03- What will you charge?
Foreword by Des Traynor, co-founder and Chief Strategy Office
We didn’t charge a single cent during Intercom’s first year. All we did was work on product. At the end of that year we were ready to think about the value we were delivering and how to charge for it. 在Intercom的第一年，我们没有收取一分钱。我们所做的就是在产品上工作。在那一年年底，我们准备好考虑我们提供的价值以及如何收取这笔费用。
Initially we spent weeks dreaming up fancy pricing models, running the numbers, analyzing our customer base to see who gets most value and deciding what should be free. During that time we met with Jason Fried, Co-Founder of Basecamp, and his advice was characteristically simple, “Just charge $50 and see what happens”. Are you serious? 最初，我们花了几个星期来梦寐以求的价格模型，运行数字，分析我们的客户群，看看谁获得最大的价值，并决定什么应该是免费的。在那段时间里，我们会见了Basecamp联合创始人杰森·弗里德（Jason Fried），他的建议很简单，“只要收取50美元，看看会发生什么”。你是认真的吗？
He was. 他是。
Charging $50/month was a smart move because it brought customers past the “why not” threshold. It’s a considered purchase. I worry about business products that charge just $9/month; it can give them a false sense of traction. eir conversion and churn will look good, but only because no one in any credible company even notices $9/month on a company credit card. If the plan is to move that $9 to $59 when things “get real”, then I’d argue the business is still none the wiser about whether or not customers will pay it. 每月收取50美元是一个聪明的举措，因为它带来了客户超过“为什么不”门槛。这是一个考虑购买。我担心每月收取9美元的商业产品;它可以给他们一种虚假的吸引力。eir转换和流失会看起来不错，但只因为没有任何一家可信的公司甚至在公司信用卡上通知每月9美元。如果计划是将“$ 9”移动到$ 59，当事情变得真实的时候，那么我会认为这个业务对客户是否付出代价还是没有什么意义。
So $50 was a good divider. It taught us a lot about our user base. It helped us distinguish credible customers from folks who were just playing around. 所以$ 50是一个很好的分隔线。它教给我们很多关于我们的用户群。它帮助我们区分可信赖的客户和刚刚玩过的人。
We changed our pricing structure a year later to something that distinguished the diffenent types of customers and types of value served. If you look at any successful business they will always iterate on their pricing as they learn more about their business and their customers. 我们一年后改变了定价结构，区分了不同类型的客户和价值类型。如果您看到任何成功的业务，他们将总是重复定价，因为他们了解更多关于他们的业务和他们的客户。
People often dispute why companies change their prices but the logic is very simple. You don’t have as much information about your business before you start charging as you do afterward. So you might realize you need to drop your pricing, tweak it, or charge bigger companies more or smaller ones less. Secondly if you continue to improve your product then it will inherently deliver more value to more people and cost you more to support and scale, so naturally you may need to change prices to account for that. 人们经常争论为什么公司改变价格，但逻辑很简单。在开始收费之前，您没有足够的关于您的业务的信息。所以你可能会意识到你需要降低价格，调整或者收取更大或更小的更大的公司。其次，如果您继续改进产品，那么它将固有地为更多的人提供更多的价值，并为您提供更多的支持和扩展，因此您可能需要更改价格才能解决此问题。
But when you’re starting up, your goal for pricing should be to get some meaningful cash from people to learn what pricing works and what doesn’t. Metrics like user engagement are de nitely relevant in the early days, but if your plan is to sell valuable software to businesses then you shouldn’t wait too long to test if it’s really valuable. 但是，当您创业时，您的定价目标应该是从人们那里获得一些有意义的现金，以了解什么定价工作，什么不是。早期用户参与的度量是无关紧要的，但如果您的计划是向企业出售有价值的软件，那么您不应该等待太长时间来测试是否真的有价值。
At every startup, no matter what stage you’re at, you should ask yourself: What can we charge for our product? It can seem like an insurmountable task to get right, especially if you’ve never priced anything before, but it’s something you should come to grips with as soon as possible rather than putting it o until the future.
在每一次创业中，无论你在什么阶段，你应该问自己：我们可以为我们的产品收取什么费用？如果您从未定价过任何东西，这似乎是一项非常重要的任务，特别是如果您以前从未定价过任何东西，但是您应该尽快掌握这些东西，而不是把它放在未来。
Here’s the thing, there’s no easy answer or solution, just you, your business and the ultimate need to make money from what you’re doing. But you should start charging your customers as early as you can, because it helps you discover the most important areas to focus on.
