AMA: Airtable Senior Director, Portfolio & Engagement Product Marketing, Christy Roach on Pricing and Packaging
December 28 @ 9:00AM PST
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Airtable Senior Director, Portfolio & Engagement Product Marketing, Christy Roach on Pricing and Packaging
Top Questions
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. Fully agree that pricing is tough. I’ll add my own point of view on top of that: pricing is tough and there is no “good” pricing. I have been lucky to work at 5 great B2B SaaS companies, and each of them have had frustrations with pricing, gone through pricing changes, and knew th......Read More
660 Views
1 request
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
I assume this new pricing model often comes with packaging changes. My hot take (maybe not so hot) is that packaging is much more important and impactful than your dollar price. If you’ve implemented a change in pricing and packaging, use the changes in packaging to drive adoption and upsell. May......Read More
645 Views
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Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. There are so many questions you could ask but I’ll give you a few: 1. Why do we want to go enterprise? How does landing with the enterprise land in our stack ranked priorities? Ask these to figure out how conviced your company is about going into the enterprise. You want ......Read More
1884 Views
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Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. Not to get too philosophical but I find there’s often too much focus on who is the “decider” on pricing and often not enough alignment across product, finance, data, product marketing, and sales around how we all work together on pricing. At this point, I don’t feel strongly that ......Read More
776 Views
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Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. This is one of the hardest types of pricing work that I’ve done. The biggest things to me were: 1. Understand how interconnected these products should be: Do you expect these products to be used together frequently? Are they coexisting with one another and can be used......Read More
600 Views
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Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. I’d actually prioritize messaging your overall product and what your vision is for the full functionality of your product. I say this mostly to point out that having messaging that’s wildly different between plans usually means you need an overall messaging framework first. 2. Th......Read More
1021 Views
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Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
This is a GREAT question and one that I don’t think a lot of PMMs are asking. My take: Your overall product positioning is about so much more than your specific features or your price. It’s about what your product does. What problems it solves. What value it provides to the business and the buyer......Read More
849 Views
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Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. Quick note that in most of my experience, new features are rarely “priced” as a standalone charge unless you’re launching an entirely new solution to the market, so when you’re making the decision you’re often deciding which pricing plan the feature goes in. In that world here’s h......Read More
788 Views
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Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. For single versus bundled solutions I usually make a process for the PM & PMM to determine: 1. The goals for the feature in usage and revenue 2. What the best customer experience looks like and our recommended usage path, as well as what the customer experience looks lik......Read More
645 Views
1 request
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. “Enterprise” can mean so many different things to different people. An enterprise plan and enterprise customer are not always the same thing. I’ve worked at PLG-focused companies where Enterprise has actually meant more of a commercial or mid-market customer, and at other places w......Read More
1736 Views
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Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
A lot of great content in the market, specifically on Sharebird and PMM groups. I’ve also learned a lot by meeting up and talking pricing with folks across product, PMM, and finance who work on pricing to swap stories and get their insight. Do a lot of digging online about how your competitors an......Read More
859 Views
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Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. Usage Based Pricing is popular for many reasons. I don’t have the exact answer but my hunch is that there are more and more products built to be use by broader swaths of users than there used to be. In this world, a software bill can often get bloated with folks who signed up or g......Read More
811 Views
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Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
Without a ton of context on how your company works and what the decision making process looks like, I’d say my biggest advice on what to do here is to lay out the full business case and options. When I hear a big flag from a VP of Sales that there’s an issue, it’s important to pause. It doesn’t m......Read More
584 Views
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Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. Going upmarket is hard, but important to do. I think increasing your price and tackling a new customer segment should always start by looking through the product lens. The biggest first thing is to define the overall value your product brings (or would bring) to a larger customer ......Read More
1484 Views
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Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. Where to start! Here are some heavy hitters: 1. Enabling your team is as important as every other step of planning: Pricing and packaging is vital for your customer-facing teams to know and be resourced around. Usually, one training meeting isn’t going to cut it s......Read More
854 Views
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Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. There are a ton of “intangibles” that we often refer to when talking about what makes a product valuable. A huge factor in this is user experience and the design of a software. In B2B PMM, one of the biggest shifts I’ve seen over the past decade plus is that customers expect the e......Read More
722 Views
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Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. I’ve seen pricing owned by PM, PMM, or finance at different companies. The world that has worked best for me is Product Management as overall directly responsible team or “owner” with PMM as a key stakeholder and part of the decision making group. This is likely because I’ve spent......Read More
1175 Views
1 request
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. Too many to count! I’ll give you a rundown of my top ones: 1. Keep the conversation focused on value not price: The more you focus on price, the more the customer will. The more you focus on value in your messaging, the more your customer will see your product as valuable......Read More
1168 Views
1 request
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. You’ll likely have a shortlist of the competitors you go head to head against. They should always be on your checklist and the folks you look at most closely. We always use them to checkpoint the packaging of new features, study why and how they make the pricing decisions they do,......Read More
1018 Views
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Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. The best advice I have for messaging around a price increase is to clear, concise, and customer focused. No matter why you’re changing your prices or how justifiable the price change is, a customer is not going to be excited about having to pay more. The biggest mistakes I see in ......Read More
1784 Views
2 requests
Christy Roach
AssemblyAI VP of Marketing • December 28
1. I’ll start by saying that if you’re consistently hearing that feedback, your job as a PMM is not just to come up with messaging to handle the objection but also to make sure you’re getting to the root of the issue, really understanding that feedback, and bringing that to the large......Read More
1475 Views
2 requests
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