How we went from data to discipline | Srinivas Somayajula (Tropic, Calendly)

Street Pricing with Marcos Rivera

Welcome to Street Pricing, the only show where proven SaaS (Software as a Service) leaders share their mindset and mistakes in pricing so we can all stop guessing and start growing. Street Pricing is hosted by Pricing I/O CEO and Pricing Coach, Marcos Rivera, sought after slayer of bad pricing. With 20 years of pricing expertise, he has helped price over 200 SaaS products and coached over 100 SaaS CEOs and counting. From the streets of the Bronx to CEO, Marcos wants to take the guessing out of pricing.

Today’s guest is Srinivas Somayajula, GM of Data at Tropic. Srinivas overseas all the data solutions and wants to bring transparency to SaaS pricing.

Srinivas talks about his time with Calendly, he suggested they look at the pricing around March 2020, and that maybe they were giving away too much value for their current pricing. (2:40) He looked into the data and spoke with customers and decided on two principles that would work for the company; everything has to be as frictionless as possible, and they had to do no harm to the customers. Existing customers needed a packaging and pricing model to migrate to and new customers were coming to Calendly with the pandemic happening. (7:40)

Marcos and Srinivas emphasize how the actual execution of price changes can be a big problem for companies, and how thoughtful planning and tests are key. (8:52) Srinivas wanted to make the product easy to sell, using the website, marketing, and building sales teams to communicate the value to the customers. (10:00) The important questions that companies need to answer are Who are we? What do we stand for? What do we want for the company? Who do we serve? (11:00)

Srinivas listened to the customers by doing multiple rounds of interviews and surveys and also did internal voting with the sales team. (16:15) He thought the internal viewpoint would give signals to understanding but could also give biased opinions as well. Both things partnered together can give a balanced perspective. Srinivas also suggested looking into support requests and using AI to analyze the billing data.

They discuss what Srinivas is hoping for in the future of pricing, hiring a senior pricing manager, and his current position at Tropic. (24:04)

Marcos and Srinivas close out the show by discussing Srinivas’ favorite song growing up was “Momma Said Knock You Out” By LL Cool J and “Money Ain’t a Thing” By Jermaine Dupri and Jay Z.

Street Pricing streams live on OC TALK RADIO, Orange County's only online business channel, every Friday at 9:00 AM PT and is available for download on all major podcast platforms.

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