Pricing vs Value vs Product Capabilities

George Haywood

Hi Guys!

I have a long standing customer that uses all of my companies products/capabilities except for Cyber Security.

When I took the account over last year, I spoke with the CISO who gave me the 2 main reasons why we havent been considered as a security partner. The 1st being cost, the 2nd being that at the time of their last evaluation, we were unable to deploy our service in the cloud.

On the deployment side, we can now offer a SaaS service, so I know we have that concern covered.

On the cost side, it looks like my predecessor didnt do much qualification/business case/justification of their security requirements and just shared a list price based on a guestimating the size of the customers environment. To be fair, this pricing was astronomical.

The customer has come back to the table as part of their Security tooling cycle andI'm due to have a call with the customer next week where I am going to walk the customer through "whats changed" in our security offering since they last evaluated us, and run some discovery to understand some more about their current tooling/challenges/reason for change etc.

My question to you guys is, around the pricing element. I know enough about their environment (they shared this with me) to do some maths on my end, and put together pretty much a BAFO from day one. My thought process is to run the initial call and offer up a cost range so that from call 1, the customer has a clear understanding of the low/high end cost of my solution.

Usually, I wouldn't offer up pricing so early, but with cost being a touchy subject for the customer, and in the interest of not spending a tonne of time on demo's/PoV's/architectural meetings, i'm thinking of using pricing to qualify in/out on call 1.

What are your thoughts on this?

George

Adam Bowen

As a former tech exec, I looked at "How much does it cost" in three layers:

1. At first glance, I just want to understand if we are on the same level to get serious. You know nothing about me, I don't expect an enterprise solution to be able to accuratley price me. For this, a "Customers like you usually get started anywhere between X and Y" should suffice. This gives me an idea of how real I can get with you.
2. Now that we've had 1 or 2 meetings and you've had some time to get to know me, I want you to dial in a little bit more and give me more accurate pricing based upon what you've heard I need. I don't expect this to be your BAFO or even a quote.
3. (This is where it can really differ) Before I get into a POV, I want to know exactly what you are proposing that we do. If we are going into a POV, I want to understand what I am going do with those results. Am I buying a 100k solution? Am I presenting to the board to get approval on a 350k project? So tech buyers don't mind to get into a POV without understanding this level of detail. You have to be very careful with them because "BAU"/"Do Nothing" is an acceptable conclusion to them as they chalk it up to a learning exercise for their people.

Now as a sales exec, I try to keep this frame of reference in mind when working with my enterprise customers and it has served me well. Especially the last point. It has kept me from wasting time on science experiments.

George Haywood

Adam - Thanks for taking the time to respond. This has give me a lot of food for thought.