Marcos Rivera

Most B2B SaaS leaders build value.
But forget to capture it.

Let me guess:

- You’re guessing your price
- You’re losing revenue
- Scaling feels stuck

What if pricing could drive growth?

Here’s what I help you do:

→ Capture more value
→ Make pricing your edge
→ Build pricing confidence

Why should you trust me?

- 25+ years in tech pricing
- Ex–Head of Pricing at Vista Equity
- Priced 400+ SaaS products
- Author of *Street Pricing*
- Trusted by MBAs and SaaS CEOs

Beyond coaching, 

I’m an:

→ Investor 
→ Speaker
→ Entrepreneur 

passionate about helping businesses unlock their full revenue potential.

Ready to take control of your most powerful growth lever—pricing?

Checkout my featured section.

Founder and CEO

We help growth-stage B2B SaaS companies design the right pricing model to scale up

Ready to shift your pricing from guesswork to framework?

Your top 20% of customers are probably subsidizing your bottom 30%.
And you don't even know it.

See the #2 cause ↓

When we audit customer bases, we find this constantly: the customers who get the most value and never churn are often paying less than the customers who churn after 12 months.

Why?

Because most companies optimize pricing for customer acquisition volume, not for customer value fit.

You built pricing to attract as many customers as possible. 
So you attracted a lot of price-sensitive customers who were never going to be good long-term fits.

Meanwhile, your best customers, the ones who would happily pay 2-3x more because they're getting massive value, are grandfathered on old pricing.

The framework shows how to identify this pattern in your own customer base and fix it.

When we help clients migrate their high-value, under-monetized customers to pricing that reflects the value they're getting, we see 30%+ expansion revenue.

From customers who were already happy. 
They just needed a reason to pay more.

Are you optimizing your pricing for volume or value fit?

CEO of Pricing I/O • Award-Winning Author • Sought after Slayer of Bad Pricing

Years of calls, DMs, and pricing debates.
Finally in the same room.

Dan Balcauski, • Mark Stiving, Ph.D., and I have known each other for years through the pricing world. 

We've shared ideas, challenged each other's thinking, and watched the space evolve together.
But somehow, we'd never all been in the same place at the same time.

Until the Usage Economy Summit last week.

Pricing work can feel isolated. 
You're often the only person at your company who thinks about monetization strategy all day. 
The pricing community changes that.

These are the people who get it. Who've been in the trenches. Who know that pricing isn't just a spreadsheet exercise.

Good to finally make this photo happen.

This is Peter. He looks nice, but he challenges me all the time. 
And honestly? It makes our work better.

Here's the kind of thing we debate constantly:

We're reviewing a client case. High churn. Customers leaving after their first year. The executive team suspects it's a product problem.

The data tells a different story:
→ Legacy customers on old pricing? Staying longer. Making the most money. Seeing the most value.
→ New customers on "optimized" pricing? Churning at exactly 12 months. Citing ROI mismatch.

My take: "This is a pricing problem. The model doesn't align with value realization."

Peter's the first to push back on takes like this:

"Sometimes it really IS a product problem, Marcos. Sometimes the product just doesn't deliver enough value."

And he's right. Sometimes it is.

But here's how you know the difference:

If your legacy customers love the product and your new customers churn, it's not the product. It's the pricing.

The product didn't change. 
The pricing did.

The value is still there. 
Your pricing model just stopped aligning with how customers realize it.

This is what I love about our team at Pricing I/O.
We try to challenge ourselves:
→ Why that value metric?
→ What happens to expansion revenue?
→ Did you pressure-test this with sales?
→ I disagree with this segmentation, here's why.

It's not personal. It's rigorous.

Our best client work comes from these debates.

Because when smart people disagree about pricing strategy, that's where the real insights live.

The best pricing strategies aren't created in isolation.

They're forged when you put smart people in a room and force them to defend their thinking.

When you ask hard questions. 
Challenge assumptions. 
Stay willing to be wrong.

That's how you avoid the "drop decks and disappear" trap most consultants fall into.

If we can't defend a strategy to our own team, how can a client defend it to their board?

Across 400+ companies, this pattern repeats:
Pricing that worked at launch stops working as you evolve.

The winners don't treat pricing as a one-time project.
They build the muscle to test, learn, and adapt.

Do you have a process for pressure-testing big decisions?
Or are you making them in isolation?

Seat-based pricing is dying faster than most CEOs realize.

12 months ago: 50% of B2B SaaS used flat or seat-based models 

Today: Down to 27% 
Projected 2027: <10% 

The shift? 41% of companies are now using hybrid pricing models.

At SaaS Metrics Palooza, I walked through why this is happening, and the framework we use to build hybrid models that actually work.

Here's the reality:
AI changed who does the work.

It's not just humans anymore. It's systems completing tasks, generating summaries, resolving tickets, approving requests, all autonomously.

So how do you charge for that? By the person? The product? The outcome?

Answer: It depends on who's doing more of the work.

