Negotiation preparation for IT & Software

Your prompt is ready 3 brackets to fill

You are an expert in this kind of work, and you know the IT & Software sector from the inside.

## Your task
Help me prepare for a pricing negotiation between a software company that ships a SaaS product and [CLIENT]. Our list price: [PRICE]. Our walk-away point: [MINIMUM]. List their likely positions and pressures, our concessions ranked by cost to us, trades to ask for in return, and phrases to use and avoid.

## About my situation
- Who this is for: engineering leads, developers and IT buyers
- What we must respect: uptime, security and data-protection requirements
- How we measure success: deployment frequency and uptime

## What matters in IT & Software
- How customers decide: technical evaluators and budget owners decide together; they judge security, integrations, total cost and support quality; free trials and proofs of concept are common; contracts are usually annual and renew.
- People involved: product managers; engineering leads; DevOps and SRE engineers; the security team; customer success; IT buyers and procurement.
- Numbers that matter: deployment frequency; lead time for changes; change failure rate; mean time to recovery; uptime against SLA; MRR/ARR; net revenue retention; logo churn.
- Timing and seasons: quarterly planning; release trains; annual renewal dates; end-of-quarter and fiscal-year-end deals.

## How to work through it
1. List their likely positions and pressures.
2. Rank our concessions by cost to us.
3. Pair each concession with something to ask in return.
4. List phrases to use and avoid.

## What to deliver
- Negotiation plan
- Concession and trade table
- Phrase list

## Rules
- Make every point specific to my situation and my industry; replace generic advice with detail that fits.
- Use plain language, short sentences, and tables where they make the answer easier to scan.
- Use only the facts I give you. Do not invent figures, laws, sources or quotes. Mark anything you had to assume with "Assumption:".
- If something important is missing, ask me up to 3 short questions before you start.

## Before you answer
Check your draft against this list and fix anything that fails:
- The message is about the buyer's problem rather than our product, and every step ends with a clear next action.
- It is written for a software company that ships a SaaS product; nothing in it would read the same for any other business.
- Nothing in it breaks uptime, security and data-protection requirements.
- Every item under "What to deliver" is included.

Open in ChatGPT Claude Perplexity

How to use this prompt

Copy the prompt. Press Copy prompt and the full text goes to your clipboard.
Fill the brackets. Use the form above, or replace [CLIENT], [PRICE], [MINIMUM] with your own details.
Paste and send. Paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Meta AI (Llama) and send. Ask follow-up questions to refine the answer.

Why this prompt works

The “Negotiation preparation” prompt tells the assistant exactly what to hand back: negotiation plan; concession and trade table; and phrase list. It makes the assistant work through 4 steps in order, starting with "list their likely positions and pressures", instead of jumping straight to an answer. Before replying, the assistant checks its draft against 4 tests and fixes anything that fails.

This version is written for a software company that ships a SaaS product, so the assistant keeps uptime, security and data-protection requirements in mind and judges the result by deployment frequency and uptime. If an important detail is missing, it asks you up to 3 short questions before it starts.

How to get the best answer

Fill every bracket with real detail: [CLIENT], [PRICE], [MINIMUM] should hold real names, numbers and dates, not placeholders.
Paste real material: where the prompt asks for notes, data or text, paste the actual content rather than a summary.
Refine in the same chat: ask "make it shorter", "turn it into a table" or "add more detail on step 2".
Check the result: review it against what you know about deployment frequency and uptime before you share it.

Other industries

Same prompt for other industries

The same negotiation preparation prompt, rewritten for each industry.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Which AI assistant works best with the “Negotiation preparation” prompt?

The “Negotiation preparation” prompt works in any chat assistant and suits ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Meta AI (Llama) best. Paste it in, send it, and ask follow-up questions in the same chat to refine the answer.

What do I fill in before sending the “Negotiation preparation” prompt?

Replace the 3 highlighted brackets – [CLIENT], [PRICE], [MINIMUM] – with your own details. The more specific you are, the better the answer.

Is the “Negotiation preparation” prompt only for IT & Software?

No. This version is written for a software company that ships a SaaS product, and the same prompt is also written for 15 other industries, listed on this page.

Is the “Negotiation preparation” prompt free to use?

Yes. First AI Prompt prompts are free to copy and use in personal and business work, with no sign-up, no account and no daily limit.

Can I trust the answer the “Negotiation preparation” prompt gives?

Treat it as a strong first draft: the prompt tells the assistant not to invent facts and to mark its assumptions, but check figures yourself, especially anything with legal, financial or safety consequences.

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