What would you pay me to turn it off?
A dealer offers to pause profitable search ads, with a way back. Rewrite the participation offer as two parties discover what the answer would be worth.
The price of a dealer holdout
What would you pay me
to turn it off?
A dealer can sell you a pause and still keep a way back.
What answer would you be buying?
A manufacturer helps pay a dealer’s search-ad bill. The reported return is good. The dealer wants to renew; the manufacturer wants to know whether it is funding extra brand sales or moving sales between its own dealers.
You are the operator at the table. There is room below to write and revise one offer. This meeting, its commercial details and its proposed trial are constructed. The funding constraints are real: a pause could require a programme exception.[1]
Dealer
Renew it. You have the same costs, leads and sales I have.
Manufacturer
I also have the other dealers’ subsidy bills. I want to put some of next year’s search money into the new-model launch.
Dealer
By turning mine off?
Manufacturer
By finding out whether we lose brand sales when you do. If we don’t, I want that money back.
Dealer
So I can lose twice. Sales while your test runs, then the subsidy if the result suits you.
Manufacturer
I won’t promise renewal as payment for a test of whether to renew.
Manufacturer
What would you take for a pause through the agreed end date?
Dealer
I’d consider it with a way back if sales fall.
Manufacturer
At your judgment?
Dealer
That is how I run the dealership.
Manufacturer
Then you can take the fee and be back on tomorrow.
Dealer
Yes. Price that promise, or ask me for another one.
Manufacturer
Give me a condition I can put in the same offer to the other dealers.
Dealer
Delivered new vehicles over the previous seven days. A floor we agree before you assign the markets, checked every Friday. Below it, we restore the agreed campaign settings the next business day, through the trial’s end. You fund the restart.
Manufacturer
Within the trial pot. Whatever I reserve for restarting is money I can’t put in your fee.
Dealer
Then show me both. Don’t show me a large fee and leave me to front the ad spend while I wait for reimbursement.
Manufacturer
I can put an advance in the proposal. Will you give me a price with that in it?
Dealer
And after the test?
Manufacturer
The fee is for the test.
Dealer
The way back. When you stop the contribution next year, does it still work?
Manufacturer
No. That money will be in the launch.
Dealer
You get to see me stop with your money underneath me. Then you want to take that away too.
Manufacturer
You’re asking me to keep part of next year’s search budget available. That is less launch advertising for everyone.
Dealer
I’ve ordered the demonstrators you asked for. I want the launch. I’m still not offering to carry the fall in local sales for it.
Manufacturer
We could find out what, if anything, the pause leaves for the launch after we fund the restarted ads—and what happens to brand sales.
Dealer
And keep paying for those restarts next year?
Manufacturer
I would have to take a smaller launch budget back to the other dealers.
Dealer
Take it back, then. Put the same protection in next year’s offer and I’ll price this one.
Manufacturer
I haven’t agreed to that. Give me your price for a pause with no early restart.
Dealer
For the trial dates, perhaps. Show me the dates and the campaigns. The fee is paid before the markets are assigned. I decide whether I can stand behind it.
Manufacturer
I need to know whether the price leaves anything worth finding out.
Dealer
And I need to know what I’m selling. I’m not crossing out that clause for the same money.
Manufacturer
I may not have a worthwhile offer for you.
Dealer
Then leave it unsigned.
The missing signature
I would take the protected offer to whoever can change the launch budget before asking this dealer for a discount. The dealer has offered to replace personal judgment about restarting with the agreed sales-floor rule. The manufacturer has offered protection from a temporary pot. The signature still missing is on the promise to fund that same protection next year.
That promise may cost too much launch advertising. A firm pause may cost too much participation money, or the dealer may refuse it at any price. The manufacturer should pay for a trial only if its answer could help it spend next year’s money better. It must be able to act on that answer, and the possible gain must justify the full cost of the trial and of acting on what it learns. An affordable test can still be the wrong purchase.
They can also leave and renew on the strength of the reported local return. Declining the trial would not add evidence of extra sales for the brand.
Before either offer could become a trial
A written restart rule can be the policy under study; using it need not break the deal. Its measure, threshold, review time and action must be set before assignment. A bad local week can trigger protection without proving that the pause caused the fall.[2]
Follow every assigned dealer’s outcomes and spending through the end, including after a restart. Keeping only the dealers who stayed paused selects the comparison using events after assignment. It does not recover the effect of a firm interruption.[3]
Settle participation before assigning markets. A signed offer supplies neither the neighboring dealers’ sales records nor independent markets. The operator still needs network outcomes, a plan for sales moving between locations, and enough separate markets for a useful comparison. A finite trial does not settle a permanent withdrawal.[4]
The fixed fee buys an agreed promise and exposure. It cannot be calculated as reimbursement for “missing sales” without assuming what the dealer would have sold—the counterfactual still in dispute.
What do your words ask of each side?
A protected offer, a request to price a firm pause, or a refusal can belong here. Read your clause as the dealer, then your purpose as the manufacturer. Leave the price and authority unresolved where they are unresolved.