicated TAM, etc.), which sound great. But be realistic about what your team will use. If, in the last year, you never scheduled those “Accelerator” sessions or contacted your TAM only once, you may not need the highest tier, or you may need to negotiate a custom plan. Avoid committing to a tier of support loaded with features that your organization won’t leverage. It’s like paying for an all-you-can-eat buffet and only grabbing a salad – not a cost-effective approach. Know your usage patterns and choose (or negotiate) a plan that fits.
- Mid-Term Upgrades at Rack Rates: As illustrated in the earlier scenario, upgrading support in the middle of a contract term (because you suddenly need it) often means paying through the nose. Salesforce has little incentive to discount in the middle of a term; they know you’re desperate if you come asking then. To avoid this pitfall, either negotiate an upgrade path in advance (e.g., a clause that you can move from Standard to Premier mid-year at a pre-agreed discounted rate if needed) or, better, plan and start the term on the right support level using your leverage at the outset. Otherwise, you’ll end up paying a premium on top of the premium if you upgrade later.
- Ignoring Renewal Terms for Support: Many customers focus on license pricing at renewal and overlook the fact that support terms can also change. Salesforce may offer a first-term support discount that disappears at renewal if not locked in. Always check your renewal quotes to ensure they haven’t sneaked support back to full price. Pitfall to avoid: auto-renewing Premier/Signature without renegotiation. Treat support like a separate item to renegotiate each time – don’t let it coast on autopilot or you could see big jumps in cost.
- Assuming More $$$ = Better Support Quality: Another trap is thinking Signature support will magically solve all problems simply because it’s expensive. While higher tiers do give you faster response and more resources, they don’t guarantee that Salesforce will fix a bug faster or that you’ll never have issues. Some problems take time regardless of support level (e.g., a platform bug might require a patch in a future release). Don’t let Salesforce sell Signature as a cure-all if your main issues have been product bugs or missing features. You might pay a fortune and still face the same limitations. Be clear on what Premier/Signature can and cannot do for you, so you set the right expectations internally and negotiate based on facts, not hopes.
By avoiding these pitfalls – and learning from others’ mistakes – you ensure that any support package you do sign up for is negotiated smartly and aligned to your actual needs.
Governance & ROI Tracking
Negotiation is only half the battle. Once you have a Premier or Signature support plan in place, you need governance practices to make sure you’re getting the value you negotiated for.
Here’s how enterprise IT teams can hold Salesforce (and themselves) accountable and track ROI on support:
- Define Support KPIs and Benchmarks: Establish key performance indicators for the support services. For example, response and resolution times for cases (are they meeting the 1-hour response SLA for critical issues?), the uptime of your Salesforce applications (if part of your support includes uptime guarantees), and user satisfaction with support interactions. Track these metrics quarterly. If you negotiated specific SLAs or a dedicated TAM, measure their impact – e.g., “critical case resolution time reduced from 8 hours to 2 hours after Premier, preventing X amount of downtime.”
- Track Usage of Entitlements: Keep a log of every support feature you’re entitled to – such as number of Accelerator sessions, health checks, training vouchers, admin assist hours, etc. Assign an owner to each item and plan their usage throughout the year. For instance, schedule those 5 Accelerator sessions across different quarters and ensure your team attends them. Monitor the number of support cases you log and their severity level. By year-end, you should be able to say, “We used 90% of what we paid for”. If you find you’re only using a small fraction, that’s a red flag (and ammunition for renegotiation).
- Regular Business Reviews: Insist on regular (e.g., quarterly) business review meetings with Salesforce’s support/customer success team. In these meetings, review the support performance, including case trends, any major incidents, the proactive guidance Salesforce provided, and plans for upcoming quarters. This keeps Salesforce accountable – if they promised proactive support, the QBR is where they demonstrate their progress. It also gives you a chance to raise concerns: “Last quarter we had three high-priority cases that took longer than expected – how will that improve?” Document the outcomes of these reviews.
- ROI Analysis Before Renewal: As you approach the next renewal, do a support ROI analysis. Calculate roughly what the Premier/Signature costs you over the term and list the major benefits gained. Some benefits are qualitative (e.g., peace of mind, faster issue resolution, avoiding business impact), but try to quantify them where possible. For example: “Our Premier Support cost $200k this year. It helped avoid an estimated $500k in potential losses by resolving a critical outage in 1 hour instead of possibly a multi-hour downtime.” Or “We utilized $50k worth of included training and consulting that we would have otherwise paid extra for.” If the numbers don’t look good (the cost far outweighs the realized value), that’s a signal to adjust – either negotiate a lower price, switch tiers, or push to utilize it more effectively.
- Adjust and Optimize: Use what you’ve learned to make changes. Governance means continuously optimizing. If your tracking shows that you didn’t use a particular benefit (for example, you never used the “Admin Assist” feature of Premier Plus), consider downgrading to regular Premier or negotiating to swap that feature for something else. Conversely, find that your team has opened many high-severity cases and still feels that support is too slow or lacks expertise. You might justify asking for a Signature or additional resources (but ideally on your terms, not just paying the list price). The key is to not fall into a set-and-forget mentality – treat the support relationship as dynamic. Every renewal is an opportunity to realign cost to value.
- Internal Communication and Training: Finally, ensure your organization is aware of the support plan and how to use it. Often, companies have Premier support, but frontline staff lack knowledge on how to effectively engage with Salesforce, resulting in underutilization. Include support procedures in your ITIL or incident management processes (“if Salesforce is down, contact our TAM immediately via the Premier hotline,” etc.). Train your administrators and power users on how to open Salesforce cases with the proper severity and escalate them if needed. Your support investment pays off only if your team leverages it fully and works in partnership with Salesforce support.
By governing your support usage and measuring outcomes, you create a feedback loop, allowing you to prove the value (or lack thereof) of the support package, which strengthens your position in the next negotiation.
Salesforce account teams tend to be much more flexible with customers who are organized, data-driven, and proactive – it signals that you won’t hesitate to right-size or walk away from a poor value proposition.
Read more about our Salesforce Contract Negotiation Service.
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