Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Now it's like we're having these very detailed conversations with people that have already shown intent, have already put in their credit card, and have already expressed real interest to use the software, and we can learn from them, like what they really want and start to see if there are signals that we can really map across everybody we're talking to. And that's been super helpful.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Yo, Mike check. What's up, everybody? You're listening to the street pricing podcast, the only show where proven SaaS leaders share their mindset and mistakes in pricing. So we can all stop guessing, start growing, enjoy, subscribe, and tell a friend. Now, let's break it down with your host and sought after Slayer of bad pricing, Marcos Rivera.
[00:00:42] Speaker C: What's up, and welcome to the Street Pricing podcast. I'm Marcos Rivera, author, founder, and pricing coach. And today's guest is gonna knock your socks off because he's a thought leader in the SaaS space. He's an operator. He's done it on the consulting side, he's done it on the startup side, he's done it on the bigger company side, and he has a ton of knowledge to share. Today's guest is Rob litters. He's head of newsletter strategy at HubSpot. I think one of the pioneers of a lot of these SaaS pricing models, frankly, but he's also the co founder at pricing SaaS. So talk about, you know, a perfect fit for a company about SaaS pricing and about bringing that to a show that is all about SaaS operators, right? So, Rob, welcome, man.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Thank you for having me. Marcos. It's great to be here, man.
[00:01:27] Speaker C: Superman. I don't think people realize how much knowledge they're about to receive here in the next few minutes, but could you.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Give them a. I hope so.
[00:01:36] Speaker C: I want to know, man. Just give them the one two. Like, what do you do? A little bit about you, and then we'll get rolling.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: Definitely. So I started my career in tech at HubSpot as a BDR on the sales side. Worked in sales at HubSpot for about four years, then did a few different sales roles at, at other SaaS companies, kind of in startup world. And that's around the time that I learned about profit well, and I went over to profit well. And once I learned about the job of a strategist there, I just fell in love with it, and I knew I just, like, needed to work there and was just so excited about the job. Thought pricing was just such an interesting lever for SaaS companies and had a lot of experience dealing with pricing on the sales side in my, in my previous life. And so I spent three years as a pricing strategist there. Along the way, I started a newsletter called good, better, best, all about SaaS pricing. It turned out a few people at the hustle were reading that, and so they reached out to me about coming over to start writing. I figured, you know, I love writing. Let's check it out. Let's see what happens. And so I went over to HubSpot, was writing for the hustle, and over the last couple years have moved over to the business side, and I'm now running strategy for the hustle or for running strategy for the newsletters at HubSpot.
[00:02:47] Speaker C: Love it, man. Love it. Because, you know what's different about that is that you sold, like, you actually had to sit in front of a customer as a BDR or as a sales rep and actually take whatever the pricing model is or whatever the schema is and try to get someone to say yes and buy. And then you went in, and then you actually help folks figure out what these models should look like. And then you turned around and you started writing about this so others can learn about it. Right. So it's these layers of experience, man, that make me so excited that you're here, man. Thanks for jumping in. Of course. Are you ready to get straight with me?
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:03:18] Speaker C: Let's do it, man. So let me, let me give a quick roadmap for everybody here, because this show is based on the book street pricing, right? So there's a rewind, there's a play, and there's a fast forward rewind. We're going to go back to a story, and let's talk about a pricing struggle. Let's talk about a success, a pivot, anything that could help our fellow SaaS operators out there. We'll bring it back to play where we'll talk about what's up today, what's working really well, or juicy topic, and then we'll look at fast forward, what's going on tomorrow, what's next, and what can we expect in the future. Sound good?
[00:03:48] Speaker A: Sounds perfect.
