Many of you may say, wait a minute, this is not a sales topic, pricing policy is not something that sales decides and administers. This is true but shouldn’t sales teams be in the process of deciding pricing a deal?
Anyways, pricing plays always a vital part when closing a deal in a B2B environment as there will be usually a negotiation phase, depending of course on industry, institution, etc., etc. In many cases, pricing is not at all fixed and drafting a cost proposal starts from a blank canvas.
The question though stands, how much would you charge the client? I believe the number is not the answer, the way you think on reaching the proposed price is the solution.
First of all, one of the first mistakes we all do, including myself (I remember having done it so many times), is negotiate down and price cheaply a deal immediately. Fair pricing means fair pricing for both. This is a two way relation not one. Someone is willing to pay for a service because they need it.
I read many publications, white papers and articles on this topic and I come to the conclusion that there is no certain way to know which price is good for the deal.
What I would suggest is to look at different ways to price a deal, concentrate on the process to decide.
Start from considering the stage your company is and how much you want to get the client. Are they going to be the first one in a region, is it a new use case, are they big enough to make a good buzz from marketing perspective? You certainly cannot ignore this factors. On the other side, there is competition out there. How do you compare to them? Not just in pricing but in everything. Should you have better pricing to compensate for the lack of some features? You need to think also the effort you make in developing, integrating, implementing a sales case. How pricey is this going to be? Will the price cover the costs? And last but not least, let’s not forget that a solution, a product or a service solves a real problem or it adds value to the customer. One needs to think what is the price for this value, how much in real money the client will save or make.
To conclude, pricing a deal is not an easy thing; price is not just a number, price is a process of deciding.
Happy selling!