The BAM Framework - Base, Allowance, Meter 

These 3 layers create 5 different hybrid pricing models:

1/ Access Tiers (Base only) - Different AI complexity per tier, fair usage policy 

2/ Flat + Unit (Base + Meter) - Platform fee + outcome-based hybrid pricing 

3/ Flat + Limit + Unit (All 3 layers) - Most popular hybrid, includes volume + overages 

4/ Credit-Based (Base + Allowance) - PLG favorite hybrid, but don't fall into cost-plus trap 

5/ Pay-As-You-Go (Meter only) - Pure consumption, AI infrastructure 

The pattern from 400+ transformations: 
Companies using Flat + Limit + Unit (Model 3) are seeing the most traction. Why?

It gives customers predictability (base fee + included volume) while capturing expansion value (usage after allowance).

But, and this is critical, you need safety mechanisms.

→ Predict usage (dashboards, estimators) 
→ Prevent surprises (match reset timing to contracts) 
→ Protect customers (caps, true-up options, don't penalize usage) 

The companies winning with hybrid pricing aren't just picking a trendy model. They're designing the model that fits how their AI actually creates value.

Based on Tremont's research:
Hybrid models are capturing 3-4x more expansion revenue than traditional seat-based pricing.

The question isn't "should we go hybrid?"
It's "which hybrid model fuels OUR growth?"

Which model fits your product? Person doing the work or product doing the work?

Seat_Based_Pricing

At Vista Equity Partners, I learned something that changed how I think about pricing forever.

It wasn't about finding the "perfect price point."

It was about understanding how pricing connects to valuation multiples.

Here's what that looked like in practice:

We'd acquire a portfolio company and immediately audit their pricing. Not to squeeze more revenue out of customers, but to understand if their pricing model supported the growth thesis.

The companies with tight discount controls, clear value-based packaging, and pricing aligned to customer outcomes? They consistently outperformed on valuation multiples.

The ones with ad-hoc discounting, feature-based tiers, and "we charge what competitors charge" mentality? They left millions on the table.

One pattern I saw repeatedly: the pricing model that works for a Series B company scaling the business is completely different from a $100M ARR company optimizing for profitability pre-IPO.

There's no one-size-fits-all.

That's why I started Pricing I/O. To bring that PE-level rigor to growth-stage SaaS companies, without the $1 million McKinsey price tag and 9 months of PowerPoint slides.

We deliver results in weeks, not quarters.
We work in the trenches, not from ivory towers.
We teach teams to own pricing, not create dependency.

Because pricing isn't a one-time project. 
It's a strategic function that evolves with your business.

What's one pricing lesson you wish you'd learned earlier?

li_at

JSESSIONID

63% of AI monetization barriers are pricing-related.
And here's the #1 question I get from CEOs: "Where does AI actually belong in our pricing?"

Most companies are guessing. Chargebee's research shows 29% are just building AI into the core without charging extra.

That's a mistake.

At SaaS Metrics Palooza, I broke down the framework we use with PE-backed companies to decide where AI belongs.

It's not about the technology. It's about the experience.

Three different AI experiences = three different packaging strategies:

1/ Underscore the Core - When AI reinforces what you already do
Slack started with AI as a $10/user add-on. A few months later? Built into Business+ with a 25% price increase.

Why? They realized AI was becoming core to the Slack experience—making search better, recaps faster, answers easier. Not a "nice to have" feature.

2/ Upgrade the More - When AI extends adjacent use cases
ClickUp Brain charges $28/user (their base plan is $7). That's 4x their standard pricing.

Sounds expensive until you realize it's replacing 3-4 other AI productivity tools at $25-30 each. For customers, $28 is a consolidation play and a bargain.

3/ Unlock the New - When AI creates entirely new workflows
Intercom's Fin resolves support tickets autonomously at $0.99 per resolution. 
New TAM, new use case, standalone product.

Those who package based on experience (not just "it's AI so charge more") capture 2-3x more value and see 40% less pricing pushback.

The mistake? Treating all AI features the same.

Your AI that makes existing workflows 10% faster ≠ Your AI that unlocks entirely new capabilities.

Where does your AI actually belong?

McKinsey published a 4000-word guide on AI pricing. 
They're right about the problem. Wrong about the solution.

After analyzing 150 AI vendors, they found that despite $4.4trillion in potential economic value from AI, less than 1% of software spend is actually going to AI products today.

Why? Three consistent blockers: only 30% of companies publish quantifiable ROI, CFOs can't forecast what they'll spend on AI quarter to quarter and pilots fail to scale without proper change management investment.

I agree with all of this. We're seeing the exact same patterns across our 400+ client benchmark.

But here's where McKinsey loses me.

Their solution: "Test with customers and iterate quickly." That's not a strategy. That's expensive guessing.

Here's what I told a $75M ARR CEO who was about to "test" three different AI pricing models:
"You can't test your way to the right pricing without first understanding which experience you're selling."

→ Are you underscoring your core product? 
(AI makes existing workflows faster/better) 

→ Upgrading adjacent use cases? 
(AI extends what you do into new territory) 

→ Or unlocking entirely new capabilities? 
(AI creates workflows that didn't exist before)

That decision shapes everything, your packaging structure, pricing metric, go-to-market motion, whether you embed or sell standalone.

McKinsey's "iterate quickly" approach skips this question entirely.
So companies end up testing random combinations. 

"What if we bundle it?" 
"Let's try consumption-based." 
"Should we do per-seat or per-action?"

