What is the best way to display your Prices: Interactive vs. traditional -
The way you display SaaS pricing should not be considered as an afterthought. It's an effective method that's simple and easy for potential customers.
Pricing is a key way of building trust with your prospect, and when done right will help to build momentum into the sales funnel. It could be among the most personalized, interactive and measurable portions of your sales process.
The initial step in making this happen is to evaluate the methods you use to display, create and communicate your prices.
Meet the ultimate villain in this story the ordinary Office Suite software.
If you're using the following Office Suite software to display SaaS pricing, it's time to provide your pricing with an overhaul. Read on for expert advice about how you can make the change.
Things NOT to Do How to Display Pricing: Traditional Ways of Displaying Pricing
1. Using Sheets for Displaying SaaS Pricing
Things you can modify: Using sheets does not show professionalism. They're boring and manually-based, and the pricing must be different. You can't personalize your pricing using a sheet that isn't personalized, which is crucial to building relationships with prospects. It is easy to get lost in the numbers, and they're time-consuming to build.
A Seller's Advice who switched: Mike Wright, Co-Founder and CEO at MESH/diversity, switched from using spreadsheets to an online pricing tool. He tells us:
"Leveraging the power of pricing tools is a game-changer since it permits you to be consistent, it gives you the history of how you've evolved in your hands, and it allows you to make choices as you move forward by relying on the past data and in a more efficient approach than digging up old proposals or looking through older versions of your spreadsheets."
Things to think about: Try incorporating personalized choices that let your customers to select the best option for their needs when you display SaaS pricing structures. To eliminate the hassle of a spreadsheet, use a software program that stores all of your previous quotes so you can easily pull in the pricing of your competitors and instantly populate calculations for prospects. That way, you no longer need to spend the time to create spreadsheets and performing calculations manually to calculate every deal.
2. Using Slide Decks for displaying SaaS Pricing
Next slide...next Slide... The next pricing strategy, please.
What you should make changes to: Sending decks to clients seems like a great way to showcase your pricing with a beautiful layout. Although they seem engaging however, they're a single-dimensional. When you use slide decks, you are throwing away the chance to learn more about your prospects and make informed follow-ups. The pricing you offer must give you an advantage over the competition and also reveal how often your customer views your pricing, and ensure they fully understand the price shown.
Advice from a Seller who switched:Stefan Kollenberg, Co-Founder of Crescendo, switched from using slideshows to using an online pricing tool that gives insight and analytics in real-time. He claims:
"I will have my prices at the bottom of a sales deck in one slides. I didn't know if the customers] were going into the deck in order to modify it, pick various options, or browse at the various tiers we offered. It's like you need to get as much data possible on how pricing worked, what didn't .">
What you should consider: Without data from earlier deals, you'll never be able adjust to the needs of your prospective customers and determine the best way to serve your potential customers. You should consider using a tool that allows you to gain insight in real time and track all things price.
3. Use of Email for Displaying SaaS Pricing
How many emails do you get in a day? Everyone has the same answer: way too numerous.
What you should change: Scrolling through endless emails trying to find an accurate information is tedious, and frankly annoying. Talking about your pricing via email extends the length of time required to complete the sale, because it's one of the worst methods to convey price.
Tips from a seller who switched: Jack Hannah, Sales Team Leader at LinkSquares has moved from email for communicating pricing, to using an interactive tool for pricing. He says:
"A lot of the conversations were taking place verbally and then followed with an email summation to ensure sure that both parties knew what we were actually discussing. We're now able to effectively share our screens and engage in a more professional, structured conversation around price, which can lead to a much clearer conversation that requires more minimal back and forth ."
Things to think about: Avoid the headache and establish a seamless relationship with potential customers by employing a program designed to facilitate swift and efficient communication. It will not only allow your prospects to find all the data they require fast, but it'll also display all of their custom pricing and relevant information easily.
4. Utilizing Collaborative Software to Display SaaS Pricing
Software and tools that collaborate have irrefutable value in your sales process, but if you're misusing the software for your primary price display instrument, then you're likely to get into an unintentional mess.
What should you modify: Collaborative tools such that are used to facilitate internal communication and brainstorming do not work for displaying SaaS pricing. Utilizing tools to show your prices can lead to making a non-sympathetic presentation and causing confusion for your prospective customers. There are many amazing tools made to help however, if you use an instrument for a pricing function that wasn't designed to be used to be used for pricing, you're going to run into many difficulties that can cause a problem.
Advice from a Seller Who Switched: Mike Pinkus, Partner at ConnectCPA previously used collaboration software to build an interactive experience for pricing before the switch to a price system that has interactivity as the heart of it. He states:
"We had an application that wasn't specially designed to be an online sales platform. The platform was definitely not professional because we were using it for a wrong reason. Since we switched the cleanliness as well as professionalism. All is neat and organized in a way that suits the purpose for selling ."
The things you need to think about: Misusing software may appear to be a time and cost saver but, in the end time, it can result in more problems than it can solve. Moving your pricing processes into software created to cater to your specific needs will benefit you while also creating an improved buying experience for potential buyers.
5. Utilizing PDFs to Display SaaS Pricing
Many of us have resorted to the old-fashioned PDF. Sure, you could have had your graphic designer create it all branded and pretty, but unfortunately, it's really just a slow and ineffective way to display SaaS pricing.
What should you make changes to: Prospects can't engage with the PDFs you provide them - much like using a slide deck. After your prospective customer downloads the PDF, there is no way to determine how many times it was received or how many times it has been opened. Editing or making changes to the document can be a lengthy process and consumes a lot of time.
Tips from a Seller Who Switched:Ross Simmonds, Founder of Foundation Marketing, brought his pricing into the 21st century by changing from stagnant PDFs to interactive pricing.
"We were given a pdf that showed three different pricing options around the way we could be able to assist our customers. We'd edit that PDF] every time a client came knocking. We would always try to design ourselves and our spreadsheets attractive, but by doing this, we couldn't provide the same amount of detail. There is no need to switch between these different tools to put together a package, we can just use Interactive Quotes ."
The things you need to consider: The only interactive advantage PDFs provide is the capability to sign the dotted line -- but an interactive experience needs to offer more than signing to close. Use pricing software that will give your prospect an engaging and personal experience from first pricing conversations to final signatures.
How should I display my SaaS Pricing?
Pricing shouldn't seem complicated, confusing or dull to the people you're trying to sell it to.
The future of displaying SaaS pricing is to provide an engaging personal experience that's easy for prospects to engage with and comprehend. That means that your partnership with office software to display SaaS pricing needs to be ended in order to totally refresh your SaaS pricing plan.
To refresh the way you display SaaS pricing, focus on finding a pricing tool that is compatible with your needs. Three areas that we recommend to prioritize when searching for the perfect tool are
1. Using a tool that will help you work more efficiently through reducing your time consumption, improving your efficiency and team's efficiency when delivering the price to prospective customers
2. Engaging and stimulating purchasing experience for potential customers
3. Gaining insights into the performance of your pricing through live analytics.
Now more than ever more than ever, it's crucial to reduce time spent and work efficiently. So forget old outdated and confusing pricing. It's easy to transition into a modern pricing method that lets to work more efficiently, rather than harder, and increase the likelihood of closing transactions faster.