没有简单的答案或解决方案，只是你，你的业务，最终需要从你在做什么赚钱。但您应该尽快开始向客户收取费用，因为它可以帮助您发现需要关注的最重要的领域。
As you’re doing that, you’ll quickly find that every startup faces four common pricing pitfalls, creating a vicious cycle which usually results in putting off charging anything indefinitely.
如你所做的那样，你会很快发现，每个启动都面临四个常见的定价陷阱，造成恶性循环，通常会导致无限期地搁置收取任何费用。
Believing everyone should be happy to pay for your product 相信每个人都应该乐意为您的产品付款
Believing there is some mythical “perfect” price which extracts maximum revenue from every single customer 相信有一些神话般的“完美”的价格，从每一个客户提取最大的收入
Believing product pricing can never be changed once established 相信产品定价永远不会改变一旦建立
Delaying charging indefinitely as a result of 1, 2 and 3 延迟收费导致1，2和3的结果无限延期
Pricing your product can sometimes feel like pulling a number out of thin air, and to a point it is. As Jason Fried says, “Put a price on it, and see what happens.”
定价您的产品有时可能会感觉到从稀薄的空气中抽出一些数字，至此就是这样。正如杰森·弗里德（Jason Fried）所说：“放一个价钱，看看会发生什么。
One thing to remember is that the longer you wait to charge for your product, the more normalized the “free” part is and the scarier it gets to ask for money.
有一件事要记住的是，您等待收取您的产品的时间越长，“免费”部分就越规范化，而且要获得更多的资金。
TEST WHICH PRICING QUADRANT YOUR PRODUCT IS IN 价格适合您的产品的测试
Regardless of whether you’re selling a SaaS service or a physical good, you need to understand what it takes to attract your target customer and then decide what you want to charge them. That gives you the ability to plot how you’ll reach those customers, which gives you three options: transactional, enterprise and self-service. 无论您是销售SaaS服务还是身体素质，您都需要了解吸引目标客户所需的内容，然后决定要收取的费用。这使您能够绘制如何达到这些客户，这为您提供了三个选项：事务，企业和自助服务。
These axes were created by Chaotic Flow’s Joel York to de ne the three key sales models for SaaS businesses and are a great way to help you understand how to move forward. e bottom right quadrant, a complex sales process with low value customers, doesn’t produce a viable business so it’s not even worth considering.
这些轴是由 Chaotic Flow 的Joel York创建的，旨在为SaaS业务提供三大关键销售模式，也是帮助您了解如何前进的好方法。e右下象限，一个复杂的销售流程与低价值的客户，不生产可行的业务，所以甚至不值得考虑。
Whether your business is an app or a restaurant, you need to first understand what it takes to attract your target customer and decide how much revenue you want to earn from them.
无论您的业务是应用程序还是餐厅，您都需要了解吸引目标客户需要做什么，并决定要从中赚取多少收入。
The problem is that many startups, when using this model to de ne themselves, end up in the bottom left quadrant as it’s the easiest one to scale in.
问题是，许多初创公司在使用这种模式的时候，最终会出现在左下象限中，因为它是最简单的一个。
Being in the lower left quadrant means you usually end up with ahigh amount of low value customers. This limits how you can acquire customers. e economics of spending $300 to acquire customers for a $99 product are all wrong. 在左下方的象限意味着你通常会得到一个高价值的低价值客户。限制了您如何获得客户。花费300美元收购99美元产品的经济学都是错误的。
So depending on which industry you’re in, picking the wrong quadrant could leave you dead before you even start building anything at all. Here are some examples:
所以取决于你在哪个行业，选择错误的象限可能会让你死亡，甚至开始建立任何东西。这里有些例子：
Some industries are notoriously hard to reach, e.g. content marketing isn’t as effective for dentists as it is for developers. is means you might need to pay to acquire customers. 一些行业众所周知难以达成，例如内容营销对于牙医来说不如开发商那么有效。这意味着你可能需要支付给收购客户。
Some industries deal in annual contracts, NDAs and SLAs. is means you need to invest in a sales process. 一些行业处理年度合同，NDAs和SLA。是您需要投资于销售流程的方式。
Some industries are used to PowerPoint sales presentations, handheld onboarding and onsite training. is means you need a high contract value to pro t on a customer. 一些行业用于PowerPoint销售演示，手持式入门和现场培训。这意味着你需要一个很高的合同价值去顾客。
Evaluating if you’re able to o er a self-serve experience or complex sales process and then determining if there’s a high or low value for each user helps you decide how you should approach the customer.
