Transform your pricing like a Kustomer PMM
Getting your pricing strategy right can make or break market share. Great product marketers know that a well executed strategy doesn't just drive revenue; it shapes perception, influences adoption, and can determine whether your product wins or loses in the market.
Joining us on this journey is someone who knows all about turning the tides with pricing—Nupur Bhade Vilas, who heads up product marketing at Kustomer. She's a force, well-known for pushing AI-powered customer experiences and driving go-to-market strategies that make waves. Having led game-changing initiatives at places like Twilio, Nupur brings this incredible insight in our conversation on aligning pricing with real customer value.
The Underrated Power of Pricing
Nupur highlights a vital point: in many companies, pricing is this often-overlooked lever that doesn't sit with product marketing. Instead, it lives in finance or sales. But when PMMs get to steer the ship, it’s magic. She stresses that pricing must evolve alongside the market, especially now with AI shaping the landscape.
4 Phases of Pricing Transformation
Together, Nupur and I explore the essential phases of transforming your pricing strategy: Discovery, Research, Design, and Operationalization:
1. Discovery: This phase is all about clarifying the problem you aim to solve, leveraging insights from leadership to uncover the roots and shape your strategy.
2. Research: From diving deep into competitor tactics to customer surveys, it’s a journey of learning and understanding industry norms and disrupters.
3. Design: This is where you build your pricing packages with precision, ensuring clarity and safeguarding margins, guided by a solid, data-driven approach.
4. Operationalization: Moving from concept to execution—this phase requires tight collaboration across departments to ensure consistency and avoid customer confusion.
Securing Stakeholder Buy-In
We face the reality of winning over stakeholders, from the executive level to the operational groups. Nupur speaks about the clever use of a ‘SWAT team’ post-rollout to maintain nimbleness and keep the strategy aligned and responsive.
Embracing Evolution and Flexibility
Nupur emphasizes that pricing isn’t a ‘set and forget’ aspect of product marketing. It requires ongoing feedback and the freedom to adapt. Her comparison with Netflix’s paced transition from DVDs to streaming nailed the point—you’ve got to give change its space, allowing customers to ease into it.
Ultimate Takeaways for PMMs
For any PMM on the brink of a pricing transformation, remember: flexibility is key. Stay customer-focused, and let your strategy grow with your business dynamics. Keep tweaking based on feedback and ensure that your pricing approach continually aligns with customer needs.
A Nod to Creativity and Authentic Branding
Before signing off, Nupur shares her take on Pierre, a company that grabbed her attention with its audacious branding around code review collaboration. It’s a brilliant reminder of how creativity and authenticity can redefine market norms. We also talk through ideas about beneficial next phases for Pierre’s new product rollout, and Nupur discusses her thoughts on how they could more clearly convey what they have on offer.
So, here’s to all product marketers—embrace change, step into your customer's shoes, and inject your strategy with the boldness and creativity that define leaders like Nupur.
LINKS:
Connect with Nupur:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nupurbhade/
Connect with Elle:
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/
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[00:00:00] Elle: Today we are talking about pricing. Getting your pricing strategy right can make or break market share. Great product marketers know that well. Executed strategy doesn't just drive revenue. It shapes perception, influences adoption, and can determine whether your product wins or loses in the market. You know, pricing strategy is one of the most powerful but very often overlooked levers in the product marketing world, and that's because in many companies, pricing doesn't actually sit within product marketing.
Sometimes it falls under finance or product, or even sales, which means a lot of pmms don't get hands-on experience. But if and when you need to own pricing, you need to follow an expert to do it right. With that, it is my pleasure to have n Newport VI loss on the show. I have been enamored with Newport's work ever since I met her.
Let me tell you why. Newport is the current head of product marketing at a company called [00:01:00] Customer. She is a force to be reckoned with. She's best known for driving AI powered CX innovation in High impact go-to market strategies. She's led game changing launches at Twilio. You know, finding powerhouse brands like Segment and SendGrid, all while shaping the company's architecture.
