Episode SummaryThis episode of the Sunny Side Up podcast discusses pricing and packaging strategies for business growth with guest David Vogelpohl. Key topics covered include prioritizing pricing as an iterative strategy, identifying moves for growth while navigating complexity, marketing misconceptions around pricing, optimizing free trials, ensuring sales and marketing alignment, and determining ownership of pricing decisions. David provides insights and recommends several individuals as sources to learn more about go-to-market strategies.
About the guest
David is the CMO at FastSpring, a payment & subscription platform for SaaS, software, & digital product companies offering 100% automated sales tax and VAT compliance worldwide. For 25+ years David has led teams building engines of growth & innovative software for leading brands like WP Engine, AWS, Cloudflare, and more. David is an actionable-insights style speaker focusing on tactics you can use to drive growth.
Connect with David Vogelpohl
Key takeaways
- Pricing and packaging should be prioritized as an ongoing iterative strategy for business growth, not just for new product launches
- Use a "growth mustache" framework to identify which parts of the growth equation (new ARR, upgrades, downgrades, churn) pricing moves will affect  
- Marketers may misconceive that customers won't accept price increases or that they solely control packaging decisions
- Take an iterative approach to pricing testing rather than direct A/B tests to maintain trust
- Optimize free trials by surfacing critical moments and considering paid trials for validation
- Ensure transparency, clear communication, and alignment between sales and marketing on pricing strategies
Quotes“At the end of the day, you're operating a business that delivers value to your customers and part of your duty in that is to operate a successful business. If you don't operate a successful business, you can't fulfill your duty to deliver that value.”
David on how businesses need to make decisions that ensure long-term success.
Shout-outs
-Jason Cohen, Founder, WP Engines
-John Hessinger, VP of Demand at WP Engines
-Michael Bonfils, Managing Director at SEM International