- We've all been there.
The demo went great,
you've been managing the sales process perfectly
the right people are at the table,
and as you approach the pricing discussion,
the deal completely evaporated.
They said, we're sorry, the price is just too high.
And you're thinking to yourself,
are they just negotiating?
Is this for real?
Do we screw something up in the demo?
Do we screw something up in the sales process?
Is it a competitive thing?
We've all been there,
where they just say the price is too high
as you approach the pricing discussion,
which admittedly comes a lot later
in the sales process after you put in a lot of time.
In this episode, I'm gonna walk you through
the three principles you absolutely need to know
and implement today,
so that you never have to deal with this question
ever again.
Intro.
(upbeat music)
What's up everybody?
Welcome to Unstoppable.
I'm TK and on this channel,
I help SaaS founders like you grow your SaaS businesses faster
with an unstoppable strategy.
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every single time I drop an episode like this
with the TK energy.
Now if you're already part of my SaaS coaching programs,
if you are part of this growing community, welcome back.
Seriously, it's really awesome to see you over here.
We have all been there.
The sales conversation is going great.
And you get the wink and the nod,
you know, the wink and nod, and you're like sweet,
this is gonna be an awesome deal.
And all of a sudden, the pricing conversation comes up
and they're just like, look,
this is just too expensive for us,
or the price is too high or some other excuse
that's tied to pricing.
We've all been there.
In fact, for me,
I've seen this in my customer sales conversations.
I've seen this in my investment kind of conversations,
where we couldn't agree on evaluation.
I've seen this on my recruiting conversations
where we couldn't quite agree on a salary.
Like you see this everywhere.
Today, I wanna talk about how to avoid this
specifically for your sales conversations,
specifically, when you are talking to customers.
I'm gonna break it down into three principles
you absolutely need to know and implement today.
And when you do,
you'll never have to deal with this question ever again.
Now I have the three principles.
But what I'm gonna do is start with principle number three
and work my way to principle number one,
which is the most important.
So if you're excited to dig in,
go to smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
Let's go to principle number three.
So principle number three is competitive dynamics, right?
Now, the first thing you absolutely need to get off table
is you need to know what your true worth is.
A lot of times when customers are saying
the price is too high,
chances are they're talking to competitors.
They start to understand what the true value
of your product and your offering really is.
Now here's the thing, it's not always about being cheaper.
In fact, I've lost deals
where the other person was quoting a higher price.
In fact, I've won way more deals
where I was the higher price, I was the premium offering.
And I said look, you can go to our competitor,
they will most certainly be cheaper,
but that's not the reason to do business with us.
And this is something that you absolutely need
to eradicate from your sales process.
You need to stop wondering,
what is it that your competitors are quoting.
You need to actually understand
what the competitive dynamics are,
and what your competitive prices are.
And you need to understand what your true worth is,
and get conviction around it.
So often, we're quick to discount,
we're quick to get afraid,
and we're quick to say like,
just because the customers like well,
the so and so competitor price that has this,
I'm like, great, you should also talk to this competitor
and this competitor, and this competitor,
and then should come talk to us,
and we can walk you through what the true value is.
It's not just about being the lowest price.
But it's important to understand what your true worth is,
what the competitive dynamics is.
And a lot of times when I got blindsided
by a pricing discussion,
it's because I didn't truly know what the pricing was,
what the competitive dynamics was in the rest of the market.
You need to figure out ways to understand that.
How do you do that?
Well, you can go through your competitors pricing process,
you can get friends to do it.
You can go ask them literally.
I've sat down with CEOs and my competitors
and just compare notes.
And like, hey, what are you seeing in the market?
What am I seeing in the market?
Let's just compare notes.
Any one of those things are fine.
It's not that hard,
but you need to understand exactly
what your competitors are doing consistently.
So that's principle number three.
What you need to do
so that you never get that pricing questions too high.
Now the second principle that you need to do
and this is super weird, I'm going backwards,
but I wanna try it, it's kinda cool.
Like the most important principle is number one,
and we're gonna get to it.
But principle number two is, they may be a customer thing,
like it may not be a you thing all the time.
A lot of times they may not have the budget,
so it doesn't matter what price you gave them,
they were gonna say it's too high
because they have zero budget.
