Aug 22, 2022
John Moss is the CEO of Flintfox International, a pricing software company with world class IP in the areas of pricing and revenue management. He’s previously worked as the Chief Strategy Officer and also General Manager of MYOB. John is also trained to use explosive and radioactive devices.
In this episode, John talks about the work they do at Flintfox. He explains why pricing models should change in line with the updates constantly happening at present on software. Additionally, Mark and he discuss the complexity of pricing, especially in these days of high inflation.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“For many organizations, pricing has been off to the side and somebody who's got a quantitative bent will do that and look into it. I think there's an increasing need to employ experts in the organization that understand pricing, that understand pricing models, how you create value, and can help you manage through the current period of uncertainty.”
– John Moss
Topics Covered:
01:18 – How John got into pricing
02:37 – Lessons learned as they transitioned from transactional to subscription pricing
04:14 – Talking about the work Flintfox does
06:51 – What makes Flintfox different from other pricing software companies?
09:40 – Discussion about the complexity of pricing nowadays
11:20 – Avoiding channel conflict and posting things for the public to see
13:25 – The challenge of increasing prices during this period of inflation
18:02 – John, business software, and value-based pricing
22:36 – Pricing table topics: “Fixed costs never matter to pricing. Never, never, never.”
25:04 – John’s pricing advice
Key Takeaways:
“Software is no longer build something, release it, and it stays stable and constant forever. Software nowadays is constantly evolving and changing, and so the pricing model for that product had to change as well.” – John Moss
“It's increasingly important, I think, to have a good data set and an integrated data set to be able to understand exactly how your product portfolio is performing and what margins you're making.” – John Moss
“We're seeing more people have the confidence to put through a higher increase in the expectation that they do it once and maybe it lasts for 9-12 months, as opposed to putting through 3% now and then come back in two or three months’ time for another 3%, which that sort of attritional increase is probably less well received by customers than a big bang.” – John Moss
“It's a consequence of software. What young people and you and I now expect is that software gets better all the time. I mean, we all see it every day. Every app we have on our phone gets updated all the time incrementally. But some of these applications do improve functionality quite significantly over a number of years. And so that's what you're paying for, effectively – the fact that the developers are still working on this product.” – John Moss
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