评估您是否能够获得自助服务经验或复杂的销售流程，然后确定每个用户是否有高或低的价值，帮助您决定如何应对客户。
If your customers are high value with a complex sales process, you’ll likely need a sales team to do the work. Whereas if your users are low value and able to serve themselves, you should invest more heavily in marketing to do the work for you.
如果您的客户在复杂的销售流程中具有高价值，那么您可能需要一个销售团队来完成这项工作。而如果您的用户价值低且能够自己服务，您应该投入更多的营销来为您做这项工作。
Some companies, like GitHub, live in a special place across two quadrants.
像GitHub这样的一些公司生活在两个象限的特殊地方。
GitHub competes at the $7 per month price point for end users, but also sells GitHub Enterprise for $21 per user per month to large companies. On that end of the scale, the company has sales and account managers to service that quadrant speci cally.
GitHub以每月7美元的价格竞争最终用户，而且每个用户每月以21美元的价格向大公司出售GitHub Enterprise。在这个规模的最后，公司有销售和客户经理专门为这个象限提供服务。
“Low pricing rules out lots of potential customers for your product, in the same way serving $3 steaks in a restaurant actually restricts your clientele.” 低价格排除了您的产品的大量潜在客户，同样的方式，在餐厅供应3美元牛排实际上限制了您的客户。 – DES (CO-FOUNDER)
PRICING FOR VALUE 为你的价值收费
The key to selling your product is understanding the value it delivers to your customers and then positioning it correctly based on that. A great example of this is how the toothpaste industry struggled to convince people of toothpaste’s value when selling it as “prevention from gum disease” as opposed to “beautiful teeth.”
销售您的产品的关键是了解其提供给您的客户的价值，然后根据这些正确地进行定位。这方面的一个很好的例子就是牙膏行业在销售“牙龈疾病预防”而不是“美丽的牙齿”时，会劝说人们将牙膏的价值说服。
Thee same is true in the software industry. $29 a month sounds expensive for “5GB of le storage” but great value for “the certainty of keeping your family photos safe forever.” It’s about understanding why your customers buy your product, and then positioning it properly.
软件业也是如此。每个月29美元对“5GB存储空间”来说听起来很贵，但是“确保家庭照片可以永远保持安全”是非常有价值的，这是为了了解客户为什么购买您的产品，然后正确定位。
Thee problem in SaaS is that there are traditionally three tiers of pricing: small, medium and large. Each tier gives customers more accounts, emails sent or API calls, etc. Imposing this type of “step function” pricing implies that your customers are going to fall into three neat buckets.
您在SaaS中的问题是传统上有三层定价：小，中，大。每一层都为客户提供更多帐户，发送电子邮件或API通话等。强制使用这种“步骤功能”定价意味着您的客户将陷入三个整齐的桶中。
In reality the value each customer gets falls across a spectrum.
实际上，每个客户的价值都在一个频谱范围内。
Some customers might log in once a month, while others spend eight hours a day, ve days a week living in your product. If you only have small, medium and large plans, you are creating a di erence between the value they get and how much they pay you because each plan has an upper threshold for cost.
有些客户可能会每个月登录一次，而其他客户每天可以花费8个小时，每周几天，您的产品将会生活。如果您只有小，中，大型的计划，那么您将创造出他们所获得的价值与他们支付的费用之间的差额，因为每个计划都有一个上限的成本上限。
Ironically, unlimited plans are the worst for you because they’re essentially designed to give the largest customers, often with the most means to pay, the largest discount.
具有讽刺意味的是，无限制的计划对您来说是最糟糕的，因为它们基本上旨在给予最大的客户，通常以最多的手段支付最大的折扣。
Often behind the scenes, these pricing plans are designed around the incremental cost to your company. Instead, your plans should focus on the clear value o ered to the user which is the di erence they’ll actually be paying for.