[00:03:49] Speaker C: All right, man, let's do this. So open things up, man. Give us a good story on pricing. I'm sure you have plenty.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: The one thing that I didn't mention in that long background is through the newsletter, I also met a business partner named John, and we've been building a SaaS research product called Pricing SaaS together over the last year. I'm working on it part time. John has been on it full time. He basically has taken this database of SaaS pricing pages and can track anytime any of them are changing. And so we've been working with PLG SaaS companies to have them basically sign up, and they can get immediate alerts anytime their competitors change their pricing. They can quickly benchmark pricing and packaging against different companies, and we can really monitor trends across the wider SaaS landscape just through this database, across pricing, packaging, pricing structure. And so we've been trying to figure out how to price this thing, and that's where I come from. Profit, well, obviously, very big freemium background there. The profit, well, software itself was always free. We monetized through services, through price, intelligently through other products. And so I've always looked at freemium kind of as the way to go about acquisition. Like get people into your funnel, especially for us. You know, we're a data company. We're trying to get folks to come in there, add their competitors. We feel like we can build this kind of data moat the more people are adding their competitors in there and getting us data. And so we felt like a freemium offering was really a no brainer for us. And so that's really kind of how we went to market at first. Fast forward about six months, we have 500 freemium customers, and we have zero idea how any of them are using the product. And that's where the challenge comes in, because, like I mentioned, we have really one and a half employees right now. We have John and then myself kind of moonlighting, uh, working on it, and we just didn't have the bandwidth to go in and make sure that our customers were having these great experiences. And so we recently made the decision to roll back the freemium plan and replace it.
[00:05:50] Speaker C: Oh, wait. So you. So you pulled it? You pulled the poll on it?
[00:05:52] Speaker A: We pulled it, man. We pulled it. Yeah, it was. It was a tough decision. You know, we. We announced it to our customers and made sure that our users are paying. We have paying customers who are obviously already paying, so they irrelevant to them. But the users that were on the free plan, we let them know. And, yeah, we pulled it back, I think, three weeks ago now. And the interesting thing is, we didn't see a ton of free to paid conversion, which I think validates exactly what we were talking about. So our customers weren't seeing enough value in the software to upgrade to a paid package. The other variable there is, we did raise the price on the paid packages, as well. So there are kind of like two things happening at once there, but ultimately, what we've done is we've taken what was a freemium plan, and we've replaced it with a free trial. And we've also made the onboarding process a lot more high touch, a lot more customized. You have to go through a form and schedule a call to get set up in your trial. We will kind of hand, like, manually build out your instance for you so that it's fully functional.
[00:06:55] Speaker C: So, hang on a second, Rob. Hang on. Wait. You told me that your capacity is really limited. Yeah. How are you doing this high touch stuff, man? That doesn't stick with me.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: So that's the thing, is, when you. When you look at freemium with zero touches, the volume of people that signed up for it was pretty high for two people to manage. Right. But when we turn off freemium and we replace it with a seven day trial, and you need to add your credit card to start the trial, and you need to book a call, it immediately shrinks that filter. So, we've had this live for, I think, two to three weeks, and we've already had four to five people sign up to kind of come through and start. Start their trial, book a consultation and onboarding call, and John is handling these. To be clear, I to your. To your point, I do not have enough bandwidth to. To handle the onboarding calls. But that's really kind of like how the math has worked for us. It's like if you put these, if you add some friction, I think it can actually really help you make sure that you're spending your time in the right places. Before, we just didn't know. Like, we'd see these big name companies show up on the freemium user list, and we'd be super excited, but then we'd reach out and, you know, there'd be crickets sometimes. Like, no, nobody would answer. And so we're a lot more excited now because we feel like we can be a lot more focused. There's a lot of kind of data management that has to happen on the back end. And if we're doing that across, you know, 3000 companies every day, that can be incredibly taxing. But if we're doing it across a much smaller number of companies because we're only focused on the people that are paying, then that actually works out a lot better for us.
[00:08:28] Speaker C: I think there's so much to unpack in this one. Right. Because the first thing that popped in my head when you were talking was, yeah, just because a freemium worked for one doesn't mean it's going to work for you. Right. And so the idea is, does that really fit? And then, as you kept explaining it and, you know, the 500, but really not. No idea where they're going. And now you have these handful that you know exactly what's going on, and they're high touch, and you're, you know, you're making money from those. I think that there's an interesting thing about funnelnomics and the math. Right. And making sure you find early in your journey what math works for you. Right. And I think that that's a key lesson here that you're showing, because this pivot was, you said it's pretty fresh, right? It was only, like, a few weeks ago. Oh, yeah. You already started. See fruit from it.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: Uh, 100%.
[00:09:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: And, I mean, I think it's to your point, like, the funnel math is. Is the key there for us. Like, it's. It also kind of, like, resets the expectation a little bit, just about, like, what we're going to work on and, like, ultimately, what's most important, like, what the biggest priority is. Before, you know, with 500 free customers, we had these, like, very nebulous tasks and projects that we would work on where it's like, hey, we should probably build this feature or functionality because we think that all of these people will like it. But we only spoke to a small fraction of those 500. And so it's like, did we really actually know what all of those folks wanted? Were a lot of them actually unengaged? Now it's like we're having these very detailed conversations with people that have already shown intent, have already put in their credit card, and have already expressed real interest to use the software, and we can learn from them, like, what they really want, and start to see if there are signals that we can really map across everybody we're talking to. And that's been super helpful.
