How to Best Display Your Pricing: Interactive vs traditional
The way you display SaaS pricing shouldn't be an afterthought. It must be an effective plan that is simple and easy for your prospects.
Pricing is a key way of establishing trust with your prospect, and when it is done correctly it can help build momentum within the marketing funnel. It is able to be among the most personal, engaging and sustainable elements of the process.
The first step towards developing this kind of experience is to examine the methods you use for creating, displaying and share your pricing.
Meet the ultimate villain in this story the standard Office Suite software.
If you're using this Office Suite software to display SaaS prices, you're in the right place to make an update. Read on for expert advice on how to make the change.
How to avoid it What NOT to do: The traditional Ways of Displaying Pricing
1. Sheets are used to display SaaS Pricing
What you should modify: Using sheets does not show professionalism. They are dull and extremely manually-based, and the pricing should be anything but. It's not personal when using a sheet that isn't personalized, which is crucial in building relationships with prospective customers. It's easy to get overwhelmed by numbers as well as they can be time-consuming to create.
Advice from a Seller Who Switched: Mike Wright, Co-Founder and CEO at MESH/diversity changed from spreadsheets and a pricing tool that is interactive. He says:
"Leveraging an instrument for pricing is an important step as it lets you stay consistent. It allows you to have the past of the way you've changed to your fingertips which allows you to make choices when you're moving forward using the historical information and in a more efficient way than trying to remember the old plans or looking through older versions of your spreadsheets."
What you should consider: Try incorporating personalized alternatives that will allow prospects to pick the right solution for them, when showing SaaS pricing plans. To avoid the labour of a spreadsheet, use a software program that stores all of prior quotes, so it is easy to pull in prices and then automatically fill in calculations for prospects. This way, you don't require spending your time creating sheets and manually doing the math to calculate every deal.
2. Utilizing Slide Decks for displaying SaaS Pricing
Next slide...next slide... Next pricing strategy, please.
What you should change: Sending decks to prospects seems like an easy way to showcase your pricing in a pretty design. Although they seem engaging however, they're a single-dimensional. When you use slide decks, they are wasting the chance to learn more about your prospects and create informed follow-ups. Pricing must give you an advantage hand and share with you the number of times your potential customer is viewing your price, and also ensure that they are aware of what pricing is shown.
A Seller's Advice who switched:Stefan Kollenberg, co-founder of Crescendo has switched from slide decks and instead used an online pricing tool that gives insights and real-time analytics. Kollenberg says:
"I could have my price at the bottom of a sales deck on one slide. I never knew if [the clients] would enter the deck in order to change it up, choose various options, or browse at the various tiers we offered. The idea is to get as much data that you can about what price was effective, as well as what did not .">
Things to consider: Without data from earlier deals, you'll not be able to adjust to the needs of your prospective customers and determine what works best for your prospective customers. Think about using a software that lets you gain information in real-time, and keep track of the entire pricing.
3. Utilizing Email to display SaaS Pricing
How many emails can you get each day? We all have one answer, too many.
What you should change: Scrolling through endless emails in order to locate the right information can be time-consuming and frankly irritating. The act of expressing your price via email extends the length of duration required to conclude the deal, as it's one of the most ineffective ways to communicate pricing.
Tips from a seller That Switched: Jack Hannah, Sales Team Leader at LinkSquares He switched from using email for communicating pricing, to using an interactive pricing tool. He states:
"A majority of discussions were conducted verbally and were followed by an email with a summary of the conversation to ensure sure both parties understood the topic we were discussing. [Now] we're able to be able to share our screen and engage in a more professional, structured conversation around price, which can lead to a more clear conversations that require more minimal back and forth ."
Things to think about: Avoid the headache and establish a seamless relationship with prospects by making use of a software designed for quick and easy messaging. It will not only allow your prospects to find what they are looking for quickly, but it will show all their custom pricing and relevant data easily.
4. Collaboration Software used to display SaaS Pricing
Collaboration tools and software offer an undisputed benefit in the selling processes, however If you're using them to display your primary pricing tool, you're in for an out.
The things you need to make changes to: Collaborative tools such like those for internal communication or brainstorming do not work for displaying SaaS pricing. Misusing tools in an attempt to present your price can lead to producing a disorganized presentation, that can confuse your potential 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 display pricing is a sure way of going to run into many problems that may end up destroying the sale.
A Seller's Advice Who Switched: Mike Pinkus, Partner at ConnectCPA previously used the collaborative software for creating an interactive price experience prior to when the switch to a price platform that incorporates interactivity into its core. He says:
"We were using a platform [that] wasn't specifically created to be a sales platform. It was certainly not professional, since we used it to serve a different purpose. After switching the cleanliness as well as professionalism. All is tidy and designed to be a good fit for the goal of the sales ."
What you should consider: Misusing software may appear to be a time and cost-saving option however, in the long in the end, it could create more problems than it resolves. Moving your pricing processes into software designed to address its specific needs will support your business while providing an improved buying experience for prospects.
5. Utilizing PDFs to Display SaaS Pricing
We've all resorted to using the good old classic 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.
The things you need to modify: Prospects can't engage using the PDFs that you send them - much like using slideshows. Once your prospect downloads the PDF, there is no way of measuring how the file has been accepted or the number of times it has been opened. Editing or changing the content is a tedious process that takes up a significant amount of time.
Advice from a Seller Who Switched:Ross Simmonds, Founder of Foundation Marketing, brought his pricing up to date by moving from static PDFs to dynamic pricing.
"We had a PDF showcasing three different pricing options around what we can do to assist our customers. The PDF was edited] every time a client came knocking. We always tried to create both our spreadsheets and us attractive, but by doing so you can't give as much detail. There is no need to switch between these different tools to put together a package and we're able to use Interactive Quotes ."
What you should consider: The only interactive benefit PDFs offer is the ability to sign on the dotted line, but a truly interactive experience has many more benefits than just closing the deal. Use pricing software that will provide your customer with an experience that is personalized and interactive from first pricing conversations to final signatures.
How should I display my SaaS Pricing?
Pricing shouldn't feel complicated, confusing or dull to your customers.
The future of showing SaaS pricing is an active personal experience that's straightforward for potential customers to connect with and comprehend. This means your relationship with office software to display SaaS pricing must close in order to totally refresh the SaaS pricing strategy.
To refresh the way you present SaaS pricing, you should focus on finding a tool for pricing which is suited to your requirements. The three areas we suggest to prioritize when searching for the perfect tool are
1. Making use of a tool to simplify your job through reducing your time consumption, increasing your productivity and your team's efficiency while delivering the price to prospective customers
2. Create an engaging and interactive buying experience for your prospects
3. Gaining an understanding of your pricing's performance through real-time data analysis.
Today more than ever more than ever, it's crucial to reduce time spent and work efficiently. So forget old complicated and outdated pricing. It's possible and simple to transition into a modern pricing method that lets you work smarter, rather than harder, and increase your chances of closing transactions faster.
