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Hi Bert,
I generally think it is a good thing to have multiple buying options available for customers to choose between. When I shop as a customer I always appreciate more options.
Are you thinking of selling the same product you were for $99.95 now for $19.95 minus the toll free phone support and updates?
The price jump for having toll free phone support and updates seems high.
If this is the case, I think you could probably charge more for the watered down product support version.
-Ryan
Hi Ryan, I agree this needs a lot of further thought. Our current product, updates and support is at $99.95 per month with annual and quarterly discounting. The support we offer alone is really unbelievable in today's market with all the outsourcing. In fact most other companies that sell in our industry charge much more than we do for much less service, product and support. To give you an example our current level of support, our customers generally never wait more than a few minutes to be helped. Our support staff members are all highly skilled programmers that can pretty much help the customer on the first call. We use remote access and help customers fix problems and show them how to do things so when our clients call us it is like we are there at their site. We have evolved our support to this level because when a client is trying to get things shipped they can afford to be down very long at all. So we figure every minute counts and our solutions must be dead on correct. On the positive side, I can say that rarely a week goes by without us being told our support is the best they have experienced. So this is a hard decision to water down what we know our customers love. In the spirit of innovation though, we decided to question what we were doing in the search for a better way to offer our product to a larger number of start up companies. We know the economy is putting a strain on most small businesses so we tried to come up with solutions that fit today's market. We knew if we could get people to use our software they it could help them lower costs and help them move more product at there web sites. So, the thought was that there might be a market out there that did not need our current level of support as they were just getting started and they could get by with just using self service web and email based support. At least to help them get started. Once they got on their feet and their business started growing again our current product support would become a great upgrade. Since SuN has so many startup companies, I wanted to know if this sounded like a good idea. As we continue to think this through, we are now concluding this might not be the right plan yet and it needs some work. I did not get the response I expected but I found the comments I did receive very helpful. Thank you, Bert
Bert,
Thanks for the further clarification. Let me know what you think of the following hypothetical scenario.
Lets say I am a new client of yours and I'm still learning how to use your product. I need help and utilize your stellar support team. I call in a few times over the next few weeks until I feel I no longer need to call in for support. At this point I feel I should switch over to the reduced payment rate to save money.
Do you think this might be a fair assessment of what might happen if you offer an additional pricing option? Obviously you would know best because you have on record how often a particular client calls in for support, and the frequency of calls after an initial learning period.
In any case, I am glad you are putting so much thought into this before making any big decisions.
-Ryan
Hi Ryan,
That is a great thought. To be honest with you we had figured this would have happened anyway if we offered both plans. There is no commitment with our monthly pricing so switching plans would have been as easy as it was to just stop using it. But that was not what has made us rethink this.
One of the many points that changed our minds on making this change was when we approached some of our current customers and asked them this same question. They told us that we saved them so much every month in shipping costs and our support team being there was such an important insurance policy for keeping them moving goods out the door that they did not like the idea. They also said that our current rate was so low, that they felt dropping our price any lower would make our product look like it wasn’t worth its true value. In other words, a low price might kill new sales instead of increasing them! Many of them both large and small also told us that before they decided to purchase our product, it was our low prices made them look around first. They said our competitors kept telling them you get what you pay for. This made them think that our product was just too good to be true. And they finally pointed out that they were glad that they had purchased it anyway, which by the way, we are too. So we realized just like being too high in price, you can be too low, too.
So we are now taking all we have learned and we are coming up with what we think is a much better approach to our marketing. You are right that one needs to put a ton of thought in every decision and not be afraid to talk about it. SuN is a great tool for sharing ideas and solutions.
I really appreciate your input.
Bert
I think it is a good thing to have multiple buying options available for customers to choose between. When I shop as a customer I always appreciate more options. :)
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