Pivoting a SaaS into a mid-5-figure MRR service company
Tjitte Joosten built a SaaS, but his customers kept asking for a service, so he pivoted to a consultancy. Now, RevFixr has a mid-5-figure MRR.
Here's Tjitte on how he did it. 👇
Pivoting from SaaS to services
For almost 10 years, I operated commercially in tech startups. When you're the first hire at multiple B2B startups, you learn how to price and negotiate. Do it for ten years, and you understand how buyers make irrational, seemingly rational buying decisions.
I built a SaaS product for pricing pages, but our early customers kept asking for pricing support before installing our product. Eventually, we offered to support customers with their pricing strategies as a paid service. But when we saw the impact of our services versus the impact of our product, we ditched the product and pivoted to a pricing consultancy.
So now, I'm the founder of RevFixr, a global tech-enabled pricing consultancy. We help SaaS, AI, and tech-enabled services with their pricing strategy. Over 90% of all B2B companies systematically leave money on the table. We help our clients increase ARR by 15–45% within 6 months.
We're at a mid 5-figure MRR.
Starting manually
We started with a completely manual approach. This is the benefit of building a consultancy. You can start manual and productize it later.
First, we put together a process for building pricing strategies. Luckily, we quickly realized we could do it using a somewhat rigid process. Then, we standardized the entire sales and intake process.
At that point, AI was finally becoming reliable and accurate, so we began using AI to help us with analyses. It even began providing recommendations. Now, our business relies on agents. We deliver top-tier consultancy services and, thanks to Gemini and Claude, we can do it at 1/5 the price of traditional consultancies.
If you want to build a tech-enabled service, remember: The more context your AI has, the better. You can't silo your sales from your delivery. Your CRM and project management have to become one. Every conversation has to be recorded.
You also have to follow structure and process. Sales forgetting to update their CRM records can be a death sentence for a project. Good thing you can also automate this nowadays.
Worth it all
The first real test for most entrepreneurs is the race against the clock: your declining reserves versus the time it takes to earn a salary from your business. This might seem obvious, but it will be a mental challenge — unless you come from money. Be ready for that.
But the moment you wire yourself a full, earned salary, it will be worth it all.
Evolving pricing
Our promise is to grow our customers' revenue by increasing the average deal size. Since we can always make a rough estimate of our direct impact on their revenue, we're able to either charge a fixed fee, a success-based fee, or a combination thereof. We can do this for a fixed period or on an ongoing basis. Usually, we do a project for a short time and then upsell ongoing services. That way, the barrier to entry is low, and we can earn their trust.
Regardless of whether you run a SaaS, AI, or consultancy business, your business is learning and improving continuously. Today, you are probably embarrassed by your product or service from 12 months ago. Your pricing should reflect that. If your customers were willing to spend $1,000 on you last year, and your product improved massively, plenty of them will be willing to spend $1,500 on you this year. So, we change our pricing model every three months based on our learnings and the projects we've run.
Tell a compelling story
Most startup founders and teams focus on the actual numbers when figuring out their pricing. But in my experience, the money is all in the structure and the psychology. If you can tell a compelling story, customers will happily pay 3-5x as much. But leave any inconsistencies, and you end up negotiating cents.
So, in general, my advice is to charge more. If you’re like most founders, you want to object on the basis that you have competition to deal with. And I will ask you the same question I ask everyone else: "Is your product truly more commoditized than a bag of crisps?"
Go to the supermarket today, and you’ll find bags for 99 cents and bags for $4.99. You cannot convince me that your software solution is less differentiated from your competitor than Tyrrells versus Lays.
If slow-cooking crisps is worth double, there must be a feature in your offering that justifies a premium price as well. You just have to find what your ICP values most and monetize that.
Growth via network and referrals
Our minimum deal size is five figures. This means we don't need Netflix-level distribution to make a living. At the same time, our business relies heavily on trust because no "trial" exists.
This eliminates cold outbound strategies. We must rely heavily on relationships and referrals. So, before we launched our first product, we were already organizing small local events — and we never stopped. Once money started coming in, we started attending other events too. And eventually, we started getting invited to speak and guest on podcasts.
Here's what I suggest:
Let your network know you're starting something new and venturing out on your own. People like to root for entrepreneurs and help them get started, so inform them.
Post on your socials.
Do the awkward work: Text your old managers and colleagues, and ask if they know anyone who could benefit from your work. If you've worked for at least 5 years and haven't been a dick, this should probably get you a few referrals — enough to get started.
From there, if you have discipline and patience and deliver quality work, customers will find you.
Ask for help
The best part of being an entrepreneur is that successful entrepreneurs are willing to give advice. Seek out others who have been where you are today. They know the struggle, and no matter how busy they are, many will make time for you.
I won't name names, but there's one person in my industry who has been doing this longer than I have. And even though we're technically competitors, I reached out for his advice. To my surprise, he was willing to sit down and provide plenty of useful advice. He said, "The market is bigger than both of us can handle anyway."
In pop culture, many compare business to war. But I've found that, with some exceptions, well-meaning people run most businesses.
Where to start if you're building a consultancy
Pick a problem and become the expert. Build a business around that. It's as simple as that.
If you don't fall in love with the problem, someone else can vibe-code a competing solution. But if you do love it and you become the absolute expert, clients will always find you.
Start by saying "yes" to everything. Then productize anything you can. After that, start saying no to everything that isn't productized. That helped us turn consultancy into something more reliable and with recurring revenue.
What's next?
Eventually, I want to make my business obsolete. RevFixr exists today because most people don't know how to price their products and services. B2B pricing resources are limited. Vacancies for pricing experts are usually reserved for large companies with deep pockets.
That's why I'm publishing free content on my Substack, Money on the Table — so every founder can become an expert on pricing. Eventually, we'd like to build an AI solution to replace all pricing consultants.
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