Pricing pages
In the recent podcast with Lynne Tye, she mentioned that at y-combinator she was strongly urged not to have a pricing page on her site, but she didn't go into detail why. What are the main considerations around pricing pages? I think in Lynne's example she had a B2B model with a high monthly fee; is that the scenario where you should avoid having a pricing page? If so, do you conduct business over the phone and through email? What's the best way to transact payments in that case?
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Hi there, Lynne here! 🙋🏻
I got lots of different advice at YC. Overall, there were a lot of opinions suggesting that I do have a pricing page. Why? If your product can be self-serve (i.e. people can sign up, enter their credit cards, and pay you w/o your help), you need to tell people how much you're charging. Since Key Values is often compared to job boards (most of which are self-serve), a lot of people advised me to create a pricing page.
Turns out though, Key Values isn't your typical job board. I spend so much time onboarding companies that it doesn't make sense for me to charge by month (this is what most job boards do). Instead, I charge a yearly subscription fee, and as a result, it's wise for me to not have a pricing page because the price might scare people away. Not having an official pricing page also makes it easier for me me to set different prices for different companies. (A two-person startup is different than a 750-person company.)
@louisswiss interviewed me recently on all of the details for how I do sales (Louis, when is that coming out?), but yes, I do sales calls and companies pay me after I send them an invoice.
If you're selling a more expensive product/service, require complicated integrations, and/or are handling a lot of valuable data for your customers, you may have to do in-person demos as a part of your sales process. You may need to offer trial periods. You may need to create pitch decks and present them multiple times to multiple stakeholders. There isn't a one-size-fits-all sales process, so you have to figure out what works best for your specific business.
Hope this helps?!!
Thanks very much for the thoughtful response. The points about annual fees and flexible pricing make a lot of sense.
iTunes is taking its sweet time authorising the podcast, but should be out this week for sure!
What is the podcast called? Thought I’d find a link in your bio but didn’t.
@lynnetye pinging you for input here :)
On it. 👍