Jun 3, 2019
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
- Know how to find the right value metric for your business
- Learn the difference between subscription and recurring revenue
- Discover the strategies in packaging and pricing metrics
Kyle Poyar is the Vice President for Market Strategy at OpenView since 2016. He is responsible for helping OpenView’s portfolio companies accelerate top-line growth through deep insights. He leads segmentation, positioning, channel/partner strategy, new market entry, and packaging/pricing initiatives, partnering closely with portfolio leadership teams. He also covers OpenView’s SaaS metrics and benchmarking research.
Previously, he worked for Simon-Kucher & Partners as a Pricing Consultant for six years. Kyle earned his AB Economics & Environmental Studies at Brown University. He graduated Magna cum Laude and with departmental honors in Environmental Studies.
In today's episode, Kyle shares his pricing journey and his perspective on how pricing is essential in decision-making. Check out his expert advice that will undoubtedly impact your business to its optimum level.
“Pricing is the tip of the spear. It's a pain point that's universal among companies, especially among earlier companies. But then once you do a pricing project, you uncover so many areas of opportunity for follow-on work.”
– Kyle Poyar
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Topics Covered:
02:59– Kyle talks about why he thinks pricing is a Trojan horse, a spear and a pain point among companies
04:12 – Sharing the reasons why he left Simon-Kucher & Partners (SKP) and moved to OpenView
06:31 – Talking about OpenView’s expansion team and the pricing challenges he encountered in their early stages of the business
08:41 – Company in expansion stage defined
09:49 – Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) as a marketing metric, and what it reveals about the status of your business
11:22 – Spearheading the SaaS benchmark initiative as Kyle’s first roles at OpenView
13:15 – Subscription and recurring revenue, understanding both revenue streams
15:44 – How he helped one company pivoted from subscription to recurring model
20:03 – Difference of packaging from pricing metrics: the good, better, best services
24:08 – Not spending time to look at pricing as one of the biggest pricing problems that subscription companies currently have
27:32 – Pricing advice to listeners – “If you start getting involved in thinking about what model (free trial or freemium models) could look like and what are the KPIs for it in your business, that elevates the role of pricing in the organization and helps you stay relevant with your users.”
29:43 – His opinion on the similarity of designing the sales force out of the system and product-led growth
Key Takeaways:
“I think the biggest ‘AHA’ moment for CEOs is when someone finally tracks the revenue impact of pricing changes and they start counting all of the dollars that they're making from making a pricing change. It's amazing if you can bring proof points around impact and real dollars and cents. I think you can change minds quickly.” – Kyle Poyar
“The early stages of business founders tend to undervalue their products. They start with extremely low pricing, and they don't change that and increase it. There's just a ton of opportunity in the early stages for business to increase prices and in many cases, not even seeing any sort of impact to win rate or conversion, just additional revenue, and bottom-line profitability.” – Kyle Poyar
“Subscriptions is a great business model for a lot of companies, and obviously the investors recognize that and are willing to pay a premium for subscription companies. But you can get a lot of the same characteristics without actually having any sort of commitment for your customers. That can be a disruptive value proposition. And I think the investors will recognize companies that are disruptive and winning in the market and reward them.” – Kyle Poyar
“I think structurally speaking, companies are not spending enough time on pricing. The biggest challenge is just a lack of great pricing skills and then more tactically for businesses. It's a very competitive world in technology right now.” – Kyle Poyar
Resources mentioned:
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