Bryan Belanger is the senior director of Technology Business Research. He's also the senior director at XaaS Pricing, a subsidiary of TBR that helps SaaS companies price on a data-driven approach.

In this episode, Bryan talks about the work that XaaS Pricing does and who their target customers are. He also shares his insights on other business and pricing models and how you could choose which one works best for your business.

Why you have to check out today's podcast:

• Find out who XaaS Pricing are and how they might be able to help with your business
• Learn how to create a simple yet effective business framework by talking to your customers
• Get insights on the current trends such as usage-based pricing and product-led growth

"Create a simple framework that works for you. For me, it's probably talk to ten customers; and that, I think, can help you. I think the hardest part is often knowing where to start or what you're even trying to solve for is. So, find a framework that works for you, that focuses on talking to your customers and asking these questions, and let it snowball from there."

– Bryan Belanger

Topics Covered:

01:51 – How Bryan got into pricing

02:56 – How XaaS started

03:40 – What XaaS Pricing actually does, and who their target customers are

05:00 – Why you'd want XaaS Pricing's products if you're a medium-sized company

09:41 – XaaS Pricing's vision: Systematize the Van Westendorp model

13:46 – Why people in B2B and SaaS businesses are not focusing at their competitors' prices

15:41 – How XaaS deals with pricing for new customers vs pricing for existing customers

17:34 – Bryan's thoughts on usage-based pricing

19:38 – Usage-based pricing works for some companies, but not for everyone

21:54 – Bryan's thoughts on product-led growth

25:17 – Does XaaS Pricing use the product-led growth business model?

26:17 – Bryan's pricing advice

27:32 – Connect with Bryan Belanger

Key Takeaways:

"I think there's a lot of great tools that if you know what to input, you can build, manage, measure, communicate economic value. But I think the gap is in actually finding the parts of the formula to input into those tools." – Bryan Belanger

"Just building that muscle of talking to customers and understanding them. That's how I learned, it's just doing hundreds and hundreds of interviews and surveys. And I think the same applies within companies." – Bryan Belanger

"I think the instances of true usage-based pricing are still edge cases, and most are just thinking about usage as a way to fence in package offerings more so than they are actually pricing based on usage." – Bryan Belanger

"It's [product-led growth] not going to work for everybody... If it doesn't work for your customers, it really comes down to who you're targeting, what they value, how you engage with them, all those things. And so, I think like anything else, take it for the secular trend it is. Watch it, understand, learn, but don't jump in and try and change everything just because it's what worked for the people that it worked for." – Bryan Belanger

People / Resources Mentioned:

• XaaS Pricing: https://www.xaaspricing.com/
• OpenView: https://openviewpartners.com/
• Peer Signal: https://peersignal.org/
• Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/en/
• Win Keep Grow: How to Price and Package to Accelerate Your Subscription Business: https://www.amazon.com/Win-Keep-Grow-Accelerate-Subscription/dp/1631954784

Connect with Bryan Belanger:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-belanger/

Connect with Mark Stiving:

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