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You’re a SaaS CEO, so you understand that the success of your business rides on the sales team.  

But they have a lot of challenges thrown at them. And one of the worst is complex subscription pricing. In fact, it’s so bad it can lead to high turnover which makes your life a lot harder. Not only does this impact your teams and you, but it impacts your bottom line.  

Fortunately, there’s one thing that can solve this problem for you – something that will not only take care of pricing complexity forever, but keep your sales team engage and excited. It is possible to create a more productive and motivated team that drives your company’s success and revenue.  

A group of happy office people standing in a row in a bright office, looking at the camera.

What SaaS Pricing Complexity Looks Like  

We understand how difficult subscription pricing can be. We’re a SaaS subscription company that works with SaaS subscription companies.  

There’s a lot of pressure on you as a CEO to get it right, but often you as a CEO haven’t been given the tools you need to tackle pricing complexity.  

And that means the sales team has to spend a lot more time negotiating the complexity with your current and would-be customers. That includes: 

Multiple Pricing Tiers: Your pricing structure can offer different levels of service, usage, and features, each with their own price points that can change as well.  

Add-ons: New products and features mean new add-ons that will complicate things further. It makes the pricing more difficult, but it also throws a monkey-wrench into the monitoring and needs of your customers.  

Customizations: It’s a fact that customers love offerings that are tailored specifically for them. But it’s extremely time-consuming to figure out what they need and to accurately keep track of it.  

Hidden Fees: If pricing structure depends on usage, chances are at some point that there will be surprise charges that some customers might not be happy about (even though the charges are fair!).  

Discounts: Discounts bring their own problems for sales teams, but they also increase customer expectations and throw off the revenue teams.  

Inconsistency: With different people being offered different things all the time, it’s hard to keep track of everyone. Mistakes are made and customers get frustrated.  

When your pricing strategy has these elements, it’s pretty much impossible for your sales team to keep up. They’ll stumble through pricing negotiations. They’ll have to spend a lot more time creating proposals. They’ll wince when quoting what might be incorrect pricing. 

In order words, their productivity is gone, and customer satisfaction and deal closure at both at risk. How can your team possibly thrive and succeed in bringing in revenue while in that environment?  

Why Pricing Complexity Makes Life Hard for Sales Staff  

The quick answer is that they can’t. Because they’re human, and there are only so many hours in a day.  

When your sales team are stuck in this cycle, they face a lot of impacts:  

  • It’s harder to sell: Complex pricing means more time is needed for sales staff to understand and explain the value proposition. When they struggle to give easy-to-understand pricing to customers, customers walk. That’s a lot of missed sales opportunities. 
  • Time wasted on negotiations: When sales pricing is hard to understand, more time is needed to prepare for negotiations because sales teams have to be ready for multiple scenarios, juggling multiple pricing options, discounts, customizations, and add-ons. 
  • More mistakes: The more complex the pricing, the greater the chances of mistakes throughout the entire sales cycle. And that doesn’t just impact your team and customers, but also your reputation.  
  • Less flexibility: There’s a lot less flexibility to adapt, to specific customer needs that crop up at any given time. Sales teams simply don’t have the time and resources to give the best offerings to their customers – so why would customers remotely enjoy their interactions with your team?  
  • No morale and plummeting job satisfaction: Imagine what it’s like dealing with these problems over and over with no chance of escape. It’s frustrating and overwhelming. The team can feel (quite reasonably!) that they’re set up for failure.  

When you get to the point that it’s impossible to do your job, it gets harder to stay at your job.  

Why the Sales Reps Leave  

Sales staff with these challenges get frustrated. So they work harder and longer to try to meet the sales targets and ern commission. This takes a toll on their confidence. They can suffer from burnout, depression, and insomnia.  

Then they notice that some of your competitors offer simpler pricing models and sales support that enables the sales team to do their jobs right, they’ll eventually go.  

What This Costs You  

This costs you both the replacement of the sales rep, the missed revenue from their absence, the recruitment and replacement process, any churn from neglected and the ripple effect on your teams.  

A graphic with 3 stats- 1) Losing a sales rep will cost you 115k 2) the tech/software industry has a sales turnover of 67% 3) 1-in-5 reps see a future at their current org.

What is the solution? 

The solution to both your pricing complexity and sales turnover problems lies in a proverbial flick of the switch.  

Automation.  

You’re a SaaS company. You understand what cutting-edge solutions do for your customers. So why not give the same solution to yourself?  

Here’s what automation does for you and your team: 

Simple pricing processes: Automating pricing calculations and configurations eliminates manual errors and ensures accurate quotes. Sales staff can rely on standardized processes, reducing confusion and saving time. 

Manual admin processes are gone: Salespeople waste up to a third of their day on repetitive processes (and that’s not counting the damage control from mistakes found in manual processing!), so once those are cleared out of the way, they’re free to do what they’re supposed to do- SELL. 

Sales get 24-7 access to pricing information: Things change fast in the SaaS world. Your company’s pricing should be agile and responsive to the customer’s needs. AND this information should flow between teams including Product, Revenue and Customer Care. With automation, your sales team will get real-time data whenever they need it for on-the-spot quotes.  

Everything is customized and flexible: Customers demand personalized service. Automation gives them offerings that are driven by their data, behavior, and consumption. No need for complex calculations. Sales opportunities are spotted (for both new and existing customers), offerings tailored, and the system even identifies the best time for the offering and which sales rep should get it.  

Easy end-to-end sales processes: Automatic pricing and sales processes make everything so much easier. Imagine a sales team that actually has the time to build long-lasting relationships with customers!  

Better productivity and job satisfaction: By eliminating both the tedious day-to-day tasks and the nightmare of complex pricing calculations, there’s a lot more job satisfaction and less stress. This also gives you an advantage over your competitors and helps you attract the best talent.  

Bonuses: 

  • No delay in onboarding due to mistakes, errors and silos with sales and revenue teams 
  • Lower customer churn rate due to better offerings when wanted  
  • Better product offerings because of AI-driven customer data  
  • Faster sales cycle because the end-to-end process is automated  

Automation is an investment that costs a lot less than you think and brings in a lot more than you can imagine.  

We all want to be appreciated. And when sales reps know they are supported, have the end-to-end automated for them, and can devote their time to high-value selling and developing customer relationships, they’re happier.  

Why would they leave?  

A blue and black graphic with stats 1) automation saves sales 2 hours a day 2) 80% of reps who meet/exceed 150% of their quotas use sales tech

The solution is yours if you want it 

The harder things are for your sales team, the harder things will be for your customers and for you.  

This is especially true with complex pricing strategies.   

But an automation solution helps you as a SaaS CEO can solve the problem of pricing complexity and then get rid of the negative environment it creates for your sales team.  

You get a simple pricing strategy that can handle any shift or turn. And in return, you get happier sales teams and customers. More productivity. More revenue. And retention of your talent.  

Why not act now? The sooner you make the switch, the sooner all the good stuff comes to you.  

Recurring revenue businesses leak up to 5% in their billing processes.

-Forbes

Say goodbye to manual sales processes and boost your growth with Bluefort’s cutting-edge automation solutions. Learn how our end-to-end system streamlines the end-to-end process. 

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