Each test costs 3-6 months and thousands in opportunity cost. This is the difference between consultants who drop decks and consultants who work in the trenches.

A 200-page McKinsey deck will tell you that 41% of companies are moving to hybrid models and you should "test and iterate." Great. Now what?

Working in the trenches with your team means asking: What experience is your AI actually creating for customers? Then designing the pricing model that monetizes that experience.

Not copying what Salesforce or Snowflake is doing. Not testing five models and hoping one works.

Companies that got AI pricing right didn't test their way there. They designed the experience first, then built pricing around it.

→ Slack realized AI was becoming core to the messaging experience, built it into Business+ with a 25% price increase. 
→ ClickUp saw AI extending productivity workflows, charged $28/user as an add-on to consolidate other tools. 
→ Intercom built AI that automated support entirely, 99¢ per resolution, standalone product.

Three different experiences. Three different pricing strategies. All intentional from Day 1.

McKinsey is right that this is the biggest shift in software since SaaS. But "test and iterate" isn't how you capture the opportunity.

Context without expertise is aimless. Expertise without context is pointless. You need both.

The discount death spiral: one deal at 30% off, another at 35%, your average hits 25%. 

Across 400+ SaaS companies, we see this pattern destroy margins and valuation multiples. 

Here's how PE-backed companies fix it with a 3-tier approval process. 

Full breakdown here 👆

McKinsey found that successful AI pilots require $3 in change management for every $1 in model development.

Most companies spend $0 on change management.
Then wonder why pilots don't scale to production.

After analyzing 150 AI vendors, McKinsey identified "sustained adoption" as the #3 blocker to AI monetization (behind value communication and price predictability).

Here's what's happening:

Companies invest heavily in building AI capabilities. Model development, infrastructure, data pipelines, millions of dollars.

Then they launch to customers and assume adoption will just happen.
It doesn't.

Without forward-deployed engineering, employee training, performance monitoring, and process integration, teams don't change their workflows. The AI sits unused. No ROI gets proven. Contracts don't renew.

The $3-for-$1 rule is McKinsey's finding from companies that successfully scaled AI pilots. For every dollar spent building the model, they spent three dollars on change management.

But here's what most pricing discussions miss:
Adoption friction isn't just an operations problem. It's a pricing problem.

This is the "L" in the REAL framework I shared at SaaS Metrics Palooza—Lift. How much effort does the customer need to invest to get value?

The more friction, the less pricing power you have.

→ High friction (3-6 months to value) means customers are skeptical. They want pilots. They negotiate hard. They're not willing to pay premium prices for something they're not sure will work.

→ Low friction (2-3 weeks to value) means customers see results fast. They're confident. They're willing to pay 2-3x more because the risk is lower.

Last month, I worked with a company that cut their AI onboarding from 12 weeks to 3 weeks through better change management, pre-built integrations, forward-deployed engineers, structured training.

Their close rates went up 40%. But they forgot to reprice.

They were still charging based on the old 12-week implementation timeline. Leaving money on the table.

Many companies forget to revisit pricing after they've reduced adoption friction. If you cut implementation time by 75%, you should be capturing more value, not the same amount.

Based on our 400+ client benchmark, companies that systematically reduce adoption friction and reprice accordingly capture 2-3x more revenue per customer than those who just focus on the product.

The pattern: 
Invest in change management → Measure time-to-value improvement → Reprice to reflect lower friction.

Adoption friction directly impacts pricing power.
Lower the friction, raise the price.

Are you investing $3 in change management for every $1 in AI development? 
Or are you building capabilities no one will adopt?

AIPilots

Your economics typically won't be as great out of the gate when it comes to AI, but the path to make it better over time is gonna be the key.

I shared this at SaaS Metrics Palooza because too many SaaS leaders are panicking about day-one AI pricing economics instead of building the right improvement path.

Here's the specific framework I shared:

Secondary limits that actually work:
→ Cap data sources (5 basic, 15 pro, unlimited enterprise)
→ Retention windows (30/90/365 days by tier)
→ Processing limits (hours per month, API calls)
→ Response time SLAs (24hr/4hr/1hr support)

The credit bonus math:
Instead of $1,200 ARR at $80/month (20% discount)
Do $1,200 ARR at $100/month + 20% usage credits

Same customer investment, but you protect pricing integrity and create margin expansion as they grow into those bonus credits.

Use this 3-step process as your 30-day action plan ↓

What secondary limit will you implement first?

Pricing

LLM costs have dropped 80% annually for two straight years.

Most AI companies responded by lowering prices or making features "unlimited."

McKinsey's research on 150 vendors shows that's the wrong move. 
Companies that maintained or raised prices despite falling costs saw 2-3x higher revenue growth than those who passed savings to customers.

Yet most are doing the opposite.

Jasper AI went from $10 per 5,000 words to unlimited generation included free. Sounds customer-friendly. But here's what that misses:
Your AI isn't getting cheaper. It's getting more valuable.

Two years ago, AI did single-step tasks, generate an email, summarize a doc, answer a question.

Today, AI agents execute multi-step workflows autonomously. Research across databases, draft outreach, update CRM, schedule follow-ups.