She's a sought after speaker at Dreamforce. AWS ran Invent and Google. Next n Newport is a true leader and mentor in the PMM world n Newport. It is amazing to have you on the show. Wow, that's a glowing introduction. Thank you so much, Anna. I'm so happy to be here. I. Of course. And I actually have a really funny confession to make that I don't think I've ever shared with you before.
So I remember my early days at Twilio, and this was before the pandemic, so everyone was in the office. So various folks across marketing and product would talk about this amazing PMM named Nur. And I feel like a little bit of a fan [00:02:00] girl right now, but I remember the first time like. Seeing you in an elevator, and it was just you and me in an elevator and I just wanted to meet you, so I complimented your jacket as an excuse to introduce myself.
[00:02:17] Nupur: That's actually such a funny story.
[00:02:19] Elle: To be fair. It was a very cute jacket.
[00:02:23] Nupur: I don't remember this jacket. I need to go to get to my closet. I know,
[00:02:26] Elle: I know. But in all seriousness, your reputation precedes you and I'm just so excited to have you here. So thanks again.
[00:02:34] Nupur: I'm so happy to be here. It's obviously been lovely meeting you at Twilio and working with you at Twilio, and excited to be here and chat.
All things, pricing.
[00:02:42] Elle: Let's do it. Okay, so diving right in. Tell me first, what is customer? Customer with a K. Tell me about it.
[00:02:50] Nupur: Yeah, happy to. Like El said, I'm the pool. I currently lead product marketing at customer, customer with a K, as she said. Customer is an AI powered CX platform that [00:03:00] puts data at the core of everything we do, and by leading with that data first approach, we enable businesses to deliver customer interactions that are far more personalized.
Proactive and relevant. And you know, in today's world, great customer experience isn't just about responding to inquiries. It's all about anticipating needs earlier and providing value at every touch point. And that's what excites me the most about customer. We are redefining what's possible with AI and making customer service smarter, faster, and more human.
[00:03:30] Elle: How exciting AI is all the buzz right now, and you hear a lot too. More specifically about our world and product marketing. We hear a lot about how pmms should be using AI for things like executing messaging and positioning, but you're talking about something potentially even bigger than that. And something that I would argue impacts customers directly.
So for this first segment of our show, I wanna start with a case study of how you used Market Insights to [00:04:00] transform the pricing strategy for a customer. So first, tell me more about what was going on at customer when you realized you needed to transform the pricing structure.
[00:04:10] Nupur: Happy to ask. So as you mentioned, pricing is something that pmms typically get to influence, but not lead.
As you said, sometimes it lives in operations, product, or even finance, but in those very rare cases when product marketing can play a central role in pricing, it's, it's kind of amazing and I was very fortunate to have been in a position to be able to drive that here at customer, but I. Before we get into customer, let me tell you what we've observed in the market and with our customers as well.
So, you know, as you said, AI everywhere. The way we work is changing. And as a product marketer, I find myself accomplishing so much more in just hours that would take. Days or even weeks, and the speed is just incomparable. And this shift isn't just affecting marketing, it's transforming every industry and every department, including customer experience.[00:05:00]
Right now, CX is at that forefront of disruption and with newer and more advanced AI models coming out, the level of personalization and self-service that businesses will be able to deliver is something to closely watch. But with this transformation also comes a need to think about how we. Price software.
In the past, the standard approach was the Salesforce model. You pay per seat, upper license, and that was a typical SaaS structure. But in today's AI driven world, with so much of CX being automated and optimized, you gotta ask yourself, does that model still make sense? Sometimes it might, but in many cases it may be time to explore new pricing models that better align with the value that customers actually receive.
[00:05:44] Elle: Ah. Okay. So I want to double down on something you just said. You said something about aligning pricing to value. So whether or not you consider the role that AI plays, I'm gonna guess that anchoring on [00:06:00] value is going to be key. So tell me more about that. When you say pricing models need to align with value,
[00:06:07] Nupur: what does that
[00:06:07] Elle: mean?
