Mark Stouse is the Chairman and CEO of Proof Analytics. He was 2020’s Top 10 Most Influential Analytics Leaders. He was also CMO/CCO at Honeywell Aerospace, so he has tons of experience. Mark also hosts his own podcast called “Accelerating Value”, a weekly podcast aimed at guiding people in creating, defending, and proving value with the help of experts.

In this episode, Mark discusses how analytics lead SaaS businesses to success as he shares insights most SaaS entrepreneurs need to know about the relationship between analytics and pricing.

 

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:

• Discover how a different way of consulting like analytics can help SaaS businesses to become profitable nowadays;
• Know how much of a game changer analytics is in terms of keeping the relationship between customer loyalty and pricing intact;
• Find out how the scientific sense of inquiry helps pricing people reach greater heights in relation to sales and pricing with clients

 

“It isn't that you say, ‘Hey, what are you willing to pay for this?’ That's not the question. You've got to say, ‘tell me about what you're really trying to solve for here and how big a problem is this to you. What would make you feel spectacular?’ Then let's talk about the technical realities, and then let's talk about a price.”

– Mark Stouse

 

Topics Covered:

02:02 – Getting exposed to pricing and learning things through failures with Mark’s experience in Honeywell Aerospace and Proof Analytics

04:06 – Diving into the world of pricing with the help of advisors he trust

06:41 – Starting out in a SaaS company and initially doing consulting: a good way for one to be profitable

09:02 – A different consulting model – analytics – for a better, faster, and cheaper reality nowadays

13:16 – Business and the gap it has with data scientists due to the lack of contextual understanding in both concepts

18:23 – What does Proof Analytics charge for and why is that the right thing for them to charge for?

20:20 – Talking about the concept of 10 models equals 10 questions and how COVID affected the business industry in the past two years

26:05 – The differences in the opportunity costs of small and large companies

30:23 – A model as an indicator of customer success and people’s obsession with margins

33:25 – What makes SaaS beautiful is that it concerns value at all times

35:30 – Mark’s pricing advice for the listeners

 

Key Takeaways:

“If you want to talk about a lesson in the reality of economics, start a SaaS company and you will learn more than you ever dreamed was out there.” – Mark Stouse

“The problem has been not the math and not even the data. It has been the issue of how do we operationalize analytics so that everybody is able to make a better decision today than they were making before when they didn't have analytics. It really is taking the existing reality and making it better, faster, cheaper.” – Mark Stouse

“Data scientists really don't typically have much subject matter expertise about any part of the business, so as the business person, you have to be very prescriptive with the data scientist in terms of laying out the non-mathematical equation.” – Mark Stouse

“If you're a very large enterprise and you're spending $150-$200 million on marketing, what you are really after is maximizing the upside and minimizing the negative impact EPS from bad investments. That's what you're really after. If you are a much smaller company, you're really trying to avoid, among other things, being a two-time loser.” – Mark Stouse

“The intersection of customer loyalty and pricing is also a piece that is usually ignored, because pricing is seen in a very short cycle sense rather than something that's a longer time.” – Mark Stouse

“The human being has become key to the success of set which probably really and truly always was or should have been. There was just this unhealthy obsession with 90% profit margins.” – Mark Stouse

 

People / Resources Mentioned:

• Proof Analytics:https://www.proofanalytics.ai/
• Honeywell Aerospace:https://aerospace.honeywell.com/

 

Connect with Mark Stouse:

• LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/markstouse
• Email: [email protected]

 

Connect with Mark Stiving:   

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/
• Email: [email protected]