Your costs dropped 80%. 
Your complexity increased 10x.

Customers don't pay for compute. They pay for outcomes.

Adobe got this right. 
Started with embedded AI and simple features. 
Moved to standalone SKUs at higher prices as they added video generation, translation, and complex workflows.

Their costs went down. Their prices went up.

Q1 2025: $125M in AI revenue, expecting to double by year-end.

Only 16% of SaaS companies commercialized AI as standalone products. But those 16% report 2-3x higher customer traction and revenue.

The pattern across companies getting this right: costs fall, prices stay flat or rise with added capabilities. 

Use margin gains to add complexity, better integrations, multi-step workflows, higher quality.

Price based on value delivered, not costs incurred.

Based on our 400+ client benchmark, companies that maintain value-based pricing during falling infrastructure costs capture 4-5x more economic value.

Falling LLM costs are a margin opportunity, not a customer discount.

Question for your team: Are we pricing our AI based on the value customers get, or the costs we incur?

Most B2B SaaS companies are about to copy their way into a churn crisis.
This is the conversation I'm having with CEOs and boards 3x per week.

I just watched a $50M ARR company copy a competitor's usage-based pricing model.
Six months later: CAC up 60%, churn jumped from 8% to 14%, sales cycles doubled.

What works at scale can destroy an early-stage company.

Before you change your pricing model, answer these three questions:

1. How do your customers actually consume value?
Not how you think. How they actually behave.

CRM where value scales with team size? Per-seat still works.
Data platform where value comes from queries? Usage-based fits.

2. What's your sales motion?
High-touch enterprise sales can handle complexity.
PLG with self-serve? If prospects can't understand their cost in 30 seconds, you've lost them.

3. What's your growth stage?
Series A proving PMF needs different pricing than $100M ARR pre-IPO.

The shift from license-based to outcome-based pricing is real.
But context without expertise is aimless, and expertise without context is pointless.

Just dropped a video about it ↓

https://lnkd.in/gNGqitFU

I break down the complete framework, why AI is accelerating this shift, how to model impact before launch, and how to test without blowing things up.

You don't hire consultants because you have a strategy.
You hire them because you don't.

A CPO told me recently:
"The team wants to start quickly. They have urgent things they're nervous about because nobody knows what they're doing, bluntly."

Not "we're pursuing a strategic initiative."
Just: nobody knows what they're doing and we're scared.

This is how every consulting project actually starts.
But nobody admits it.

Here's what really happens:

Your company launches an AI product. 
Pricing team guesses at a model. 
Three months in, churn spikes. 
Board asks questions. 
Nobody has answers.

Or: Competitor changes pricing. Sales scrambles. Everyone has opinions. Nobody has data. CFO demands a strategy by next board meeting.

Or: New product launching in 60 days. Pricing still says "TBD" in the deck. CEO keeps asking "what are we charging?" and the room goes quiet.

That's when you call.

Not because you woke up wanting to "optimize monetization strategy."

Because you're 30 days from a board meeting with no idea what to tell investors about your AI pricing.

Consultants sell transformation.
You're buying panic relief.

When you say "we need to move fast", you're not impatient. You're scared and running out of time.

When you say "the team is nervous", you're admitting you don't have confidence in your approach.

When you ask "how quickly can you start?", you're really asking: how soon can you stop us from making an expensive mistake?

The consultants who get it don't lead with "here's our transformation methodology."

They lead with "here's how we'll de-risk this for you in the next 30 days."

If you're evaluating consultants and the process feels like it's taking forever, this is why.

You need someone to de-risk the urgent thing. 
They're selling you a six-month transformation.

The best projects start by de-risking the urgent thing first. Building the transformation second.

When's the last time you were brutally honest with a consultant about why you're really hiring them?

"We're paying for 20 seats but only 5 people use it."

You're charging per seat. 
But your customers don't get value from the number of seats, they get value from tasks automated, data processed, or outcomes achieved.

This is value metric misalignment. And it's killing your renewals.

Real example: 
AI-powered task automation company charging $50/user/month. 
Customer signs up with 20 seats at $1,000/month. 
But only 5 people actively use it.

They're paying $1,000/month but perceiving $250 worth of value.

At renewal: 
"Why are we paying for 20 seats when only 5 people use this?" 
They churn.

The fix isn't lowering the price. It's changing the value metric.

→ If value comes from tasks automated, charge for tasks, like Zapier does. 
→ If value comes from data processed, charge for data volume. 
→ If value comes from outcomes, charge for outcomes.

When your pricing metric aligns with how customers actually consume value, they can justify the cost.

Across 400+ B2B SaaS companies we've worked with at Pricing I/O, this is the #1 cause of pricing-driven churn.

What's your pricing metric? 
Does it match how your customers actually get value?

$60K for 6 months of value? That's too expensive.
This is how customers justify churning, even when your product works.

I see this pattern constantly: products that require data integration, team adoption, or behavior change take 6+ months to deliver full value.

But companies charge full price from day one.

So at renewal, customers do the math: 
"I paid $60K but only got 6 months of real value. That's $10K/month. Too expensive."

And they churn.

Not because the product failed. 
Because the pricing model didn't account for the time it takes to realize value.