[00:06:08] Nupur: Yeah. Well, when we rolled out the outcome-based pricing model where customers only pay. When the platform has actually helped them, rather than paying for licensers of seats that they may or may not use to their full capacity through the year. And just to put it simply, you think about customer experience, it is a seasonal business.
There will be spikes during some parts of the year, like Black Friday or the December holiday season, for example. But that's not gonna be sustained through the year. And that's why we think outcome-based pricing makes sense for businesses. It's a fair approach where customers only pay when their customers receive outcomes.
[00:06:44] Elle: Aha. Outcome-based pricing. I'm here for it. No one ever wants to pay more than what they're using. Okay, so let's say that I'm a PMM and I'm inspired by what you're doing here, and I decide that I need to [00:07:00] conduct a pricing transformation for my product. Let's outline the steps that I or any PMM out there would need to take.
What's
[00:07:07] Nupur: step one? That's awesome. So I mean, if anyone is starting out, it's really, really simple. You gotta think about it. In terms of phases. There will be four phases. The first one is discovery. Then you have research, design and operationalization. Happy to talk through each phase, starting with discovery.
That's the very first one. The primary focus during the discovery phase is defining the problem that you're trying to solve, which really starts. From that point, and for that, I would really lean on the leadership team. You know, having open, free flowing conversations with the leadership team would help everyone gain a clear understanding of the challenges at hand, and that will shape the foundation of your pricing strategy.
And that phase really helped us uncover key factors like internal and external headwinds risks. Early hypothesis because the leadership team has been so ingrained with pricing and they've been around since the start of the [00:08:00] company, and so there's just so much more in tune with the problem that they wanna solve.
So it's really important to getting that clarity as early as possible. So I will say the discovery phase is probably the shortest phase, but it's also the most critical one because as I said, no one has a better vantage point on the business than the leadership team.
[00:08:20] Elle: Yeah, of course. Okay, so we've got, just so I am reiterating what I'm hearing, you have four phases, discovery, research, design, and operationalize.
[00:08:31] Nupur: Yep.
[00:08:32] Elle: Okay. So helpful. Okay, so once I do that discovery work that's short and sweet in the beginning, what's involved with the next phase? Was it research?
[00:08:40] Nupur: Yes. Step two is research, and during this phase we focused on researching the competition and surveying our customers. But we can begin with the competitive analysis first.
You know, with this one, you wanna go. Really, really deep on some of the emerging players in the space and understand how they price their offerings. And at the [00:09:00] same time, you need to sort of also study legacy platforms and how have they traditionally structured pricing. So what are some of the industry norms?
And then I think, here's another tip, which has worked really well for us, which is you also wanna look at disruptive pricing strategies, which may not be in your space, you know? In the past, like Salesforce, obviously they set the standard with license based pricing and the entire SaaS world followed. But when it comes to usage based pricing, companies like Snowflake, Databricks, Twilio, they have really led the way and so.
I would say the key is to move beyond just looking at your direct competitors. You also want to study how successful businesses across industries charge their customers, and more importantly, what's their unit of measurement for that work-based or outcome-based pricing approach.
[00:09:48] Elle: I.
[00:09:48] Nupur: I
[00:09:48] Elle: love what you said here, so of course, kind of obvious you would do some kind of competitive analysis on pricing, but this is a really strong nugget to look at.
Basically, your peers in the [00:10:00] market or those that you see are also disruptors from a pricing perspective in their markets. I've seen similar strategies even as companies might produce their earnings reports, right? They talk, they compare themselves to some of their peers in the market from like maybe a disruption perspective and consider similar like units of measure, as you stated.
Such a great idea. Okay, so where does customer research then enter the picture for some of this?
[00:10:28] Nupur: Yeah, so I mean, you've got your competitive analysis done. You've surveyed other players in the space that are disruptors, but now you wanna take those insights and validate them with your real customers. And what that looked like for us was serving over 200 CX leaders to understand their pricing preferences.
