Background
Services & product businesses often depend on deep discount offers to attract customers and find it difficult to increase the price as business demands. This also comes with a often unspoken, yet important practice of turning away unfavored customer persona's.
PROBLEM / OPPORTUNITY STATEMENT
The client wanted "better" customers, essentially clients with deeper pockets and larger projects and had a problem with their SaaS product having underwhelming sales.
CRITICAL CONSTRAINTS
Though a large team and sufficient lead generation was in place, the problem was that they were attracting low quality leads and were again stuck with customers who have had not seen a service price increase in over four years, increasing the price would risk losing the clients.
KEY OBSERVATIONS
Customers prefer clear and precise conversations on why the service costs what it costs and demonstration of value for the fee charged. As long as the transparency in billing is maintained, the clients generally tend to appreciate and adjust their service hiring according to the newer rates.
SOLUTION
Psychographics of a customer with deeper pockets and larger projects was evaluated and found out that such clients tend to want to see more information on the site and would take the effort to fill in a lead form. Thus, we began restructuring the "information architecture" of the entire web presence of our client.
APPROACH TO SOLUTION
Demography, Geography and Psychographic analysis plays a huge role in ascertaining the target and messaging process. Getting it right is a measure of market testing and continuous refinement.
KEY SOLUTION METRICS
Per hour billing rates were increased for all new clients for existing customers, the option to gradually increase the costs was introduced. The communication was direct and to existing clients, some ad-hoc perks were extended in form of value added services, with clear mention of sustainability challenges at present rates. Lost 0% of clients in the process.
SOLUTION LIMITATIONS
The solution will only work when the prices are market competitive and is within acceptable budget or buying power of the market.
PROCESS APPLIED
Process involves review and realignment of sales processes and account management, qualifying customers by way of how they communicate and share information, respond. The process is an inclusive process covering multiple teams and is heavily reliant of correct data on customer behavior and history throughout the engagement.
REVENUE IMPACT
Revenue increased by 2x in a period of 9 months and started stabilizing at 2x as MRR.
AD-HOC CONTRIBUTORS
Filter process introduced to qualify prefered and unfavored customer persona improved the sales pipeline to 80% & higher success rate.
KEY BENEFITS OF SOLUTION
Better customers meant better revenue and sustained partnership in the market, allowing for stabilized expansion with predictable growth targets.