[00:10:09] Speaker C: Just seeing signals, man. Yeah. Big fist bump on that one. Because even though it didn't work out, on the freemium side, you learn forward, right? You said, okay, this isn't working. Let's adjust. Let's move this here. This is working now let's keep leaning in and move forward. That's the exact path that I think a lot of founders or entrepreneurs or SaaS operators are taking or have taken before. And this. It's true, right? It's true. It does take a few iterations to get it right, even though somebody like you, who's actually seen a lot of really good and crappy pricey models in the past, takes a minute to kind of see that, like, in reality, what happens and how to adjust. So I think that another big one is like, be patient and take the steps forward. Like, go ahead and make the move. If the move doesn't work out, pay attention and then kind of move, you know, move a little bit further in. And so that's. That's another. Another big one there. So let's, you know, now that we're kind of in it and you have, you know, John's probably, like, on the phone all the time, like, getting this stuff going, but what do you see as the next step for you on this one? So you pivoted away from freemium. You got a free trial going. It seems to be working better. High touch is working. What else?
[00:11:15] Speaker A: Yeah, so that's all been super helpful, and you absolutely nailed it. I mean, I think r1 benefit to being bootstrapped is we're not, were not tied down to any specific strategy. We havent put too much investment into anything in particular other than just the general database, which we think that we can potentially go to market with in a range of ways. Right.
So one of the big things at the kind of heart and center of what were trying to provide is accessible pricing expertise. As you know, pricing services can be viewed as expensive to people buying it. I actually think theyre underpriced. When you. When you actually look at what they're doing for you, it can completely change your business. But when you're looking at it as a startup and you're trying to figure out where to allocate your money, it looks expensive compared to other things. And so one of the things that we've tried to do is come up with this kind of accessible pricing expertise and software that can help folks get just a little bit of context. It's not going to give a full blown deliverable, like, pricing IO or a profit price intelligently or something like that where you're really getting, like, the full experience and you're getting a real recommendation on what to do with pricing. We're not going anywhere near that, but we wanted to ultimately give people kind of a hint of, like, what's going on in their market and what are some things that they might be able to do to improve their pricing. Like I mentioned, like, the. The price resistance from PLG companies has been real, and I think a challenge with selling a pricing product that we've noticed, and we kind of knew this going in, like, pricing itself is kind of a nascent function. It's very different from company to company. The person that owns pricing could be a product marketer. It could be a product manager, it could be somebody in finance, it could be somebody in business ops, it could be somebody in strategy. Like across our paying customers, it completely ranges. And I think there's a certain scale. It's typically like between 501,000 employees. I think at SaaS companies, where you actually get like dedicated pricing people, but there are only so many of those companies, right. And so we were really going that route. And ultimately, what we've started to do, we started to get a lot more interest from investors for kind of like the holistic set of data that we have and monitoring trends on a quarterly basis, understanding, you know, what's changing across price points. Are they going up or down? What's changing across packaging? Are people consolidating plans? Are they releasing new add ons? Like, how are people pricing and packaging AI and what other features are really hot right now and then for pricing structure? Like what is the ratio for per user pricing versus, you know, other consumption metrics? Like, how is that changing? And so we're looking at that as kind of like the next frontier of where we go and, and working with kind of higher acv customers on a more holistic database product. We're not going anywhere with the PLG product, and we're continuing to offer that. But our focus, because we have to, because we're so lean and bootstrapped, and we really need to be focused on where we can go to generate revenue, where our focus is naturally, I think, gravitating up market to, to figure out how we can serve those types of customers.
