Steven Forth is the co-founder, managing partner and CEO of Ibbaka, a software company which helps companies design their pricing and how to then communicate that pricing 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
- Ibbaka relies heavily on partners and inbound sales for their go-to-market strategy.
- VC firms and private companies are Ibbaka’s key partners, who introduce them to clients.
- Ibbaka 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, Ibbaka 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
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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?
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