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Pricing

The Hidden Margin of SPAs, and their Strategic Advantage

For many distributors, Special Pricing Agreement management has become an administrative burden to survive, not something to optimize. The first of this three-part article series explores how SPAs represent hidden margin for distributors and a roadmap for optimizing them.

February 10, 2026

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Editor's Note: This is the first article in a 3-part series that serves as a primer for a forthcoming MDM whitepaper on this same topic that will cover substantially more materialSee Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.

Distributors sit on millions in untapped Special Pricing Agreements (SPA)

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margin. The reason is not negligence or poor performance. It is the growing frequency and complexity of SPAs, which have expanded faster than most organizations’ ability to manage them effectively. Even the most successful distributors struggle to keep pace. Over the past three decades, I have worked with…

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