通常情况下，这些定价计划围绕贵公司的增量成本进行设计。相反，您的计划应该侧重于为用户提供的明确的价值，这是真正付出的代价。
If you can nd a pain point that resonates with your audience, you might not even need to change a single line of code to start selling or upselling your product to people.
如果您能找出与观众共鸣的痛点，则甚至可能不需要更改单行代码，以开始向用户销售或推销您的产品。
Understanding that there’s more cost to using your product than just money is important. When you ask your users to do something it needs to be framed in a way that ful lls their needs and desires.
了解使用您的产品的成本不仅仅是金钱是重要的。当您要求您的用户做某事时，需要以满足他们的需求和欲望的方式进行框架化。Your customers aren’t just investing money into your product, but also time, data and e ort to learn something new, and it’s easy to forget that.
您的客户不仅仅是将资金投入到产品中，而且还要花时间，数据和价值来学习新的东西，并且很容易忘记。
FOUR PRICING PRINCIPLES FOR YOUR PRODUCT 您的产品的四个定价原则
Armed with this knowledge, how should you guide your pricing discussions? ese four pricing principles can help you determine where your focus should lie.
1. Charge earlier than you’re comfortable with 早一点收费（在你安心收费前）
Charging early delivers the right kind of customer feedback. Customers who don’t pay for software give diffenent feedback from those that do, and are the wrong people to take feedback from. As a rule of thumb, feedback from non-paying users tends to focus on additions to the product. Feedback from paying customers focuses on improvements to the product you already have.
早早收费可以提早得知正确的客户反馈。不支付软件费用的客户，它们给的回馈是我们不应该用的。根据经验，非付费用户的反馈倾向于关注产品功能的添加。付费客户的反馈重点是对您已拥有的产品进行改进。
At Trello, the team struggled to put a price on their product and nally said, “It doesn’t matter. We just need to pick something. So we should charge this at rate because people will pay for it.” It turned out that people did, but that presented a problem later. It was hard to move away from that at rate, and a lot of money was left on the table.
在 Trello，球队努力为自己的产品付出代价，并且说：“没关系。我们只需要选择一些东西。所以我们应该以这个速度来收费，因为人们会付出代价。“事实证明，人们是这样做的，但后来出现了一个问题。很难摆脱这个速度，很多钱留在桌子上。
“It shouldn’t be a surprise when you start getting your first paying customers. You should be confident you’re delivering a product people are happy to pay for. 您开始获得第一批付费客户时，这不应该是一个惊喜。你应该相信，你正在交付一个人们乐意支付的产品。” – DES (CO-FOUNDER)
Michael Pryor, CEO at Trello, said that while it was a good solution at the time, the company took too long before revisiting it and could’ve been charging customers a lot more each month since users fell across a spectrum of usage habits.
Trello首席执行官Michael Pryor表示，虽然当时这是一个很好的解决方案，但公司在重新审视之前耗时太久，每个月都可能会向客户收取更多的费用一系列使用习惯。
The upside to at rate plans is you’ll quickly drop people who would never pay. The negative is that companies with extremely heavy usage habits pay the same amount as those that barely use your tool, and you’ll be missing out on that money.
使用 rate 方案的好处是你会迅速放弃永远不会支付的人。坏处是，用量非常大的公司支付的金额与那些几乎不能使用您的工具的金额相同，您会错过这笔钱。
2. Charge more than you’re comfortable with 收多一点钱（在你安心收这么多前）
It’s easy to fall into the trap of charging a “small” monthly fee for your product, such as $19, to attract small-to-medium sized businesses. Even a four person company probably has $16K in monthly outgoings, which puts that price in perspective.
很容易陷入为您的产品收取“小”月费（如19美元）吸引中小企业的陷阱。即使是一个四人公司也可能每月支出16K美元，从价格上看。
If you’re charging less than the cost of your customer’s o ce morning co ee run, and your tool is providing invaluable bene ts for them, you’re doing something wrong.
如果您收取的费用低于客户的早上费用，而且您的工具为他们提供了宝贵的收益，那么您做错了。
One mistake many startups make is offering a “top-tier” unlimited plan, which offers your largest customers significant discounts. Josh Pigford, Founder of Baremetrics, found that offering an unlimited plan “puts a hard cap on your revenue while giving away the farm.” The types of customers who use your unlimited plans are the ones who are happy to pay far more than you’re already charging, and probably get the most value from you as well.
