Your pricing page is likely your second most important page, right after a Value Proposition page where you’ve answered: “Why You, Why Now?”
What’s interesting is to see all the craze and excitement over PLG (Product Led Growth), and at the same time folks lining up on both sides of the fence: No Sales and Yes Sales Assisted.
However, like most things when it comes to scaling your business, it will be important to take all that is useful and distill it down to which suggestions will pay dividends with your product.
Start with a tour around the zoo
What I mean of course, is to get a good pulse on what is working and different pricing page layouts. Take a tour around the web (zoo) and find some examples you like.
I suggest ask 5 of your team-mates to track, trial, use any tools they come across, and even ask loved ones or non-Tech folks. Ask them all about various products/tools/ and have them take Screenshots of the journey and include the Welcome email from each company. By compiling those into a deck or PPT, you are off to a nice start.
You can also scan this mixture of pricing pages from Gleam showing 50 various designs.
An even better sampling is found here, with HubSpot’s 12 best pricing pages and a quick rundown on each. (I am a fan of #9, Slack)
So what are the most popular options?
Freemium
Pros: Open funnel, allow all visitors to see value or experience the product, and increase chance of new paid user acquisition.
Cons: No end date or forcing factor. Time ticking down, discounts, and expiration plays into human motivations.
Examples: Dropbox, Zapier, and many more detailed here
Free Trial
Pros: Buyer seems to show some interest, they indicate they want to try (careful on your messaging). With a time expiration - 14 day or 7 day or 30 day, etc., you can automate follow ups and give signals to a Sales team who can also reach out and try and show a Demo or walk-through to the end user.
Cons: The user must set up and enable the trial and they must be able to see the AHA! moment themselves. If they get stuck, frustrated, or simply move onto other high priority items and they forget to come back. You may have lost them for good. Where in Freemium, the user may come back or jump back in 3 months or 6 months. It’s all about the buyer’s journey and their process of identifying problems, becoming aware of the problems, and deciding what type of solution will help them.
Data has shown users tend to engage a maximum of 3 days and then get pulled off into other directions or focuses. Bowery Capital has more insights and ideas right here.
Examples: DocuSign, PandaDoc, Notably.ai
Small, Medium, Large
Good, Better, Best with Sales Driven - Chargebee
There’s a reason when you walk into a coffee shop or fast food restaurant, you are often presented a Small, Medium, or Large cup size.
This one is all about giving Buyer’s a chance to self-educate and self-select.
It is modularized and based on features that align with the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Only by taking customer feedback, NPS scores, Product team driven insights, and Customer Success + Sales insights, are you really able to start mapping out all features to value proposition to ICP and start to align your price options to different buyer stages.
This is of course, related with Segmentation, and is an important data exercise and team initiative. Once you have gone past Product Market Fit and have enough data to test, measure, and make some educated assumptions, your pricing page can start to steer potential clients into the right plan.
Primarily Sales Driven - Intercom
Now this one is interesting, I almost missed it, and I suppose that’s the point.
See the tab at the top “for very small businesses”. That’s the Self Service or “trial” option that is being pushed to the side of the table.
All eyes and the landing page focuses on “For most businesses” and the CTA is to
”Get a demo”. Also interesting to see Intercom not try and hide behind another word like Product Tour or Product Walk-Through. Nope, they stick with Demo. Likely because they trust their ICP (RevOps and Marketing Leaders), care very much about Demos in their own day to day.
Only Sales Driven - No Trial or Self Service - Whatfix
For some products and companies, the idea of letting your potential buyer jump right in and go for a test drive is a quick no no.
The trend is that these examples are quickly diminishing, however depending on your product, your ICP, and your average deal size, you may try controlling your funnel and having a Sales person engage with every prospect.
So they don’t get lost or so you can be sure they see the AHA! moment.
Where Do We Start?
There are clear benefits between Freemium and Free Trial motions. If possible you could A/B Test or try running one specific in region. But I suppose if you are under $1M ARR or caught and can not decide, start with Freemium. You can always nurture + help + market to those early potential clients down the line, if you do it right.
One key conversation to have with you Head of Product and your Sales and Success teams (when you have those folks in seat) is to talk about the “AHA!” moment or the “value moment” or the “Activation Metric”.
Maybe just think of a spider web.
Your activation metric is the first time they touch the web or the trick you’ve uncovered to get them to touch the web, and get a bit ensnarled in it.
Source: OpenView
So once you’ve confirmed your “spider web moment” you may even want to consider this approach, called the Reverse Trial.
The Reverse, what now?
The Reverse Trial
Yes this may become the hit of the summer. The Reverse Trial.
As Kyle Poyar at OpenView lays out:
🏁 Acquisition: Freemium products tend to see higher conversion from website visitor to new sign-up, translating into faster and more efficient top-of-funnel growth. Since freemium products don’t restrict users to a restricted trial period, folks try out products earlier in their buying cycle.🤑 Conversion: Free trial products see higher free-to-paid conversion, often 2-3x the conversion rates of freemium ones. Free trial products create urgency to make a purchase decision. They also force a binary choice: either use the product and pay or stop using the product altogether. The free plans don’t ‘compete’ against paid tiers.
⏰ Time-to-value: For some products, users can’t experience real value in only a 14-day or 30-day period. Freemium products without an expiration give users more time to get set up, share the product with their team, and form a habit.
🔁 Virality and network effects: Your product might become more valuable as more folks use it through viral loops or network effects. In these cases, product owners inherently prioritize acquisition over conversion and revenue.
💰 Cash payback: Free trial products not only see higher conversion, they also see faster conversion as folks buy upon trial expiration. Median time-to-purchase might be 14 days in a free trial company compared to 60 or 90 days for a freemium one. If you need to generate cash quickly to fund paid marketing efforts, a free trial looks far more appealing.
The Reverse Trial, gives you the best of both worlds. See the full deep dive here. Suggest you follow him for Pricing masterclasses.
Source: OpenView partners
With all this ideas, I find it important to first step back, and spotlight with a team: where are they at in this journey below. Where are they now? What is coming next?
Grey curves indicate where you may flatten or fall off. This happens. The grey lines are where good companies live. Moving up beyond Scaleup, is where the Unicorns roam free.
Source: Winning by Design
There’s so much great advice out there, it’s just hard to zero in and know where to start. And then start stacking 1+1+1 to build your momentum. I am looking forward to helping the following companies as an LP with Stage 2 Capital with their recently announced Accelerator program this summer.
Source: Stage 2 Capital
What About Great Sellers?
Why does any of this matter for an AE?
Well, it’s big part of the equation and something you should consider in your research. Right up there with RepVue or Glassdoor rankings.
You’ll want to consider Product Market Fit and what type of sales motion (see their pricing page) will they be leaning into. Sometimes this is one of the best interview questions you can ask. “I notice you are differentiating your plans and I assume X, how do you see this trend playing out?”
You want your question to spark them telling you about what the best AEs are uncovering, what the best CSMs are discussing, and where the Sales team adds the most value.
That will be where you focus as an AE.
Interested in talking with the hiring manager and setting up an interview with one of these companies?
You are in luck. I know the hiring team and managers at each, and will be happy to introduce you over email.
There is no fee or any cost for you the Job Seeker.
It’s a stressful time out there if you are looking for the right company, and I hope this curated list can help!
I am also available if you would like a short prep call to discuss the interview or your job search.
You can message me on Linkedin or send me an email → paul@runrateconsulting.com