The carousel above shows three ways to fix this: ramp pricing, success milestones, or hybrid models.

The goal? 
Make it easy for customers to justify the cost at every stage of their journey

If it takes 6 months to see full value:
Don't charge full price from day one

The value may be real.
But it takes time to materialize.

If your pricing model doesn't account for ramp time, customers will churn before they see the full value.

Your best customers are paying you 40% less than your worst customers.
And that's why you have a churn problem.

I see this pattern constantly at Pricing I/O.

A CEO comes to us: 
"We've invested millions in product development. Hired more CSMs. Improved onboarding. But our churn rate is still 15%."

So we pull their data.

Legacy customers, 5+ years with the company, love the product, paying 40% less than new customers.

New customers? Churning after 12 months. 
Primary reason: "Can't justify the ROI."

Most CEOs think their legacy customers are just more loyal.
But that's not it.

Your legacy customers are paying less, but they understand exactly what they’re getting for the money.

Your new customers? 
They're paying more, but they can't connect what they pay to what they get.

When we run pricing surveys with churned customers, here's what they tell us:
"We weren't using enough of the product to make it worth it."
"We couldn't justify the cost."
"The ROI wasn't there."

These aren't product complaints. These are pricing complaints.

Your product didn't fail them. Your pricing model did.

If your legacy customers love the product and your new customers churn, it's not the product. It's the pricing.

The product didn't change. 
The pricing did.

Across 400+ B2B SaaS companies, I see this constantly: 
High churn isn't always a product problem. It's often a pricing problem.

Are your best customers paying you the least?

Building a SaaS product is the easy part.
The hard part? 

Knowing what to charge for.
Not how much. What.

I've worked with 400+ companies on pricing transformations, and the most common mistake isn't bad pricing, it's never defining the value metric in the first place.

They default to per-user because competitors do it. 
Or per-seat because the billing system made it easy. 
Or per-transaction because... honestly, no one remembers why.

None of those are strategies. They're inherited defaults.

Here's the question that actually matters: 
What is the thing that, when your customer gets more of it, they're clearly getting more value?

It's not always obvious.

For a fintech client, it wasn't users. It was connected bank accounts, that's what correlated with value delivered.
For others, it might be projects managed, workflows automated, or outcomes achieved.

The right value metric does three things: it scales with customer success, customers understand it intuitively, and it's predictable enough to forecast.

"Per user" used to check all those boxes. But AI is breaking that model.

When automation reduces headcount, when one person can do the work of five, charging per user starts to punish the efficiency you're selling.

I'm seeing companies rethink this now, before their customers start asking why they're being penalized for getting better at their jobs.

What's your value metric? 
And when's the last time you questioned whether it's still the right one?

A client who's known me for years just evaluated five other consultants before hiring me.
That should terrify you.

This week, a billion-dollar SaaS company closed with us on a pricing transformation. 
Their Chief Product Officer and I go way back, we worked together at Vista Equity Partners. 
He knows my work. Trusts me. We literally survived the trenches together.

But when his company needed to hire a pricing consultant, he still looked at six different options.
During our debrief, I asked what made the difference.
He said: "When I did the reference calls, I asked each vendor's clients a specific question: Would you use this consultant for any type of pricing problem, or just this specific one?"
For the other five consultants, clients said: "Actually, they're great at this thing, but not so much at that. For that other problem, I'd probably use a different vendor."
For us: "I'd use them for anything. And have, multiple times."
Here's the uncomfortable truth nobody's talking about:
Your relationship doesn't protect you anymore.
Your client can love you. Trust you. Have worked with you before. And they'll still compare you with five others.
Why?
Because they've been burned by consultants who solved one problem and disappeared. Who dropped 200-page decks and never showed up again. Who created dependency instead of capability.
So now they do real diligence. Doesn't matter who you are.
What decides the deal isn't your pitch. It's what your clients say about you when you're not in the room.
"Would you hire this consultant again? For a completely different problem? Or just this one?"
If the answer is "just this one," you're a disposable solution. An expensive band-aid.
If the answer is "for anything," you're a partner.
What's the difference?
Disposable consultants solve problems. Partners build capability.
Disposable consultants deliver a model. Partners teach the team to execute it independently.
Disposable consultants create dependency. Partners make themselves less necessary over time.
The executive said something else that stuck with me:
"We wanted to make sure we didn't bias our process by our relationship. So we did the diligence even though we already knew you from the Vista days."
Your relationship gets you on the shortlist.
What your former clients say about you is what closes the deal.
In 2025, everyone's making those reference calls. Everyone's comparing. And the question they're asking is:
"Do you make me better after you leave?"
If the answer isn't "yes," you're losing deals you thought were already yours.
When's the last time you asked your clients: "Would you hire me again for a completely different problem?"
If you're not sure of the answer, you already know.

"We're not using it enough to justify the cost."
When SaaS customers say this at renewal, it's not a usage problem. It's a pricing problem.

After analyzing hundreds of B2B SaaS churn calls, I've identified 3 customer churn red flags:

Red Flag #1: "We're not using it enough"
→ Your pricing metric doesn't align with usage patterns

Red Flag #2: "We can't justify the ROI"
→ Your pricing model doesn't account for value realization timeline

Red Flag #3: "It's too expensive for what we're getting"
→ Wrong customer segmentation driving churn

If you're hearing these in renewal calls, fix your SaaS pricing model, not your product.