One of the biggest rules in marketing
is don't sell to broke people,
like unless you're in some sketchy scammy business
where you are predatory and broke people like don't do that.
Don't sell to broke people.
And it's very possible
that there's nothing wrong with your pricing,
you are actually accurately providing the right value,
you're quoting them the right price,
the price is fair, there's clear ROI,
but they just don't have budget,
they were never gonna have budget,
they were never gonna buy.
And sometimes you have to understand and decipher that.
You may just be in the wrong segment of the market,
or the wrong type of customer,
you need to revamp your ideal customer profile,
to make sure you're not selling to people
that have no budget or aren't gonna prioritize this.
Now, if you want to dig more into how to create
a proper ideal customer profile, here are three things
you need to know about creating an ideal customer profile
and check it out here, you don't have to go right now,
because I still have Principle number one,
I'll link to it below, you can check it out after this.
But no budget can be a very good reason
on why you're getting this. And that's okay,
you just need to filter for this.
The other two things is that you may have
an unclear value proposition, you may be quoting a price,
but they're not marrying the price to the true value
proposition of what you're bringing to the table.
To them, it's just another number and the number looks too
high compared to the true value of what you are delivering.
This is the kind of stuff that gets tackled on earlier in
the process where you truly communicate the value,
and you communicate the value proposition.
And it's not just in the beginning of a sales conversation,
it's actually all the way to when you run your ad,
or have a lead magnet, or the first five seconds
that you talk to them or what you have in your homepage,
nailing your value proposition early on and building
it into the relationship,
it helps get you set up for success
when you present the price because then they can actually
marry it to the value proposition that you've given.
So if you're constantly getting like where, you know,
you're the same price as the rest of the market,
and but there's still like the price is too high
or the price is off or we're not gonna buy,
chances are your value proposition is completely
out of whack over here. And lastly, the last one that you
want to think about is you may just have confusing pricing,
let's just say they have the budget, they understand the
value proposition, the one that that really comes in is they
may just be confused about the pricing, a lot of times
pricing, it's very easy to complicate. It's like well,
if you buy this and you get this, but if you have this and
gets this and any additional users this, and this is this,
and they literally have a tough time budgeting this,
they literally have a tough time deciding on how much
they need, what they should get.
And then the default answer is like, Look,
there's not enough urgency for us to figure out all this
pricing, this is really confusing, this price is too high,
we're not gonna do this right now.
So you may just really have a really bad pricing strategy.
And it's really confusing to communicate.
If you can't communicate your pricing in a few words,
at least initial pricing, the ballpark of what
they're gonna get, then chances are, especially for a SaaS
product, if you're in the early stages, then chances are
it's too complicated, and you don't have a clear
pricing strategy. So it's super important for you to revamp
your pricing strategy and make sure it's not confusing.
So that's Principle number two, it may just be that you're
picking the wrong customers early on,
or your value prop early on is not quite there.
Or when you're presenting the price that's too confusing.
It's a lot of these little micro tweaks that you can do
across your go to market strategy that can actually help
eliminate this problem. So that's the first two principles.
Let me just pause here for a second, if you start to see
the power in thinking through this,
it's not just about the price.
But number three, it could be the competitive dynamics,
right? Like it's like what they're comparing you to
and you're not aware of what your true value is.
Or it could be that they have no budget,
or they don't understand the value prop or they're just
confused about the pricing model that you're giving.
And therefore they have no urgency. It could be any one
of these two things, right? These are the most
common things. But there's a more important one.
But let me pause here for a second before I go to Principle
number one, the most important thing to do so that you avoid
this problem, and you start to see the power in this.
Can I just get a yes, in the comments below. Also smash that
like button, the YouTube algorithm really likes it when you
do that. It really does. I don't know why it really does.
Also, if you're at this stage where you're driving growth,
and you want to actually make sure you have a clear value
proposition, you have a clear ideal customer profile,
you have a clear narrative and you also have a well defined
pricing strategy and you need to help doing these pieces,
then this is exactly why I created my SaaS Go-To-Market
coaching program. I'll tell you more about it at the end of
this video. But let's go to Principle number one,
the most important principle and congrats for staying to
this video and actually watching to this part. Still really
weird going backwards. I might not ever do that again,
comment below if you like this, but I don't know.