[00:14:20] Speaker C: No, no. That is so dope. One of the big things here, what I love about, by the way, what you're doing at pricing SaaS, right, with this, this level of competitive knowledge on pricing is a, I think, a big unlock for a lot of folks out there, right? So my biggest enemy, it's not profit. Well, it's not, you know, McKinsey and Simon Kutcher and all those guys. My biggest enemy is actually guesswork, right? And the folks out there that are just taking something that is so critical to their business, I mean, your prices determine 100% of your revenue if you think about it and just guessing on it. And when you said it as a nascent function, I couldn't agree more because I also have a lot of experience in product management. And for many years, folks didn't even understand what the heck product management was like. You talk to three companies about product management, you'll get four different answers, right, but you look at it, but the way it's evolved, product management now has a bit more knowledge behind it. And then you look at the rise of roles like customer success, like Rev Ops. Right. Even ux had to go through this for a while, right? Aren't you? Oh yeah. Supposed to just make the pages pretty like no, ux so much deeper than that. And so when you think about that spectrum pricing, I think you're right, is in that earlier stage. What is it? Who owns it? What are we supposed to do? Aren't you supposed to just put a bunch of numbers on the pricing page? Like, no, it's a, it's a whole system right behind it, 100%. And I think we're at that early stage. And so you're seeing a lot of these products starting to come to market. At least I see them because I'm a nerd and I watch this stuff. But the idea here is they're trying to solve a very squishy and still forming putty of a problem that is still taking shape in the marketplace. And so I think its going to be a little bit before youll see that direct nailing connection of a pricing product that will really serve the market. And I think coming at it, at least from this angle, its a very obvious win because its like, look, theres a big gap in knowledge and insight and we can help fill that gap. Big up to you guys.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Thank you, man. Yeah, that was one thing that was so exciting for me about joining profit. Well, back in the day is exactly what you just said. It's like this is something that's going to continue to grow. And it reminded me a lot of at HubSpot when I was there, sales enablement really blew up at HubSpot and I'd never even heard of sales enablement as like a function or career that you could have. And then all of a sudden sales enablement was everywhere and there's, you know, gong and chorus and all of these companies that are building in the sales enablement space. And yeah, I think it will be kind of a trickle down effect and we're only seeing the beginning of it now.
[00:16:46] Speaker C: We are, I think usage based billing, I want to say even like CPQ providers watch out because I think there's going to be a lot more activity and momentum and it's going to start pushing its way in. Right. Like that's all like the kind of not so sexy, you know, technical stuff, blocking and tackling.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
[00:17:03] Speaker C: It'll start making its way. Man, that's phenomenal. Let's, let's move from the rewind to play real quick because, you know, I think there's, there are a couple different things today because you said you did a BDR role, you did a sales role. And I would love to start unpacking that a little bit because when it comes to who's impacted by pricing changes, I can't think of anyone more than the sales team.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:25] Speaker C: Let's talk a little bit about your experience on price changes and sales.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: 100%.
[00:17:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: So my first experience working in sales for a SaaS company was at HubSpot. And I started at HubSpot in December of 2012. And by that time they already had, I think, two axis, I don't know if they were at three axis pricing yet, but basically they had a good, better, best model where there's a kind of base amount of email contacts that were included in each plan. And this is before HubSpot even had a CRM. So this is just back when it was just marketing software. So there is, it was a three part tariff model. There's kind of a base amount of contacts that you got included along with a bunch of features and a variable cost for additional contacts. And as you went up, that base included more contacts, more features, and the variable rate for more contacts shrunk. So at each tier there's kind of a cliff where it just made economic sense to upgrade to the next plan. And it was a genius model. And the, the great thing about it too, is we were very much a sales led company back then. HubSpot's made a bunch of strides towards product led growth in the last decade. But back when I started there and was selling HubSpot, very much a sales led approach, sales led model. And we really had kind of a consultative sales model where we're teaching our potential customers all about inbound marketing and marketing automation. It was still so new and fresh that people didn't really know what to do with it and didn't really know how it could apply to their business. And so within this context of this consultative sales process, we would also be able to kind of give them recommendations on where, on how big of a package they should sign or basically what their, what kind of a contract they should sign. So what we would do is we would look at their current list of contacts and leads and their current growth rate and project that out for a year. And then we would figure out, you know, where do we think you guys are going to land? We want to make sure that we're accommodating that and we want to get you as much access to the product as possible. So let's figure out, you know, what. What that strategy looks like. And the genius thing there is. Then you're digging into their growth rate of contacts, and all of a sudden, you're learning more and more about how they're adding leads to their database, and then you can start kind of picking apart their marketing strategy and making recommendations, and you gain all of this trust in the process.