Watch more insights here:
https://lnkd.in/g-7XkY9X

LLM costs dropped 80% for 2 years straight. Should you lower AI prices?

McKinsey analyzed 150 vendors: Companies that maintained/raised prices saw 2-3x higher revenue growth.

Why? Your AI isn't getting cheaper, it's getting MORE valuable.

18 months ago: Single tasks
Today: Multi-step autonomous workflows

Adobe's playbook: Costs ⬇️ → Prices ⬆️ → $125M Q1 revenue

What to tell your CFO: Customers pay for outcomes, not compute.

Source: McKinsey 2025 report

Most companies make pricing an after thought.

Most companies also are never able to use pricing as the superpower it actually is.  

I have had the privilege of overseeing revenue management for over $6 billion in revenue across a diverse range of industries during the past decade. Throughout this experience, I've gained a deep understanding of the critical role that pricing plays in business success. 

I'm passionate about sharing my expertise and insights to help organizations harness the power of pricing strategies to improve profitability and overall performance.

Karan Sood

Pricing skills should be pie-shaped.


Most pricing professionals grow deep in only one or two areas.


The ones who rise will build a 4-layer toolkit.

Before we dive in, if this resonates, please like + share so more people in pricing see this.



1) Core Skill - Pricing: This is your foundation.

You need breadth across pricing models AND depth in how pricing actually works across industries. It’s not enough to just know one space.


You should know how to price a widget, a service contract… a subscription… a perpetual license… usage pricing… value-based vs. cost-plus.


Your pricing instinct comes from knowing many models - not just the one in your company. Talk to people outside of your core.



2) Essential Skills - Finance + Industry

Finance is non-negotiable. If you don’t know what’s inside a P&L, you should start now. You should be able to understand:

AR
BOM
payment terms
reserves
accruals
margin math contribution vs. gross…

You should be able to slay a P&L, 7 ways to Sunday.

Industry knowledge is the other essential. Knowing the market, competitors, and the value chain. It will let you speak with authority in any room.



3) Preferred - Soft Skills:

This is where careers are made. Don’t underestimate this. Don’t just be the excel ninja, that is tablestakes. 

Need to grow your Influence.
Be better at executive communication.
Stakeholder management.
Framing difficult conversations.
Reading a room full of execs. 
Know when to be firm and flexible.



4) Desirable - Cross-Functional Knowledge

This is your long-tail advantage. Know other areas of the business like:

Sales and Marketing
Operations
Contracts
Supply chain
Commercial terms
Basic legal understanding
Internal processes


You don’t need to master everything, but knowing how things actually work makes you a far more strategic partner.


Develop this skill set and your impact becomes impossible to ignore.


If you made it this far, please: 

👍🏼Like it or 
♻️share it with everyone
✉️ Send it to a peer.
💾 Save it for yourself

————————
Making conversations like this easier with PricingTribe.

Something pricing. Be a part of PricingTribe.

5 tips I gave the MBA and a Masters Class.


1) You can’t escape pricing. No matter what field you end up weather that’s finance, marketing, or product, you won’t be far from pricing. So empower yourself.


2) Remember nothing will increase profitability for any company you work for like pricing. So when asked for ideas for next year, remember ‘Pricing Optimization’.


3) Whatever pricing decision you make, do it ethically. Remember very fine line between what’s good for profit va what’s ethical and good for customers.


4) Build something. Anything. It has never been easier to build. Build a website, an app, a  newsletter. Whatever gives you an edge. Learn to use loveable and claude !


5) In a world of AI, cherish human connections. Network relentlessly !! I wish I did in univ, I thought that was a chore not worth the effort. I wish I listened…


6) Decide your future role now, don’t leave it for luck for after graduation. If you dream it up, then lot of forces will align to make it happen. 


7) Add people from your future domain now on LinkedIn. Chat, and meet them virtually. What’s the worse that can happen ? You got nothing to loose.


8) Add the 1% extra in your job search effort. That 1% could be finding a referral, messaging the hiring manager, sending a pain letter, sending your portfolio, connecting with an alumni….all these added up or even individually will make you stand out.


9) Cherish your time at the univ with your peers. Some of you will become lifelong friends. As gruesome and challening this time is, you will never be back in school once you are done. This will be it !! 


10) This holiday season use Keepa to save yourself some money on Amazon, buy airline tickets in incongito mode on android :D


Thank you to my alma matter and Dave Bussière  for bringing me back to the same halls and classrooms that I once roamed as a student. It was good to be back !! 


___________________
Building PricingTribe.

No alternative text description for this image

Stop obsessing over price. Your customers aren’t. More you obsess, more you fear.


Price is just one of the many triggers in a buying decision - and often not the biggest one.

Usually it’s the 3rd or the 4th factor.


Here’s one of my favourite research examples:


Alan Sawyer and Peter Dickson once stood in a supermarket aisle watching people shop.
They noted which items went into the cart… then asked those same shoppers the price of the item they just picked up.


The results?

