Welcome to Crescendo Insights

We’re happy to have you here. If you’re new here (and all of you are), this will be a weekly email where I highlight new case studies, research, theory, and resources for you to use in your pricing and monetization journey.

We’ll also be featuring Crescendo news and updates, so stay tuned and smash that Subscribe Button!

Capturing Value Through Pricing - The Guide

This week marked the launch of Crescendo’s guide to pricing on OneGuide, the PE & VC portfolio operations hub. This guide is a distillation of everything I’ve learned doing over 100 price changes in the past 5 years. OneGuide has offered any viewers 2 free downloads, so make sure to head to their website to get a copy:

Along with a Pricing 101, the guide covers how to tell if you have a pricing opportunity, how to implement price changes, and how to use pricing to drive go-to-market strategy.

Case Study Corner: Packaging

Each week, I will feature a new analysis to showcase how to put good pricing theory into practice. The following chart comes from a self-service SaaS business in the marketing technology space. We asked a few hundred customers about the product’s features and had them rate the features as “must have”, “nice to have” or “not necessary” (see chart below).

What packaging framework should this company adopt? 

1. Tiers (a.k.a. Good-Better-Best)

2. Buffet (1 big package)

3. Platform + add-ons (1 package + lots of a la carte)

What do we do with Feature 9?

1. Bundle it in

2. Sell it a la carte

3. Get rid of it

Scroll down for the answers………………………………

If you answered B (or #2, I suppose) to both questions, you’re right! With similar feature preferences in features 1-8, there isn’t enough differentiation to create packages. Plus there are tradeoffs to feature gates in engagement and infrastructure that you have to take into account.

Feature 9 is a classic “killer” feature in the “leader-killer-filler” framework. You should unbundle it and jack up the price.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I suggest you read the guide I mentioned earlier.

How to get in touch

Crescendo works with medium sized software business to help optimize their pricing, packaging, and promotion strategies. If you’d like to book a quick consult, reach out at [email protected] or schedule time directly via our Calendly.

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