And so it was this great kind of consultative sales process that was underpinned by a pricing strategy that also required some consultation and also made a lot of sense when you explained it to them. But the cool thing about that is, I feel like in recent times, like, I'm on LinkedIn sometimes, and I see people talking about pricing, as I'm sure you do, too. And one thing I see a lot is people just over indexing for simplicity. Like, one thing that was genius about HubSpot's motion, I think, is the pricing model made sense, but it. It did kind of require a little bit of explanation and context, and so sales could really help with that. Right. And it kind of forced people onto the phone with sales to talk about what they should do. Like, people couldn't sign up directly from the website. And it just made our job a lot easier to have a sales pricing model that actually made sense and scaled well and intuitively kind of put people into the different packages that they were right for. So, that was my first experience in sales, and, honestly, it was. It was great. I didn't even. This is the funny thing, Marcos, is like, I don't think people think about pricing until it's not working. And that's what happened to me, is I never even really thought about pricing until I left HubSpot and went to other places and was having trouble selling and felt like pricing was part of it. Then you realize how good you had it at a company like HubSpot.
[00:21:09] Speaker C: No, you said it right. It's the broken. It's the fire alarms. Are we reacting to the fire alarms versus thinking about it strategically? Exactly. That mind shift needs to change if you're really gonna capture value.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: 100%.
[00:21:22] Speaker C: 100%. I love it, man. I love it. And the thing is that downstream effect on sales. And so that ability. It's funny you mentioned that the packages and the changes made it easier to sell. So this was a term I heard the other day, not product led growth. I think it was product led sales, pls. And I was like, yeah, okay, that kind of makes sense, right? It kind of leads them into a nice warm assisted close, the closes, it's not as drawn out, it's not as onerous. All those key things allows you to scale and you build a little bit of trust entering into the paid motion. So as they're getting activated and traction and things like that, there's a little bit of trust there to kind of get deeper and utilize the product to get value. So I think there's, there's a lot there in that product led sales motion piece and I think you were maybe, maybe it was before its time, I don't know. But you were in the middle of that years back with the HubSpot team. That's awesome. If you had to say like in all that learning, because HubSpot, I was watching them for quite a bit, they are not afraid to experiment with pricing and to update it where needed. What do you think would be the one biggest takeaway when you're doing this? Knowing you have a sales team, knowing that you have all this, your pricing experimentation upfront, what's the big thing?
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Yeah, so I think HubSpot did a lot really well. I think at the core of HubSpot's model they had differentiation of their plans by functionality and by consumption. And I think having that blend of usage and features incorporated into how your pricing scales, I think people would probably refer to that as kind of like a hybrid model. I think that is really the sweet spot for SaaS companies if you can make it work. Because HubSpot's pricing was based on the number of leads that you had in your database. We call them contacts. It naturally aligned to business growth most of the time. The more leads you have, the more customers you're likely going to close, the more roI you're going to see out of HubSpot. I think they did a really good job out of that too. Like, I've seen a lot of these kind of like skin in the game type pricing models, like Substack takes 10% of your subscription revenue and I think Patreon does something similar and there are other companies that do that. HubSpot didn't quite do that, but they did have a really solid proxy, I think, for business value and growth tied to pricing that made it really intuitive for customers.
[00:23:48] Speaker C: Agreed. Agreed. It's interesting though, when you think about that contact as the center of the universe for a while and then you look at, say, salesforce like the granddaddy of the good, better, best and all these things, right?
They charge by the user and pretty effectively too, by the way. They didn't grow to a gajillion dollar valuation for nothing. And you look at these two side by side and I think the origins of the marketing for HubSpot, you can tell me because you were actually there, right, but my thought was, well, gee, because their origins were in marketing and how do we maximize the value of each contact when it grew into CRM and other things? It's like, all right, that contact is still the center of the universe, but in the salesforce world, sales rep is the center of the universe and that's how they get individualized value. They can log in and get value all by themselves. Right. So totally two different models. You know, if you knowing what you know on the inside, like HubSpot and they're being so different, not charging by the user in a CRM, was that like a big deal or is that something that, no, we have conviction around the contact thing?
