Archives for December 2015

Pricing Strategy Framework for SaaS Startups

Another awesome article by Lincoln Murphy

pricing-strategy-framework-for-startupsPricing doesn’t exist in a vacuum and is therefore not something you can tackle on its own.

Pricing is a function of marketing and determines, among other things, your market position. It also indicates – or is ideally derived from – the type of customer you want to do business with.

And of course in SaaS, pricing is tightly coupled to the product itself, which is different from other types of software and non-tech products where the price is decoupled from the product.

Which is why I can’t recall a time where a SaaS company came to me with a “pricing problem” and there wasn’t something else that was going on, too.

In fact, their “pricing problem” often had little to do with the actual “price” – the numbers – and more to do with pretty much everything else (chosen revenue model, customer segmentation, value proposition, marketing strategy, conversion optimization, etc.).

So, when those in an early-stage startup – or those bringing a new product to market within an existing company – ask me for help on pricing, I always say that you won’t get it perfect out of the gate, but you can get it as right as possible.

And then I give them a high-level pricing strategy framework, which I thought I’d document and share with you in this post.

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Qualifying Leads in a SaaS Free Trial

Another awesome article by Lincoln Murphy

qualifying-leads-in-a-saas-free-trialI got this set of questions on Twitter: “Is there a certain level of activity during the free trial that is likely to predict conversion from free to paid? Also, how do other companies handle Sales vs. Marketing Qualified Leads (SQL vs. MQL) when it comes to Free Trials?”

I thought that was an awesome set of questions because it indicates the person asking is starting to look at their Free Trial as a true sales pipeline; something more people and companies should do.

So I loved the question and I thought my answer was equally awesome (if I do say so myself), so I decided to expand on it a bit and share it with you, too.

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