💵 B2B Pricing
Pricing products in a B2B setting is a bit different from normal pricing.
Understand the B2B purchasing cycle so you can exploit it. This is the most common purchase cycle in any business. Most employees hate the purchasing process because it inhibits their ability to get work done.
- Potential user in the company discovers they need something. They ask of it.
- Purchasing agent looks for solutions. Google etc.
- Purchasing agent sends out questions. Previous partners etc.
- Purchasing agent sends requests quotes.
- Purchasing department creates a purchase order for one of the quotes.
- Business delivers the product.
- Business invoices the company accounts.
- Company accounts pays the business.
You can use monthly billing to skip the whole purchasing cycle. Most companies have an upper limit on expenses per worker, usually between $500 and $1000. This is why substantially every SaaS business should have a plan priced between $250 and $499 a month. It's not their money so the employee doesn't care whether it is $99 or $499 a month.
Prepare for longer subscriptions. Some businesses don't have a corporate allowance per employee. Your policy should be we are happy to take purchase orders if you pre-pay for a year.
Customers want to see social proof. Don't make a customer feel like your biggest client or assure that being the biggest client is an asset.
You can call me at any time.
I am fanatical about taking care of you because you'd be my biggest
customer, and if I don't take care of you, the business is over.
Use your competition as leverage. The best way is to contrast the level of service you can offer with that the competition can offer. You will always win this comparison if you phrase it correctly. Always.
Use unique emails. If you're ever talking to someone, use their name and their employer's name. Use it just a little more than you would think would be natural. Suggest CCing to the internal team, it's free marketing for you.
Be honest. When you have a discussion over the phone, focus on being 100% honest.
"I don't have a good answer for you right this minute, but I will follow-up
with you over email with the specifics.""
->
Make this email immediately after the phone call.
Ask to CC the internal team.
Namedrop appropriately. After you get the first big company to use your product. Namedropping makes it a lot easier in the future.
Stop thinking like a human. Speak like a human, think like a corporation.
The magic word is auditing. Auditing is a systematic examination of books, accounts and documents of a business to as certain how far the financial statements present a true view of the concern.
Add a setting "Auditing: turn on", and when clicked say that
the plan does not support it.
If they do click that link, fire yourself an email saying
Bob Smith (bob@example.com) was interested in: Auditing.
5 minutes of programming, six-figure deals.
Enterprises are not price conscious. Don't attempt to sell them based on your price.
GitHub receives most of their income from enterprise accounts.
Only difference is that the corporate repositories are behind a firewall.
Use drip marketing. Send out emails beginning with straight-up educational as to how to use the software to solve their problems. Once in a while, tell how to do stuff that is only available in the enterprise tier. Possibly send the enterprise mails only those that you know might be interested.
Find out internal rules of your biggest potential customers:
Example "Service-level agreement" on a company:
All software purchases must include one year of maintenance with
a minimum service level guarantee of tier two support being available
within 6 hours.
Offer this in enterprise tier.
Now they have to take the $5000 a month deal over the $250 a month deal.
Support: Email support on a best-effort basis. No SLA purchased;
available separately. price: (included)
Have a dashboard with all signed in users last day. Look for the big names e.g. boeing.com and ask for their written recommendation. Try to reach for founder or project manager.