Now these CX leaders weren't necessarily our customers, but they were CX leaders. They could have been customers of our competitors or they might be just exploring new software. So it was really everyone, and we kind of [00:11:00] wanted to know where do they stand on the different pricing models? We clearly had an hypothesis.
We knew what competitors were doing, but where did they stand and what was their appetite? Uh, for a new pricing model. And then if we were to roll something out, how long would it take for them to adopt a new model? That's always a big change, right? Everyone's used to seed based pricing. We wanna get a sense of.
When people would be really ready and, and what that, you know, phase approach might look like in their ideal scenario. And then you wanna also get a sense of who are the key decision makers driving these pricing decisions. Very often you think it's CX leaders, but in in smaller companies it could be the CFO or the CEO, who's the primary person here.
So we wanted to get a sense of who would be, uh, the people in the room as we roll something out. And also things like. What are the price points? Would they be willing to pay for different aspects of our platform for different features, for our functionality? So it's really that willingness to pay exercise.
And for that you wanna sh give them a [00:12:00] showcase of all the features and services that you'll be offering and, and getting a sense of how valuable you think or they think those features are to them.
[00:12:08] Elle: Yeah. Yeah, so discovering customer insights is one of my favorite parts of being A PMM. There's something just really satisfying about understanding what makes people tick, why customers might need or want something a certain way.
I. So good, so good. Okay. So you did, um, let's say I've, I've done the discovery, I've done the research. What's the next step?
[00:12:31] Nupur: The next step is design. This is where you define what will go into every package and how much to charge for it. And setting clear guidelines and principles upfront is critical. For instance, you may want a well-structured upsell path between packages or a deliberate approach to how add-ons are introduced.
So a deep understanding of your current costs, such as your AI expenses, your hosting fees, or operational overhead, all of that is [00:13:00] very essential to protect and optimize your gross margins, and that is where data becomes your best friend. So. Having someone on the team with strong analytical skills will be really, really invaluable in making those data-driven pricing decisions.
And this space is also where you wanna determine what happens when customers exceed their package limits. Should they upgrade to a higher tier plan? Can they purchase in the add-on? Would a pay as you go model or an over charge make more sense? And so all of these decisions will directly impact the flexibility, scalability, and honestly the long-term sustainability of your pricing strategy.
[00:13:37] Elle: Yeah. Awesome. Okay, so wanna back up for a minute. How did you determine what goes into each package? Did you have any guiding principles? Was that like part of the customer survey? Where did that come in? Can I just say it
[00:13:52] Nupur: just came
[00:13:52] Elle: to me?
[00:13:53] Nupur: I dunno.
[00:13:54] Elle: Yes, yes, you can.
[00:13:57] Nupur: Well, honestly, I just thought about it from a [00:14:00] customer's perspective.
Basically, I asked myself questions, what would happen if I finished something that was allotted to me? If it was all done, what would happen? Would I be able to purchase more as an add-on? Would it be an upgrade to a different package or would I just be able to pay a little bit more for the extra that I used?
So what were my options? And I wrote it down. And so when I wrote it down, I realized that for anything that had a numerical value to it, like if a feature had a numerical value, it made sense to have a prepackaged add-on with the discounting available, where the more you commit to using more, you get higher discounts essentially.
But to ensure that nobody faced a disruption in usage, we always allow for a pay as you go if somebody exceeds what they were allotted initially in the package. And then for any feature that was just. You know, either you have it or you don't like a check mark feature. Then the goal was to just make it available in the higher package and they would have to upgrade to a higher package.
So new [00:15:00] medical values were available as pre-packaged add-on that you could discount, and then anything that was a check mark or not was just. You gotta buy the higher brokerage.
[00:15:09] Elle: That was really smart to bake in the discounting. 'cause I know some, that's something that sales likes as a lever to pull when they're structuring deals with customers.
Also, can I just say, this is why you're such a powerful PMM. You wear the customer's shoes. I absolutely love this. And I imagine, or I can't imagine, I'm not sure if you did this on your own or if you did it as. A exercise with PM or with some of your leaders, but doing a workshop of, you know, let's all wear our customers shoes together.