- Half the shoppers were wrong.
- Most underestimated the price by ~15%.
- One-fifth couldn’t recall the price at all.


If people can’t recall the price of something they literally bought 30 seconds ago, what does that say?

You try, do you remember the price of the last item you purchased ?



It tells you this:

Price matters, but it rarely drives the entire decision. And only 15%~20% of customers are truly price sensitive.


Yet most companies behave like 100% of their customers are price sensitive - and they underprice themselves into the ground.


Yes, there are exceptions like commodities, hyper-competitive categories, and recessionary pressure. But even then, those conditions are temporary.



The fundamentals never change:
- Build a brand.
- Obsess over value.
- Obsess over quality.
- Obsess over delivery.
- Obsess over your customer.


Retail or B2B? Same principles apply.


Price is a signal. Value is the engine.

If this is useful:

✉️ send it to someone 
♻️ Repost it to your network
💾 Save it for the future.


————————-
Building PricingTribe. Ask me anything about the community.

I didn’t say that. John did.
John who ? Baba yaga ?
(Had to ! IYKYK)

I love this quote.

Lot of products fall into this bucket. 

Apple, 
Coke, 
P&G, 
lululemon, 
starbucks, 
Air jordans, 
Sonos, 
Dyson,
Disney trips,

List goes on…


But honestly I have no idea about the origin of the author. Anyone has any idea about the John Harrison who said it ? 

——————————-
PricingTribe community is going live soon for Alpha founding cohort.

Starting or stepping into a new pricing role?
Don’t dream big. Dream small.

I know the instinct. You want to take on the biggest, baddest pricing problem.

Trust me - I’ve done it. And I won’t do it again. 

Here is the mistake pricing professionals make in new roles:

They aim for a big win too early when they have 0 credability.


But early in the role is about sustainability, credibility, and momentum. Your first few months should be about small wins.


Fix the things everyone ignored. Simple things like clear the backlog people were too lazy or too scared to touch.


These small wins do the heavy lifting. They show your execution power. The wins are small but so are the losses.



Small becomes smooth. Smooth becomes fast. Fast becomes trust.


And trust is the real skill in pricing. You are not going to go far without it.



Why does this matter?


Pricing is already a cross-discipline battlefield  with Sales, Product, Finance, Ops, Execs. Everyone has an opinion, and none of them match.


When you take on a big pricing overhaul too early, two things happen:


- Time to value increases.
-  Cost to value increases.


That’s when red flags appear. And when big projects fail, the losses get amplified.


The “I told you it wouldn’t work” rhetoric takes over. Your credibility takes a hit.



This is why I always advocate for small execution early on. Frequent, visible, low-risk impact before the big swings.


What do small wins look like?


- Fix clunky approval workflows
- Clean messy price lists
- Delete old SKUs or discount rules
- Tighten discount guardrails
- Run simple PVM or waterfall analyses
- Repair spreadsheets everyone fears
- Schedule 1:1s with Sales
- Shadow a few customer calls


Small actions. Big intent. Bigger impact.


Go small and go far !!
————-
PricingTribe community is live. Slowly onboarding founding members. If you applied, your invite will come soon in coming weeks keep an eye out for ‘PricingTribe’ in your emails.

5 fundamental questions in Pricing: 

1) What value are you creating? Economic/Emotional.

2) Who is it truly for? Your ideal ICP.

3) Why is it worth this price ? WTP.
 
4) What proof do you have that customer agree ? Research.

5) Who inside the company believes in this price enough to defend it? Person of Influence.


You can elasticity-model, price-index, A/B test and competitor-benchmark all day. You can debate pricing ownership till the cows come home. 

But if you answered one of those questions wrong, everything downstream is garbage. 


The real work in pricing is answering those 5 questions — clearly, consistently, and courageously in all rooms. 


This comes from 17 years of defending prices at all levels in all rooms. Its never easy to defend pricing when everyone can be better at pricing than you ! 

-------------
The goal of the PricingTribe community is to help you elevate your pricing effectiveness and bring like minded pricing professionals together.

It's not the CEO's responsibility to price. 

Just like its not their responsibility to create a product, or do marketing or take customer service calls. It's to support the creation of the best outcome. 

Too many people suggest CEO's role should be the final approver or should own pricing or team should roll up to CEO (good luck with that one). Maybe in niche cases, smaller companies. In most cases they won't have the bandwidth or the org structure to support it. 

CEO's role in pricing in opinion is to empower and to signal.  


Empowerment: 
To create the right atmosphere for pricing to thrive. Making sure product, finance, marketing and pricing are collaborating at the right phases in the right way. Making sure meaningful discussions are having, and right questions are getting asked. 

Even a simple questions like: 

- Has pricing seen this product ? 
- How will we communicate value ? 
- At what stage do we revaluate pricing ?
- What are the pricing KPI to monitor ? 
- Can product-finance-marketing bring aligned reco ? 

Those questions alone will arm teams with a lot of meaningful info and create space for dialogues. 

Signaling:
Second important part is "Signaling", internally and externally. 