Principle number one is you need to have 10x ROI.
This is the golden rule of software. It's true.
Doesn't matter what kind of software you're selling,
you share 10x ROI, meaning if they pay $1 for your software,
they need to get a 10x return on investment.
And they need to be able to actually articulate
how they're gonna get that return on investment.
There's three ways you can do ROI. One,
you actually help them save money,
you need to show how you're gonna help them save 10x
amount of money, you or you actually help them make more
money. You need to show them how you're gonna help them
make 10x amount of money or you're going to reduce risk,
meaning if they don't do this with you, they expose them to
10x amount of risk. It's got to be one of these three things
So this is so important principle number one,
I left it for the end, it's the most important,
you need to show 10x ROI.
And even when you are presenting the pricing,
you need to remind them like, Look,
this is how much we cost, but you're gonna get 10x
the return on investment, here's why. Let me explain why.
And then you need to tie it to either saving money,
making more money or reducing risk.
This is it. This is the one, the other two principles,
get rid of a bunch of stuff and tweak a bunch of stuff.
If you don't have these things in place. Start here.
But ultimately, when you are presenting the pricing,
you need to be thinking about, Hey, is our pricing
strategy being communicated in a way? Is the proposal
being communicated in a way? Are we having the pricing
discussion in a way where we're gonna show 10x ROI?
This is super, super important. So important. So to recap,
Principle number three, is you need to actually make sure
you think about you explore your competitive dynamics
know your competition, know how much they're charging,
know how are you gonna differentiate,
and it's not about being cheaper,
it very rarely is in software about being cheaper.
It's about communicating and having the most value
and having the bigger partnership and the greater trust.
That's what it's really about.
Well, how do you do that principle number two,
make sure that you have a clear value proposition.
Make sure that you don't have a confusing pricing strategy.
Make sure you're not talking to people who have no money,
like just don't do that. How do you do these pieces
actually flesh out your ICP, I'll link to that video below,
actually flesh out your value proposition,
actually flesh out your pricing strategy.
And most importantly, Principle number one,
as you start to put all these key pieces together,
make sure that you're clearly articulating that you're gonna
give 10x return on investment on their software investment.
Software is an investment,
they're investing in the software. So they get a return.
And they want a 10x return that is a rule of thumb.
And founders that forget that go about and they're not sure
why they're not making any money. They're not growing,
it's because they forgot, the only reason people will buy
software is because there's a 10x ROI. And you need to bake
that into everything you aren't doing.
Those are my three principles so that you never
get the question or never get the response
of your price is too high.
I don't think this is the right fit for us. Right?
You'll never get that if you address these three things.
Now. If you are building a SaaS business,
and you're looking to grow faster,
and you're trying to figure out these pieces,
trying to figure out your ICP,
trying to figure out your strategic narrative
and your value proposition and positioning,
you try to figure out how to actually generate more pipeline
you're trying to flesh out your pricing strategy.
This is the exact reason why I created my SaaS
Go-To-Market coaching program. Inside this coaching program,
I give you the framework to follow to flesh out
this go to market strategy. And I coach you through
the process based on my 15 years of experience
in building scaling and exiting SaaS businesses.
So if you want to work together, I invite you
to check out my go to market program and apply to it.
All you need to do is just go to tkkader.com slash apply.
Tkk.com slash apply. Over there, you'll answer
a few questions. And then we'll get on a one on one
strategy call. Once we get our one on one strategy call,
I'll ask a few questions about your business.
And if we feel like we can help you, I'll tell you all about
my go to market program. And if you feel that it's a fit,
we'll start working together. It's that simple.
And I created this program specifically because I wish
this existed. These are specific things that I needed
to solve I needed to actually solve and you couldn't recruit
fast enough, you couldn't get the right caliber people
and I had to figure out all on my own.
This is why I created my coaching program.
So go to tkkader.com/apply. And let's get our call
together and review where you are in your business
and see how we can help you accelerate growth
and put all these key pieces into place.
Lastly, if you got value from this video,
please smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
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when you are with us. Yours is gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK I'll see you in the next episode.