Steven Forth is the co-founder, managing partner and CEO of Ibakka, a software company which helpscompanies design their pricing as well as how to communicate that price and its value across the entire customer journey. Named one of the top ten pricing authorities in the world by Open View Venture, Steven joins Ryan to talk about all things pricing including how he has helped both start-ups and Fortune 500 companies drive returns and increase profits through pricing.
Steven also reveals his framework on how to give value and measure it effectively as well as how he became the leader of a LinkedIn design thinking group with more than 200k members and why AI will eventually take over software.
KEY TAKEAWAYS

Ibakka relies heavily on partners and inbound sales for their go-to-market strategy.
VC firms and private companies are Ibakka’s key partners, who introduce them to clients.
Ibakka is prolific on LinkedIn, for their own blog posts but also their engagement with others.
Your price should be based on the value you are creating, Ibakka helps companies identify what this is and how to communicate it to their clients. They also track their own value for their clients so they can present this to them when it comes to renewal.
You have to quantify your outcomes after the fact, to show clients your value to them.
Often value and promises to a customer aren’t tracked, which means when it comes to renewal the sales teams aren’t armed with the information they need for one of the key factors in SaaS companies, retention!
There are six ways you can make your customers' business better: help them increase revenue growth, help them decrease operating cost, increase operating capital, help them defer capital expenses, help them reduce risk or increase optionality.
More and more companies are starting to worry about operating capital due to interest rate increases. So if you have a solution that can reduce this, this is a valuable area of growth.
Many companies have increased prices due to general inflation, but this could be disastrous, you need to ask yourself, how is inflation affecting your customer's business and act accordingly.
Steven attributes part of the success of his group to a ‘power law’ in that the more people who join the group the more people want to join it.
AI will take over all aspects of software in the next 5-10 years.

BEST MOMENTS
“We’re prolific on LinkedIn, not just in our own blog posts but with other people”
“Pricing is about a lot more than just sticking a number on a price tag”
“The implementation and customer success teams often don’t know what promises were made and nobody is tracking to see if they are being delivered”
“The best salespeople are not all sales people”
“2 years ago, because of interest rates people didn’t care about increasing operating capital, today people are starting to care”
“Just because inflation is increasing it doesn’t give you a free pass on raising prices”
“The more people that join a group the more people want to join it”
“AI is eating software. Every aspect of software will be touched by AI”
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Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io 
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How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman o