Price and package it

Pick a first price, then change it later without losing the customers you have.

4 steps, 16 questions underneath, read for doing the work

1. 1
   Pricing and packaging

   What to charge, what to charge for, how to package it, and how to change it later without losing people.

   How do I design tiers so buyers pick the right plan and grow into the next one?

   The gist Good, better, best works for about two thirds of SaaS companies because it makes the choice easy, so start there unless you have a strong reason not to. Give every tier a job: one to acquire, one to be the obvious default, one to capture the buyers with budget and requirements. Make it instantly clear who each plan is for, because buyers default to the middle tier when they are confused and you lose money on both ends. Sell a feature as an add-on when it is polarising, appeals to a different buyer, or taps a different budget, and resist gating anything that drives engagement. Map the tiers to the real user journey (individual, team, organisation) rather than to a feature list you invented.

   📰 Your guide to SaaS packaging 201 Answers the two packaging questions that actually come up: when to bundle a new feature into a tier and when to sell it as an add-on, and how to gi... 4 questions on pricing and packaging →
2. 2
   Who you sell to

   Picking a customer worth chasing, and knowing early when a deal is not one.

   How do I qualify a deal properly instead of just hoping the enthusiastic person can buy?

   The gist Enthusiasm is not authority. Before you invest another hour, you want four things: a named pain the buyer can quantify, the person who controls the budget, the steps the company takes to approve a purchase like this, and someone inside who will argue for you when you are not in the room. If you cannot name all four after two calls, you have a conversation, not a deal. Learning one framework properly, MEDDIC or MEDDPICC, is worth doing not because the acronym is magic but because it forces you to ask the awkward questions early rather than in week nine.

   📄 MEDDIC / MEDDPICC Sales Methodology and Process The reference explanation of all eight elements from the people who own the trademark, so you are learning it first hand rather than through a tool... 4 questions on who you sell to →
3. 3
   Expansion, upsell and churn

   Growing revenue inside accounts you already have, and stopping the leaks.

   How do I spot which accounts are actually ready to expand?

   The gist Look for accounts that are pressing against a limit and accounts that are spreading sideways. Hitting a usage ceiling, adding users faster than they bought seats, or a second team quietly showing up in the logs are all better signals than a good NPS score. Then profile your last twenty expansions and find what they had in common before they bought more: a usage threshold, a tenure, an industry, a team size. That pattern becomes your list. Expansion outreach that lands is timely and specific to what the customer just did. Generic upgrade emails to the whole base mostly teach people to ignore you.

   📄 Expansion MRR: Definition, Formula, and Impact on SaaS Growth The cleanest definition of expansion MRR with the formula and the benchmark that matters: top companies get up to 40 percent of new ARR from existi... 4 questions on expansion, upsell and churn →
4. 4
   Forecasting and GTM metrics

   Pipeline coverage, stage conversion, CAC payback, magic number, and calling a number you can defend to a board.

   How do I calculate conversion rates by stage, and what do I actually do once I have them?

   The gist Calculate them on a cohort, not on a snapshot. Take every opportunity created in a month, follow that same set forward, and measure what share reached each later stage. Snapshot ratios (stage two divided by stage one today) mix cohorts moving at different speeds and will mislead you. Once you have the curve, do three things: find the single worst step, since one stage usually leaks far more than the rest and that is where your attention belongs; measure time in stage alongside conversion, because a stage where deals sit for eleven weeks is a qualification problem wearing a conversion costume; and use the rates to work backwards into how much pipeline each rep needs, which turns a vague target into an activity plan.

   📊 The Bowtie Standard The clearest single document on what a revenue data model should look like end to end, from lead through renewal and expansion. It is the vocabular... 4 questions on forecasting and gtm metrics →