If you watch closely, the best CEO's during annual and quarterly reports will communicate their pricing intent. What they intend to do on price. This allows them to signal where they are headed, and where they would like the customers to follow: 

External Simple signals like: 

- We are not going to compete on price. 
- We are going for aggressive market capture
- We are launching new value products
- Costs are rising, we may take price up

Those signals express pricing intent, to be read by the market and customers. It limits price wars often when executed correctly. Look at companies like Pepsi, Coke, Unilever, P&G, Ikea, McDonald's, etc and look up analyst transcripts. 

If you are looking to build pricing confidence, yes make it your mission to get alignment from CEO but don't make it your mission to have your roles roll up to CEO's. Well intentioned as it may be, you are better off being a better collaborator for the CEO. 

If you want to talk to other like minded pricing professionals on topics like this, the place to be 'PricingTribe Community'. Now slowly letting people in.

#Pricing Giving Wednesday Again !
Last time we made at least 8 connections. 
That's 7 more than my target. 

Help like this can be life changing. 

I still have an inbox full of people looking for new roles or candidates. 

You know where those roles exist. 

Some of you are hiring. 
Some of you have connections there.
Some of you have employee referrals.
Some of you have career advice. 

Here is a snippet what I have: 

- I-Hsuan  is hiring for a pricing analyst in US

- Umesh is looking for pricing candidates in India.

- Sahima is looking for 2 smart pricing specialists in UK

- Jonathan is hiring for a commercial finance and pricing analyst in Georgia US

- Other Jonathan is looking for a very smart SAAS Monetization Sr. manager

 

These roles have 100's of applicants. But I can help you get front of line. You just have to ask ! 


If you are looking for a role, tell me so I can make a connection. If you know of a role tell me, I have a inbox full of people looking for roles.  

Tell me openly here or privately in inbox. 


♻️ Repost it to your network
📧 Forward it to someone 
💾 Save it for the future. 

PS: Also, while you are here Steven Forth, and Mark Stiving and I are going on a webinar tomorrow to discuss the state of pricing in Q3. What happened ? What is happening to compute cost, what is happening with credit models, vibe coding...  

Join us or access recording. Link in comments later. 

-------------
Building PricingTribe. Founding members invite going out soon.

It was such an amazing day ! To walk the halls again with students who are currently going through the program, was a powerful reminder of the power of giving back to the very place that set us and me for success. If it wasn’t for Odette, I would have never started my career in pricing as a co-op and transformer it into something inpactful 17 years later. 

I wish this cohort of business students all the best for success in the program and in the career. My inbox and my network is always available.

It was an incredible full-circle moment as Karan Sood, an esteemed Odette MBA alumnus, returned to present to the current MBA cohort on Pricing Strategy! 

We are so thankful to Dave Bussière for arranging this visit and bringing Karan all the way from Toronto to share his expert knowledge on using pricing as a key lever for profit. Hearing directly from an alumnus who followed a path similar to ours is truly inspiring. Thank you, Karan, for investing your time in us!

#OdetteSchoolofBusiness #AlumniSuccess #PricingStrategy #BusinessInsights

#PricingTribe Community update. 
Behind the scenes.


Here is what goes behind the scenes of launching a community. So many things you learn were outside of my wheelhouse. 


- Creating the PricingTribe web front end

- Creating a robust backend to capture info

- Creating workflows to capture application

- Creating product offer, recreating it, and then again

- Creating all design elements from scratch

- Selecting a platform, only to scratch it

- Creating banners, layouts, visuals

- Creating meeting and event cadence

- Learning to use a community platform

- Selecting founding and beta members from 170+ applications

- Creating groups of people with similar goals. 

- Creating onboarding workflows etc...


List goes on and on... 


All so that members can have the best experience inside the community once they enter. Because I want to create a space that speaks to pricing professionals and built for them..  Community should revolve around the pricing professionals looking for transformation.. Its a place for them !


Founding members are getting the invites today. These members will help test out the process and systems for the rest of the members coming in soon in January. Everyone will be notified about application status soon. 


Ask me anything about the community..

-----------
Building PricingTribe.

#pricingtribe. How do you solve for this ?

In the end, the primary obstacle to deal success isn’t customer’s lack of appreciation for the “supplier’s value”; it’s customer’s inability to establish broad-based agreement on what they’re trying to solve.

Excerpt from ‘The Framemaking Sale’ by Brent Adamson and @karl schmidt .



Sometimes it’s not the value delivered, but more clarity on the customer side on what kind of value needs to be delivered.


————————
Building Pricingtribe.

Why is credit bases pricing confusing ?
Can Vibe coding really help pricing ? If how ? 
Compute cost is rising, so should your price ? 

Lots of questions. 

Luckily we have • Mark Stiving, Ph.D. . and Steven Forth  and this good looking man !!Available to answer today.


Last change to register for webinar/recording: 


We are covering the biggest shifts hitting pricing teams right now:


- Token and credit based pricing in AI
- Vibe coding
- The major pricing moves in Q3
• The rising cost of compute

If pricing feels like it is changing faster than ever, that is because it is.


This session gets you caught up in under an hour.

We go live today at 12 noon EST. 

Last chance to register:

https://lnkd.in/gVszQyuw

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taplio

The Battle

Marcos Rivera

Karan Sood

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Marcos Rivera's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreMarcos Rivera's LinkedIn Performance