[00:24:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I think they charged by the contact with the marketing software and then in general they gave away the CRM functionality, at least at first. Now they do have like a user model with the CRM and I do think in general, I think per user pricing in general gets a really bad rap. Like I think people rag on it a lot. I think because they think that it's an old school way to charge and there's like snowflakes consumption model is obviously blown up and some other companies have had some really innovative models too. But I think per user makes a ton of sense if it's in the right use case, which like for Salesforce I think it makes a ton of sense for CRM. It's like the more sales reps you have, the more they're likely getting value out of your CRM, the more revenue you're closing. Like it all makes sense. I think that's the key is just making sure that whatever your value metric is that you're tying to your pricing strategy ultimately aligns with the value that you're providing and scales with the value that you're providing. And to your point, yeah, I think user can totally work, especially in a place like CRM. And for HubSpot I think they were coming at CRM very much as the challenger and so they had to do something different at first to make headway towards Salesforce and that's a long hill to climb because Salesforce been around for a long time and they basically invented the category. So I think that's probably why they kind of came at it the way they did. But now I think you're seeing them go a little bit more mainstream and assimilate around the user charge model as well.
[00:26:27] Speaker C: I knew you were going to say that. If you look at their website now, right, there is users on there as you bolt on sales as you bolt on whatever they got.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:26:36] Speaker C: Services like all these things. And it's interesting.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: You're right.
[00:26:40] Speaker C: I think user does get a batter wrap and I think there's, there's areas where it's inappropriate like AWS or snowflake where it's like look, the product is doing all the work here so the users have nothing to do with what's going on. But on the other end, right, if you look at say like UX software, just go back to UX for a second there anything Figma could be one example or some of these others. The user makes sense in a lot of that because they can get individualized value. So I always have this. It's this interesting little two by two with product and people and how much is the product doing the work and how much is the people in there doing stuff in the workplace? And then so the more people are in there doing stuff, user can actually work really well. The more the product is doing everything. You're probably better off with a more usage based or consumption based type thing.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: I love that idea. That's a great framework, man.
[00:27:26] Speaker C: It helps, it helps. But here's the thing. Where's software really going? It's kind of a blend of the two, right? Oftentimes you don't see the two extremes and that's where the hybrid models come in. So that goes back to a little bit earlier, man. So listen, thank you for stepping up here and giving us a lot of great knowledge. I do want to talk one more on about the fast forward in the future. Right. So yes, you know, if you think about the evolution of pricing, subscription, usage base, all these things, but what do you think is next? What's coming, what's coming down the pipe?
[00:27:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the, the word on everybody's mind in pricing, at least in my corner of LinkedIn, is AI and AI's impact on, on pricing. And I think we've seen at pricing sas at least a ton of new features based around generative AI and it seems to be different by company how they're charging. You could go notion and just do the AI add on or a company like Intercom made it a core feature within one of their existing plans. I think that there's so much interesting opportunity with AI because you can charge a flat rate if you want to or you can charge on the usage model, because obviously AI takes compute and so it kind of scales linearly with however much compute you're using. And so it's been really fun to watch people get creative there. One thing that I do think is going to be interesting, and I've had a lot of conversations recently with people about this aspect of pricing, is I do think as AI scales, there is going to be a lot more outcome based software where you're solving a specific need. And I do think that'll happen. I think profitwell did this with retain and so this isn't unprecedented. I know there's some software out there that is already doing some of this stuff, but I also think on the other side of that, services are going to become more valuable because you're going to need people who can actually help you accomplish some of these things, help you actually add kind of like that expert layer to whatever it is that you're doing with AI. And going back to HubSpot, like services was a big part of signing people up with HubSpot. And I think if you can kind of like Orient people around this idea that you're not only giving them the software, but you're kind of teaching them how to use it, it can be a really, really beneficial leverage in a pricing model.
[00:29:35] Speaker C: That's super, super interesting because you think of AI replacing a lot of manual services, a lot of human intervention, but you're saying like, no, no, no, hold on. The more AI, the more value on the human touch or that high touch service because of, I guess what's the way to think about it is you don't miss it till it's gone. Or like you can now understand how much more valuable it is. And you can tell, people can still tell between, you know, an AI recommendation and human recommendation. So it's interesting that, that maybe that value might go up, not go down. Oh, for sure.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: I mean, I think about it like, what's the job to be done? I think like a customer service rep, you're already seeing a lot of these companies where AI is kind of taking over like the chatbots. Like I think drift pioneered this back in the day too, with, you know, the chat bot on your website and stuff like that. I think AI can be a very useful solution almost entirely on its own. But stuff like even like what were doing at pricing SaaS not to keep coming back to it, but were using AI to surface whats actually changing on pricing pages and then we can add commentary on top of that, right? So I think a lot of solutions are going to be built on top of AI, where the AI gets you, like, 80%, 90% of the way there. But then its that extra layer of human touch and expertise that can kind of add context and make it more valuable. And I think thats where that combination of generative AI and actual human experience is going to get super valuable.
