Renewal Armor: Detect Vendor Price Changes & Protect Margins

Advisors quietly lose margin when vendor rate changes slip through renewals priced to legacy quotes. In this episode Bob interviews a channel operations manager (who ran a 30-account pilot that recovered ~10% of lost margin) and a data/automation engineer to deliver a concise, human-first playbook for detecting vendor price changes and protecting renewal margin. Listeners will leave with four tangible takeaways: a Rate-Change Triage checklist, conservative repricing bands and approval gates, client conversation scripts that preserve trust, and a 30–60 day pilot plan with success metrics (Margin Protected %, Renewal Win Rate). The episode balances practical detection methods (APIs, scheduled exports, email parsing) with clear legal/ethical rules (vendor consent, partner-owner sign-off, avoid portal scraping without permission). Actionable examples, sample messages, and a suggested pilot roadmap make this feasible for small teams to run within a month and start recovering hidden revenue without harming client relationships.