How would we dream up? These packages together. I could see that being a really strong alignment exercise to do with the stakeholders. And that's exactly what we did. I mean, you already know how
[00:15:49] Nupur: to do pricing.
[00:15:51] Elle: I'm learning as we go. I'm learning as we go. Okay. So up to this point, you've done all the strategy and foundation work for the pricing strategy.
Now, how [00:16:00] do you put it into action? What's the final step?
[00:16:02] Nupur: Yeah, I mean the final step operationalization that in my view is the hardest part of the entire process because this is where the pricing model moves from the theory to the execution piece. And so, you know, you gotta be really cognizant of like.
Limits on features, and you have to be very careful that whatever you are enforcing is enforced across every touch point. So whether it is within the product or within your billing systems or on the website and any documentation, clarity is everything. And the same stuff needs to be reflected everywhere because if there's any ambiguity, de it can lead to customer confusion.
Billing disputes. Friction in adoption is just a, we don't want that. So ensuring everything is seamlessly aligned will require medical attention to detail, and really strong, strong collaboration across product, engineering, finance, and even marketing. [00:17:00]
[00:17:00] Elle: Yeah, I imagine this was a massive, uh, rollout across the company and you'd have to enable sales.
And in fact, on that note, how did you enable sales on this? How did you roll it out across the entire company?
[00:17:14] Nupur: Yeah, this was a big rollout. And so enablement, your point is really the key thing that you need to achieve here. So, I mean, I'll, I'm gonna go in a little bit tactical here. There are several key assets really that you want to roll out for this.
Smooth transition. Um, you want a good FAQ document. It should be a comprehensive resource. It should address common questions, clarify key details, questions like, when can I start sending these new packages? What is the difference between the packages? Just be really, really clear and make it really, really simple.
You want a pricing tool. It's an interactive tool. It should help teams quickly configure and understand the best pricing options for their customers. So. What's important to remember though, when you're designing these tools, and I've seen a lot of [00:18:00] ROI calculators, they can be so complicated. You want something that's just five questions, or five inputs, and a beautiful chart, which shows the output.
So we did that. We had a streamlined tool, just five key inputs, number of seats, number of conversations, proposed package. Add-ons you want and that's it.
[00:18:20] Elle: Ah, okay. I wanna interrupt you for a minute. So you had two key assets, probably a bunch of other assets, but two key assets for sales. You had the FAQ doc and you had this pricing tool, the interactive tool.
Was that something that's like something that a sales person uses, like a simple spreadsheet, or is this like a customer facing tool that the sales maybe controls it, but then the customer might have visibility into it?
[00:18:44] Nupur: Yeah, so this one, well, we developed it to be a spreadsheet tool that was internal and not customer facing, but that is the next step.
We do want to put it on the website and enable customers to be able to. Just send it a couple of key inputs and see where they land. [00:19:00] So that is the next step and we are working towards getting there, but it's so new right now that we haven't quite got that yet. But good question. I mean, for now it is internal, but it'll eventually make it to the website because I think that's a wonderful way to even boost your demand and efforts.
I think people really like that. Okay, so getting back to rolling it out to sales. Yeah. Yeah. So other assets, as I said, two key assets, the FAQ and the pricing tool, but other assets being the pricing one-on-one training. So a foundational training session covers everything that's included in every package, but more importantly, real world pricing scenarios.
So you want to have a hands-on approach so teams can confidently assess customer needs and recommend the right package. So we designed it so that they were. But in these different scenarios where they were talking to different verticals with different sizes of companies, and we were like, which package would you sell?
And so it was like a hands-on exercise that just forced them to get familiar [00:20:00] with the pricing and the packaging. So helpful. Yeah. And then we hired an objection handling guide, which again. Very, very important here. 'cause you know, when you're rolling out new pricing, I mean 99.9%, I can tell you with confidence, you can expect someone to say it's too expensive, or I only need these features while we're paying for these other features that I don't think I'm gonna use
[00:20:23] Elle: Anytime there's like a significant change, like pricing.
