Inc - Do Spiffs Really Work in Sales?

Up Next: Today, July 10th @ 10AM Pacific

Topic: 9 Signs A StartUp Isn't Going to Make It ... and 5 Things Not To Worry About So Much

Speaker: Jason Lemkin, CEO and Founder, at SaaStr 

Workshop Wednesdays is our popular series where we be bring some of the best SaaStr speakers to you LIVE, every Wednesday. 

Each workshop will be hosted in a live, interactive 45-minute format at 10am Pacific each and every Wednesday. This workshop will be 100% LIVE, not pre-recorded, and will be hosted in an, interactive format, including Q&A.

Most sales leaders and sales teams talk about using Spiffs to hit certain goals.  To incent a certain revenue goal this month, to try to incent selling a new product, a new add-on, etc.  Sometimes, to incent folks to help others on the team.

A spiff — an extra bonus for achieving a goal beyond just their core bookings targets.

“Let’s Do a Spiff!” comes up on many sales calls.

But … do spiffs work? I did a quick survey. Most of you said … Meh. 20% said they don’t work at all, and 49% said only a little. ut a moat.

What makes for a good pricing page?

A few thoughts at least — mainly about what to copy from the big leaders, and what to maybe not copy from them.

• The stronger the brand, the more complex the pricing page can be. So yes, copy Salesforce, Twilio, Slack, and other iconic leaders. But bear in mind their brands make them a default choice. That means their prospects will be more patient with complex pricing. But your prospects may just move on if the pricing page makes it seem too … hard.
• Familiarity in your pricing schema is key to maximizing sales velocities with less well-known vendors. Innovation is great … just often not on pricing. At least not in the early days. Prospects need context. Copy someone’s pricing page and style that your prospects often already have purchased. That will give them context.
• “Editions” are super helpful when you sell to customers of varying sizes (i.e., S, M and L). Big companies intuitively know they “want” the Enterprise Edition. So add one. We’ve all bought 50–100+ apps now. We know which segment we are at this point, more or less.

Just do it. If it’s easy to do.

Lots of folks agonize over white-labelling. The brand benefits will go to my partner, not me. I’ll be valued less. Etc. etc.

But bear in mind a few things:

• All money is green, all recurring money is ARR. If the revenue recurs, it counts.  White-labeled or not.
• Customers often will figure it out, so you still get some brand benefits even if you are a while-labeled product. Unless you are truly a back-end provider like a Yext, the customers will figure it out. Your brand will shine through. Take, e.g. Twilio. Everyone knows what products run on Twilio, at least with a quick bit of Google diligence.
• It’s a great opportunity to accelerate learnings. You’ll get pulled into new markets and new opportunities earlier than otherwise. This can be a gift.
• Someone else will do it (i.e., a competitor) if you don’t.  Sometimes, that’s OK.  But oftentimes, you’ll regret it.
• It hasn’t hurt Stripe, or Twilio, Algolia, or any API leader.  Most of them are effectively white-labelled.  You have no idea you are using them.

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