Podcast · Podcast episode, around 30 to 40 minutes

Pricing and Packaging for SaaS with Dan Balcauski

Better Done Than Perfect (Userlist), with Dan Balcauski · Better Done Than Perfect podcast Free Intermediate

Dan Balcauski is a full-time pricing operator, and this episode gets concrete about the machinery behind serving different buyer sizes: price metrics, packaging, and the price fences that let you charge a startup and a large company differently for the same product. It moves past theory into the moves you actually make, like giving smaller or earlier buyers a lighter program without gutting your pricing. A good listen while you are sketching your own tiers.

  • Packaging (price metric, bundle, and fences) matters more for long-term outcomes than the final headline price number.
  • Price fences, such as a special program for startups, let you charge different buyers different amounts for effectively the same product without leaking discounts everywhere.
  • Revisit pricing on a regular cadence (every year or two at minimum), and give the pricing function a clear owner instead of leaving it to whoever is closing the deal.
Open on userlist.com ↗

The question it answers

  1. What is a fair way to price when I'm selling to a mix of small startups and large companies with the same product?

Read with it

  1. When you are the only one selling something like your product, cost-plus and competitor benchmarks give you nothing to anchor... Wiley (2016) Book · Book, ~240 pages Monetizing Innovation: How Smart Companies Design the Product Around the Price Madhavan Ramanujam and Georg Tacke
  2. This is the canonical piece on packaging one product into three tiers so it stretches across price-sensitive and premium buyers... Harvard Business Review Article · Article, around 10 to 12 minute read The Good-Better-Best Approach to Pricing Rafi Mohammed
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