Salespeople need to know how to have those conversations. Exactly. And then,
[00:20:32] Nupur: I mean, they need a standard talk track. Should be a compelling narrative. Why are you changing your pricing? What's the value that a customer will get? Is it create a value, flexibility, alignment with where they are on that messaging piece?
Like one thing to notice that it'll be nuanced, what you say to an existing customer will be different from what you will say to future customers, because with existing customers, you gotta reassure them that they will be supported no matter what with their renewal decisions. [00:21:00] They should know how the transition will work 'cause they're paying in a different way.
And now you're telling them that they might have to change the way that they pay you. And for future customers it's more forward looking. That highlights how this will give them better value, how it aligns with their modern CX needs, the flexibility and so on and so forth.
[00:21:18] Elle: Yeah, absolutely. I can imagine being a customer and hearing pricing is changing.
It's good to have the narrative. I'm even thinking too, very recently. Netflix had a price change and the market did not like how they put that narrative together. I would say actually, I would say a lack of narrative. It was very impersonal. There's lots of chatter across social media about that. Uh, so very astute for you to include the talk track, the narrative for.
Salespeople's able to be able to handle that. Okay. So you clearly have had a lot of stakeholders and then you met, you mentioned this early on in the [00:22:00] discovery phase of this project. I imagine lots of opinions on pricing, especially folks like the leadership who have been there for a long time and know what the customers really well.
So how did you get buy-in from those folks who maybe had strong opinion, like who are the stakeholders?
[00:22:16] Nupur: Oh my
[00:22:16] Elle: God. Ah.
[00:22:19] Nupur: Well, I like to think of it as like two phases of like stakeholders and the different people that you speak to. So think pre rollout and post rollout and you know, let's just separate those two for a little bit.
On the pre rollout phase, you wanna have three different teams. You want the executive team, which has the C-E-O-C-T-O founders, all of those people. And this group. They should receive regular updates on progress. Ensure we're still doing what they expect of us so. You want that alignment at the highest level and you want a pricing committee.
And so this is a more focused subset of the executive team. Really, this excludes the CEO and CTO. We wanna spare [00:23:00] them from every decision, but it still helps in driving those decisions. So this role. This committee really played a crucial role in reviewing the recommendations and offering their insights and shaping the final pricing proposal.
Like this one had the VP of Finance and, and he was able to tell us like, this is what we are seeing in our deal desk and, and so on and so forth. So you wanna have that smaller team. And then the pricing operationalization group. So think of this as the execution focus team. They're really the ones with their boots on the ground, like making things happen.
That last step that I talked about, the. Operationalized, step phase four. That's where these people come in. Um, so this one really has representation across sales, customer success, product marketing, sales enablement, systems, architecture. I never thought I would talk to systems architecture before this.
FPA legal billing, really every function, everybody. Everyone needed to implement pricing successfully across the organization. You'd [00:24:00] not, I mean, I've never thought there would be so many implications across Zuora billing price books. Did you have like info sessions? Like that's a lot of stakeholders. It's a lot of stakeholders.
It was a lot of alignment and a lot of times spent on meetings. But, uh, it is what it is. It is a big initiative and it really. Has to happen. And then the post rollout, this was really smart actually. We have a new, new CEOO who recommended that we had a SWAT team. And that's the way you can actually measure success and make changes fast.
And so we set some clear goals around customer adoption of the new pricing. For like a stipulated amount of time. And the assembled SWAT team really is dedicated to enabling our go-to market teams to hit those goals. And so it's more like a one team, one dream strategy, and the SWAT team is basically like, okay, this isn't working, or we need to change the positioning a little bit, or like something about some feature should be available in every package.
That's the [00:25:00] feedback that we are hearing from the field. Those sorts of changes that need to be made would come back from the pricing SWAT team.
[00:25:07] Elle: Got it. Okay. So then you have all your stakeholders, everybody's caught up to speed along, I'm assuming, all four phases of the project. I guess after you launched, what did this look like from a customer's perspective?
