Negotiating unlimited entitlements when demand was genuinely uncertain

A new initiative made one usage metric impossible to forecast honestly: the internal range ran from 200,000 to 900,000 units for the year. The vendor's standard tiers priced the low end at around $45,000 and the high end at around $160,000. Picking either meant either paying for capacity that might never be used or walking into an overage conversation mid-term.

The ask

Instead of negotiating a tier, the ask was for unlimited entitlement on that one uncertain metric at a fixed annual price, with the real projection range shared openly rather than presented as a bluff. Everything predictable in the contract, seats and standard feature access, stayed on normal tiered pricing; a fixed-price license audit can help check the entitlement position.

Why the vendor was open to it

A vendor facing genuine customer uncertainty has two unattractive options: a large surprise overage bill that sours the next renewal, or giving away capacity if usage stays low. A fixed price for unlimited usage on one metric, calibrated by their own finance team against actual delivery cost, removes unpredictability from their revenue forecast as well as ours, and lands close to their internal expected value.

The outcome

The unlimited entitlement was granted at a fixed $95,000 annually. Usage ultimately scaled to roughly 780,000 units by year end, near the top of the range, with no renegotiation, no overage conversation and no mid-term scramble. Under standard tiering, that level would have cost close to $150,000, so the structure saved approximately $55,000 against what actually materialised.

The takeaway

When uncertainty is genuine rather than a planning failure, the right ask is not a better guess at the right tier. It is removing the need to guess. Vendors often have more flexibility on unlimited or fixed-price structures for a single uncertain metric than their published tiers suggest, but only when the ask is framed around the real uncertainty driving it.