[00:30:59] Speaker C: Oh, man, I love that a lot. The way. The way I'm starting to think about it is AI is kind of the new grunt, right? Yeah, exactly.
Getting all the work out there. Summarize all this information for me, you know, put it in the deck, give me my takeaways so it'll do all that. Maybe over time, though, we may see that grunt start to step up and, you know, move into more of. Maybe interpreting some of the insights more, taking some steps forward. But at least for now, I think we're getting comfortable with it, doing the hard legwork for us and saving us some time, and you still get that. That layer of human, of, you know, so what the hell does this all mean? And the nuances that come with the way people think. Right? I love it, dude. I love it. Listen, man, you've been. You came prepared today. Thanks so much.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: I'm in it, man. I know you are, too. We're both very deep in this, so I was excited about this, man. I really appreciate you having me.
[00:31:50] Speaker C: I am so glad you made it to the show. And I do have one more question for you before we start wrapping up here. And it's just to. Just to get a glimpse of rob. Right. I want to know what your favorite jam was growing up. Doesn't have to be nineties hip hop, but bonus points if it is. Yeah. What's that favorite jam of yours that, you know, that song you can hear over and over again?
[00:32:07] Speaker A: Oh, this is crazy. So, I know you and I are on the same page about one of these, so I'm a. I'm a hip hop head. Have been for a very long time. I got five on it by the loonies is maybe like, it's like a top three song for me all time. It's absolutely just like, like always puts me in a good mood. And I think I actually heard that song the first time. Cause I went to University of Texas for college, and all my buddies were like, houston underground Houston hip hop heads. And they loved this guy zero. And he did a freestyle over the I got five on it beat. And I was like, oh, my God, what is this beat? And one of my buddies like, wait, you haven't heard I got five on it. And so I listened to. I got five on it and was like, this song is incredible. The first hip hop album I ever bought, though, no way out by Puff Daddy and the family. And I was. I was in second grade, and for some reason, they didn't. They didn't put a parental advisory sticker on the CD. And I went home and was listening to this thing, and I heard all these swears, and I literally, like, turned it down. I would only listen to it in secret when my mom wasn't. Wasn't around. So, mom, if you're listening, I had a. Yeah, this is why I have such a potty mouth. But, yeah, those would be. Those would be a couple examples.
[00:33:16] Speaker C: I will say this out loud, right? So I got five on it. Quintessential chapter in my book. It's chapter smack in the middle of it, right. And I talk a lot about. Riff on it, that doo doo, doo beginning of the song. You know exactly the song from the end of it. Right. So the freestyle battles over that beat can happen all day long. It is. It is endless. And so, man, that is such. Such a good choice. And. No way. That was a good one. I actually grabbed that album.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:33:42] Speaker C: I had that playing in my CD. My CD player, for those of you don't know what that is, right. In my car, my pull out stereo myself. Right. But no, that was a fun one. Just good medley of songs and classic, I would say, samples from, like, old hits pulled into there, like, the classic.
So, man, that says a lot. Now I know why I like you so much, right? But we're in pricing, we're in sass. You know, you like hip hop.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: What else is there? Exactly, man. Exactly. We're gonna have to get together and jam soon.
[00:34:11] Speaker C: Swear words. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Dude, I want to thank you again for coming on the show today and just giving us your all, man. We and the SAS community appreciate it a lot. So I want to thank you for. For stopping in.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: Thank you so much, man. It's been a blast, and I've been following the pod and love it and really appreciate you having me, Marcos. Thanks, man.
[00:34:31] Speaker C: Oh, man. Wonderful. And team. Team. That was Rob litters. He is another thought leader in SaaS. Runs things with newsletter strategy at HubSpot. Is also starting up a pricing SaaS with John Byerson. Really smart dudes solving a really great problem and came and brought the fire today. So please take this knowledge forward, use it, and remember, stop guessing, and start growing.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: Until next time, thank you and much love for listening to the street pricing podcast with Marcos Rivera. We hope you enjoyed this episode, and don't forget to like and subscribe. If you want to learn more about capturing value, pick up a copy of street pricing on Amazon until next time. Time.
