To be of Value: Mark Fulford speaks to Mark Billige of Simon-Kucher
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What’s the difference between price and value and why does it matter for SaaS?
Unlike price, price is a really binary, simple concept. It's number it's got a number in it, it's quantifiable, it's also very easy to compare a price. Value is the opposite, right? Value is very intangible, very hard to quantify, and importantly very hard to compare.
Welcome to Orbit, the HG podcast series where we speak to leaders and innovators from across the software and tech ecosystem to discuss the key trends that change how we all do business. I'm Mark Fulford, head of HG's Portfolio Growth Team. Today I have the pleasure to welcome Mark Billich, CEO of Simon Coocher, a consulting firm who helped their clients grow their revenues and profits by optimising their strategy, marketing, pricing and sales. Hello Mark, thanks for joining me. Hi Mark, great to be here. Thank you very much. So at HG, we think very carefully about growth, and we have a growth framework which really looks at the key drivers of growth for businesses, covering new logo acquisition, customer expansion, retention and renewals.
But one of the most important ones is obviously pricing and value proposition. And hence us discussing today, because we think it's a really important topic. I think even more so in today's world where inflation is raising its ugly head. guess it'd be really interesting just to to start the conversation to ask you about how you thinking about inflation and how it's impacting certainly software and tech firms today in the marketplace.
Yeah, and y you're right. I mean, you can have all the best pricing plans in the world, but now all of a sudden they look very, very different in a in a world with sort of ten percent plus inflation. So I think software's quite interesting as well because here we talk about mainly I think labour inflation and and cost inflation on that side and and whatever happens, that never goes back again. So that's here to stay now. So that's ratcheted up. And I have to say that my biggest insight at the moment, working with various clients, is most are massively underprepared. Yeah. I think uh in the past and in and and software in particular has always dealt with that relatively well. A lot of that have been dealt with through contracts and and inflators in contracts, but they were always around kind of an RPI level, one, two percent.
Now we're dealing with double-digit inflation, and let's be honest. Most managers and leaders of companies haven't probably dealt with that in their entire career span. We have to go back fifteen, twenty years before we had that kind of inflation.
I like that, that whole that whole concept of how are we delivering value to our customers and making that part of the conversation. And and I think from what I've seen that the discussion around value is often we've we've lost a lot of that muscle memory around suddenly it's about justifying value and talking about the value to companies. How do you guys go about thinking about helping equip people to discuss value and talk about value when when you're working with the with your clients?
Yeah, and you're right, 'cause value is uh unlike price, price is a really binary, simple concept. It's num it's a got a number in it, it's quantifiable, it's also very easy to compare a price. Value is the opposite, right? Value is very intangible. Very hard to quantify and importantly very hard to compare between alternatives. And so, of course, that whole concept of pricing power relies, as you said, on some kind of value power, which is to say that I create some value for a customer. So first observation is most companies create a lot more value than they think. They're very bad. They're often often quite humble, I think, and too introspective on that, that they
How is double‑digit inflation changing pricing strategies for software companies?
Uh, they're too quick to sort of worry about value delivery and because I think you you focus on the bad things you hear and you forget the really good things you hear, right? And you focus on the churn number, y you forget that ninety X percent of the base renew every year and they're super happy, right?
Yeah.
So I think the first thing is that sort of a bit of confidence to think about value and then to talk about it, particularly in an inflationary environment, it's a it's a training moment, particularly for a sales force, to have a very different kind of conversation, to really talk about value delivered, and to actually I think lean into the pricing conversation to say, listen, you know, we we charge this price because we deliver great value.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What’s the difference between price and value and why does it matter for SaaS?
0:00–3:04
2
How is double‑digit inflation changing pricing strategies for software companies?
3:04–5:48
3
Why do most SaaS firms struggle to articulate the value they deliver to customers?
5:48–8:11
4
What pricing models best align with the value customers actually receive?
8:11–10:16
5
How can usage‑based or consumption‑based pricing help manage inflation risk?
10:16–12:24
6
Who should own the pricing function in a tech organization – finance, marketing, or sales?
12:24–15:01
7
Which pricing KPIs should CEOs track to drive revenue quality and growth?
15:01–17:05
8
How can companies better enable frontline teams with pricing tools, incentives, and data?
17:05–19:49
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