许多创业公司的一个错误是提供“顶级”无限制的计划，为您的最大客户提供大量折扣。Baremetrics创始人乔什·皮福德（Josh Pigford）发现，提供无限制的计划“在放弃农场的同时，为您的收入提供了坚实的上限”。使用您无限制计划的客户类型是快乐支付远远超过您的客户类型“已经开始收费了，也可能获得最大的收益。
Don’t be afraid to charge people for what they’re really using and, as mentioned earlier, sell them on the value you’ll be delivering.
不要害怕为他们真正使用的东西收取费用，如前所述，将他们的价值卖给他们。
3. Justify (or kill) your lowest price point 证明（或杀死）您的最低价格点
A lot of services include a “starter” plan for $5 or $9 per month. Usually that’s to reinforce the claim that the product is “a ordable enough for everyone”, while boosting your numbers.
许多服务包括每月5美元或9美元的“起始”计划。通常这就是为了强化产品对于每个人来说都是“足够的人”，同时提高你的数量。
Many of your costs are spread across all your customers, but some, such as Cost Per Acquisition and Cost To Serve are xed regardless of the pricing plan. A customer on the $9 plan costs just as much to acquire and can cost as much to support as your customers on the top-tier $49 plan.
您的许多成本分散在所有客户中，但有些成本（如每次收购成本和服务成本）不论定价计划如何。9美元计划中的客户的成本同样要求，并且可以像您的客户一样支付顶级49美元计划的成本。
Worse yet, those tiny customers very rarely grow into higher priced tiers. Small companies can grow into large customers, but more often they remain a small customer paying the same amount forever. Many companies have chosen to kill their lowest priced plan after realizing this, lowering their support costs and increasing their revenue.
更糟糕的是，这些小客户很少成长为更高的价格层级。小公司可以成长为大客户，但更经常的是，他们仍然是一个持续相同数量的小客户。许多公司在意识到这一点后选择了最低价格的计划，降低了支持成本并增加了收入。
4. Plan to change your prices 计划改变你的价格
A common mistake is to never change your pricing. As you improve your product by adding features, speeding it up or in other ways, it’s worth regularly reviewing your pricing and asking yourself some questions:
一个常见的错误是永远不要改变你的定价。当您通过添加功能，加快功能或以其他方式改进产品时，请定期检查您的定价并询问自己一些问题：
Are we delivering more value than we were two years ago? 我们比两年前是否提供更多的价值？
Are our new customers less price-sensitive than previous ones? 我们的新客户对以前的价格敏感吗？
Has our marketing improved? 我们的营销改善了吗？
If you can answer yes to any one of these, it’s time to review your pricing. When you do, document the ways your product has been updated and use that to justify it to your customers.
如果您可以对其中任何一个回答“是”，那么现在是查看您的定价。当你这样做时，记录你的产品的更新方式，并使用它来为客户辩解。
The fear of changing pricing is often a fear of customer complaints. “Grandfathering” mitigates a lot of this, as current customers are moved onto the new plan at their old pricing and new customers won’t know the di erence.
对价格变动的恐惧往往是对客户抱怨的恐惧。“爷爷”减轻了很多，因为目前的客户以旧的价格移动到新的计划上，新客户不会知道这种差异。
THERE’S NO SILVER BULLET FOR PRICING 没有银标价
Of all of the things you can spend time tweaking, pricing will yield the best return. One study by McKinsey & Company found that a one percent increase in pricing a ects pro ts more than any other change. For some reason, never updating your product seems ludicrous, yet never updating your pricing doesn’t?
在所有的事情你可以花时间调整，定价将产生最好的回报。麦肯锡公司的一项研究发现，比任何其他变化，价格涨幅提高1％。由于某些原因，从不更新您的产品似乎是可笑的，但从来没有更新您的定价不？
As with all matters of pricing, there’s no one way to do it, but there are lots of wrong turns and dead ends. Learn from them, adjust and decide if you’re being su ciently rewarded for the value you’re delivering.
与所有的定价问题一样，没有办法做到这一点，但是有很多错误的转弯和死胡同。从他们那里学习，调整并决定是否对您提供的价值给予足够的回报。
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