Ask A Sales Operations Manager: SaaS Pricing Strategy

We asked Andrea Balducci, Head of Revenue Operations at Sortlist, for a sales operations best practice he’s implemented lately. He highlighted the importance of pricing and offered up tactical steps for an effective SaaS pricing strategy. Read on to get his tips –

So, what are the steps to creating a solid SaaS pricing strategy?

As a Revenue Operations leader, I would recommend being obsessed with pricing and offering. And review it regularly, as it is the biggest (yet, the least considered) leverage you can have to drive revenue growth.

1. Create a pricing committee inside your organization with the CEO, CMO, CFO, CPO, VP Sales, and Data Scientist. This committee should meet every 3-6 months to discuss value creation, offering, packaging, and pricing.
2. Ask for an external player to help you, such as Profitwell or Pricingpact, as it’s one of the most complicated and diverse topics you can face. It implies collaborating with so many stakeholders and departments. And it’s no easy task finding common ground without an external point of view.
3. Explore what customers are saying about your product. How do they perceive it? What do they value the most? Or what alternative would they use if your solution wouldn’t exist? Then, put all this on a value map to prioritize what are your killer features, and the “nice to have”. This will help you craft your offering and packaging.
4. Test and implement. We’ve implemented a new flexible and modular approach to our pricing, which helped us increase ARPA by 37%. The next step will be to move to value-based pricing.

Can you give us a good example of a marketplace or SaaS pricing strategy?

Take our pricing strategy at Sortlist as an example of flexible/modular pricing. We try to adapt to the different needs any potential customer could have on their marketing & sales funnel. Not only that, but they also have the option of creating a tailor-made solution on our website or by getting in touch with our team.

And finally, what’s your overall mission as a Revenue Operations Leader?

For my sales team composed of 30 Account Executives and Account Managers, my mission is to improve marketing, sales & account management team alignment, productivity, and impact across the globe. And, of course, enable data-backed decisions that drive growth.

I report to the CEO, and I work as the true right-hand to marketing, sales, and product leadership as they’re counted on to find answers to the hard questions. Leaders are constantly thinking about ​how revenue can be increased​.

Therefore, as the Revenue Operations Manager, I need to ​know best where the opportunities for improvement​ are within the agency team.

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