ruca1213

Regional Sales Director

Does your company change its pricing constantly?

Hi crew - hope you're having a kickass day.

I am just curious what your thoughts are on this situation... as a start up we're constantly evolving - gotta love the beautiful fucking chaos.

In the beginning of the year we raised our prices and used a calculator to develop pricing based on volumes. Originally the entry pricing started at $30K ACV ... my boss said you know what hold off on using this calculator, just go through me for pricing. Now pricing starts at $60K and I literally don't have access to the calculator, I have to go through him!? And literally have no idea how we got these numbers.

Is it normal / fair for sales reps to know HOW pricing is developed? Or am I dreaming?

Is it normal / fair to want to be able to pitch pricing on my own? My gut says we as ENTERPRISE SALES REPS should know what our price is and have the autonomy to pitch it? Instead my boss is just tacking on 10s of thousands because we need to raise our ASP.

OY. thank you for listening and sharing your insight!?

5

10 comments

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DaveFromCollege

Notorious Answer

2

Account Executive

Wait, do we work at the same company?
Haha really though, it's brutal when the higher ups make those decisions without proper feedback. I honestly have no idea what to do except voice your concern on how many deals you are losing without transparent pricing.

ruca1213

Contributor

0

Regional Sales Director

hahaha oh man that makes me feel better, ya it's insane how much changes without truly understanding from the folks with boots on the ground. That is an awesome point, and my colleague and I both have data locked and loaded to present (if they wanna listen)!

CadenceCombat

Tycoon

2

Account Executive

Oh man. Literally just left a company that operated this way. Have a sympathy upvote!

CadenceCombat

Tycoon

1

Account Executive

Just to add to this...

The company I just left was plagued with a backlog of product problems so not only was my CEO trying to implement irrational spontaneous pricing complications in a weak effort to increase average order sizes but he was doing this while the usage of the product was torpedoing and I kept trying to explain to him that gating product features as premium offerings is only going to exacerbate our usage problems... And I had to repeat this almost on a weekly basis and we lost a big opportunity as a result of his ignorance about how he approached pricing.

ruca1213

Contributor

0

Regional Sales Director

oh my gosh so unreal sorry you dealt but good for you moving on!

CadenceCombat

Tycoon

0

Account Executive

@ruca1213 Thank you!

slaydie

Big Shot

0

Account Executive

Yikes, I wish this wasn't a common occurrence but it sounds like I'm not the only one that has experienced this. I feel like this is more common at smaller start ups although I work at a 200 person company and this definitely happens regularly. Pricing changes every quarter and like not just a few dollars, it's 10's of thousands of dollars in difference. It has proven to be a poor customer experience.

We do have rate sheets though so we are able to pitch the assigned pricing ourselves without having to get manager approval - that seems a bit micro managey to me...

Keep voicing your concerns to your manager, team mates, product, CEO etc. I hope they will have a conversation with you to at least be able to better understand each other's beliefs.

CaneWolf

Politicker

0

Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract

I've dealt with this. Sounds like your boss is worried about how hot his seat is/the CEO has changed the rules on him. I think you might want to keep your eye on other roles. @sahil could probably provide some insight on this as well.

SalesPharaoh

Big Shot

0

Senior Account Executive

Yes, thankfully they do but that's because of the nature of our business there is constant cost change which can make us flexible sometimes but also putting us at risk in others.
Pricing is cost plus a certain margin. Yes sales know how pricing is developed in our company which gives us an understanding on the real floor and enables us to sell value more and not just going around giving discounts to anybody just when necessary if a deal is at stake.

grrr

Member

0

Sr. Account Executive

I've been at some iteration of this before. A few things to think about:

1. If your pricing calculator is tied to management then your sales team is not building a scalable process.

2. If your pricing calculator is a black box then your sales team will not understand the levers to increase the value of your deal. This will negatively impact your discovery and value building conversations.

3. If your management team is not doing some sort of pricing analysis how will they understand the best price to sell your product? Pricing analysis could be as simple as "how does your price affect the number of deals and length of sales cycle" and as complex as "price elasticity to understand supply and demand.

It doesn't really sound like Enterprise Sales :-/ I'd consider trying to make a change at your company, or looking for a company that does empower you to understand your pricing calculator and negotiate your own deals.

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