What can you do to improve pricing Conversations -
When you conduct price calls How do you convince your prospect that your price is the right one?
A few would suggest telling them what you think your product does better in comparison to the other products...
However, it will only get you only so far.
Here are two ways to improve the quality of the effectiveness of your pricing calls within a B2B SaaS environment that has each of Sales Development Representatives (SDR) and Account Executives (AE) are engaged in the sales process. Let's start...
Value Coaching
Negotiations on pricing are likely to fail if there is too much daylight between the things you and your potential customers consider to be value. Although it's tempting (and in fact, more flexible) to rehash the corporate Value propositions and other talking points, it's more likely to create a gap between you and your prospect. It's not always about semantics, but it's essential to fully understand your prospect's business. It is then possible to design your product or service in terms of what is valuable to the business of your prospect.
The process that I use is known as consider value coaching. This is a complex concept, but it starts by listening and understanding rather than doing all the talking. There are two common ways to start understanding what prospects perceive as value:
1) Effective discovery with an ongoing conversation.
Try asking your prospect the following the following questions:
- You mentioned your sales team uses (TOOL X). Which part of the solution do you use the most with your employees? How are you addressing the issue today? Are you using any tools and are you responsible for it?
Check out this quote from Scott Sambucci, Founder of SalesQualia:
"Price can be a reference point for customer perceived value. If customers aren't satisfied with price, they're telling you that you have not yet expressed the worth that is required for them to justify spending the money ."
Sales representatives often do not understand the stack of their prospects and often quote too soon. These probing questions about how the prospect perceives the value of their current product will allow you to discover how your product fits in it, and to show that you have value to them.
Before entering prices ensure that you know what similar software tools they use. Then you can shift your discovery around what value those tools bring to them and address the area that lies between.
Your prospect could see value in the time they are using the product. The team they work with uses HubSpot at least five hours per day, making it an excellent business investment.
If your item isn't one which requires users to be glued to it for the entire day It is important to communicate the user why your product has benefits even though they may not be using it 24/7.
Be aware that if you set the make your pricing too soon it is possible that they will balk at the price. Find out what they value and discover an opportunity to connect with their struggles in business and the ways they may see worth (in the sense of warming the salesperson a little). Sales' best responses can be either no or yes. If there is more than one perception of worth, it's in both yours and the prospects best interests to withdraw of the transaction before investing more resources.
2) Leverage tools that offer insight into how people interact with your content.
Finding the right way to discover is a challenge since the majority of prospects are trying to see a demo or to reach the cost point. There are tools and techniques you can use to gain insight into what interests those who are interested.
- Uberflip: create personalized content experiences for your prospects. The analytics tool they provide gives you an insight into what the content that your customers are consuming.
These two tactics will help to educate your potential customers on value rather than assuming what they would like and offering an unsuitable solution.
Single Option Alternative
Another tip to make successful calling calls to pricing is to use the psychological principle behind single-option aversion.
Behavioural researcher Daniel Mochon posits that customers are more likely to purchase if they are presented with more than one option. He conducted an experiment where consumers were presented with two different brands of DVD players. 32% stated they'd purchase the first one, and 34% picked the second. However, when participants were shown just one DVD player, only 10% or 10% (depending on which type of brand they were shown) said they would purchase the item. That's a 66% growth in sales just adding another alternative for the purchaser.
Although it's not a good idea to sell B2B SaaS in the past, the brain is able to approach almost all purchase decisions like this.
It is my opinion that this impact only grows when you are in B2B SaaS environments.
We researched the leading SaaS companies and found that over 65% had a consumer-facing multi-tiered pricing page with a contact-us/enterprise tier without a price.
In most companies, whenever a user fills out the "contact us' form , the prospect's information is passed to an SDR for discovery and then to an AE for a deeper exploration, demonstration, and pricing. Prospects have come to love auto-service solutions as they have the ability to choose an option that meets their preferences as well as quickly buy and install the software.
When they first see your pricing page on your website to the price proposal, customers have the option of choosing and options. At the conclusion of the process, are provided with just one option as well as a price for the solution.
I'd suggest replicating the self-service buying experience for your prospects while keeping the price in the dark. This way you can frame your conversation as "These are a few different packages that suit our various customers, is there a particular tier or set of features/functionalities that resonates with your needs?"
From there you can leverage the strength of's pricing guides to narrow in on the exact solution your prospect is looking for.
After you discover where their interests lie through the initial chat, you'll be able to design and price out 2-3 customized levels to meet their requirements. These come with the benefit of a greater understanding and fundamentals of single-option aversion.
Interactive Quotes lets you create completely customized guides for every new customer, ensuring they are met with the best possible options when it comes to price and options.
Additionally, you can integrate Drift right in your price guides. Customers can have questions while in the pricing guide rather than needing to write you an email. This can speed up the procedure. This lets you modify the guide at a moment's notice and puts you that much more close to closing the deal.
The Wrapping Up
The process of pricing calls can be challenging and uncomfortable. In order to build trust with your prospects increase the speed of the sales process, and make more efficient pricing calls:
- Make your discovery process more akin to the value of coaching instead of taking your prospect's perceptions as value
- Make use of single-option aversions as well as self-serve pricing methods to your advantage
