Arguably the most important factor in a sales negotiation is a price. The UCaaS industry boasts an unprecedented ability to implement creative pricing strategies. As cloud computing and subscription-based products advance, pricing models continually become more specialized, customized, and innovative.
To maintain a competitive advantage, UCaaS companies must explore different pricing strategies. Here are 5 ideas to get you started:
1. Recurring Frequency:
Possibly the most common pricing model for any subscription business, recurring pricing or frequency-based pricing is simple. “Pay As You Go – only $5 per user per month!”
The benefit of this strategy is usually just the simplicity of it with regard to revenue management.
2. Variant Pricing:
Customers are always drawn to customization. Variant pricing implies that products or services can be priced according to the customer’s budget or requirements. This model typically utilizes a low-cost plan for the basics with more progressive plans offering more features at a higher price point.
Businesses use this model to encourage customers to upgrade to higher plan levels to obtain more features or greater functionality.
3. Tiered Pricing:
Also referred to as “volume pricing”, tiered pricing is based on the volume of the purchase. There are typically two patterns of tiered pricing:
Threshold Pricing:
Price is determined by volume. For example:
- For an order of 1-100, the price is $10 each.
- For an order of 101-500, the cost is $9 each.
For an order of 501-1000, the cost is $7 each.
And so on.
Volume Tier-Based Pricing:
Price is calculated based on the tier the order falls into. For example:
If the tiers look like this:
1-10 = $10
11-20 = $9
An order of 15 would be calculated like this:
[1-10] @ $10 x 10 = $100
+ [11-20] @ $9 x 5 = $45
TOTAL = $145
The idea behind this strategy is to boost sales by offering better discounts for higher volume orders.
4. Usage Metering:
Computing charges based on the actual usage of any service is called usage metering. Measuring usage can utilize any unit of measurement. Some examples include storage kilobytes, MB, GB, calls, minutes, licenses, features, software usage, data, messages sent, bandwidth, and more.
An advantage of this type of price plan is the accuracy of charges. The customer pays for exactly what they used.
5. Preferred Customer:
Preferred pricing defines certain categories of the customer to offer special pricing. For example, returning customers or existing customers can get a special discount – an advantage over a new customer who is signing up for a first-time service.
Preferred pricing increases customer loyalty.
20 More Pricing Strategies:
To inspire you to aim for more in your subscription business and to take it to new heights, OneBill has developed a FREE ebook. Click here to download 25 Pricing Strategies for Cloud Subscription Business for free and discover the most effective pricing strategies for your UCaaS enterprise.
Limitless Pricing Possibilities:
For the UCaaS economy, pricing models are (and should be) diverse. Throw discounts, offers, and trial periods into the mix, and pricing becomes a complex entity for UCaaS businesses to deal with.
The revenue management system you use must be flexible and easy to configure so you don’t waste time, and robust enough to handle any pricing strategy you choose to implement.
To find out how OneBill can effectively and efficiently accommodate your pricing strategies, contact us today.
