Exposed! 6 contract negotiations secrets revealed

After more than 12 years helping banks and credit unions optimize their service contracts through expert negotiations with vendors, I have picked up a number of secrets that have empowered JMFA clients across the nation to take the reins and experience substantial savings on their vendor agreements. Today, I’d like to share with you a few tips to help you get the best deal from your service providers.

Secret #1: Humility can equal significant savings.

What I’ve found over the years is that there’s so much changing in the marketplace with technology contracts (like core processing, Internet banking, custom bill pay and debit cards), that even those adept at negotiating in other situations may not have the information they need to negotiate with these types of vendors.

There are a lot of different line items that can be negotiated within a certain contract. But unless you do this all the time (like we do at JMFA), you probably won’t know what to ask for on each line item, what concessions can be made, or what line items are strictly pass-through costs that can’t be negotiated, regardless of the vendor.

 

continue reading »