How did you manage potential customer objections? I know you had the, um, objection handling, or how did you temper expectations and like was that part of that narrative that you put together?
[00:25:32] Nupur: Yeah, well, interestingly, we launched it in a very, very big way. It was one of the major announcements at a high profile LinkedIn live event with a website overhaul and a debut of our new AI agent offering service was a lot of force behind this launch, and so given the significance, we wanted to maximize its impact.
So rather than treating it as a standalone update. We made it a high visibility event. But to your point, how do you manage those [00:26:00] customer objections? You know, ahead of time? We made sure that CX teams were prepared with the enablement they needed to talk to customers. And in fact, those customers that were nearing renewals were already aware.
And so they already knew what was coming at them. And by the way, we rolled this out last October, but we also recognize that businesses need to transition at their own pace. So. Well, we are very confident in the model. We are giving customers the flexibility to choose what works best for them. And it's funny you said Netflix and their pricing, but I actually have a fun analogy here.
You know. Just like Netflix. They didn't move from DVD rental service to streaming overnight. That's not how it went down. They launched their DVD business, I think in 1998, and they introduced streaming, I think in 2007, but to shift to streaming, um, fully, I think it was only around 2019. 2020. It's like 20 years.
It was a wow shift. Yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't overnight. Nope. And we expect that to be [00:27:00] the case here as well. Not 20 years. I do hope not, but it will be a gradual shift for customers as they get comfortable. And so we are taking that similar approach. We are leading with innovation, while ensuring our customers can adopt the change in a way that makes sense for them along their timeline.
[00:27:16] Elle: Yeah, what a great analogy too. And it really speaks to the fact that. While technology and the way that we use and consume technology does have these huge influences on even how we procure and pay for, or the price that we pay for some of these services, the innovation that takes place for that can happen very rapidly.
But I, our adoption rate. Maybe a little bit more of a tail, so great parallel there. Okay, so last question for you, Nupur on this topic. What advice do you have for a product marketer who's trying to transform pricing for their SaaS product?
[00:27:55] Nupur: Wow. I. Pricing is never gonna be a set it and forget it kind of [00:28:00] thing.
It just has to evolve. And flexibility is everything. You don't wanna lock yourself into a model that you can't adapt just because you made a pivot and you launched something. So I would say what's really important is staying open to feedback and keeping a pulse on what's working and what's not. And making those smart adjustments along the way, and that's how you'll build that pricing model that will actually work both for you and the business, but also for your customers.
[00:28:26] Elle: Yes, I love that. Never said it and forget it. In fact, we learned that through the Netflix example that you gave. Things happen gradually and so you gotta keep in touch with metrics and customer's perceptions and all of that that's going on on a regular basis, for sure. Okay, so now I'd like to switch gears a little bit and move on to the second segment of our show today, the messaging critique.
So this is where we as product marketers get to analyze a real world messaging. But here's the fun part, npo, you my guest, get to choose the company [00:29:00] that we're gonna talk about. Okay. Before we get started, I wanna talk through three things that I wanna focus on. Just some ground rules about the messaging critique.
So. First, I wanna hear something that you love about the product or the company or the messaging, like what's working really well? What's, what's standing out in a positive way? Second, I wanna hear something that you wish the PMM would've done differently. Maybe something that would've made the message clearer or stronger or more impactful.
And then third. What's a way that the PMM could iterate or take it to the next level? Maybe think more creatively about campaigns or leverage voice of the customer, anything to that matter. So this is all about learning, refining our craft. No negativity. Just a thoughtful, constructive critique. Are you ready?
Yeah, I got it. Sounds great. Excited. Okay, so tell me what product or company has caught your attention? Good, bad. Somewhere in between.
[00:29:56] Nupur: Oh my God. I. Good banner. Somewhere in between. That's funny that you say [00:30:00] that. Have you heard of pure.co? No. Okay.
[00:30:04] Elle: pierre.co. I'm plugging it into my browser right now. Please do that.
Yes, let's pull up their website. They've got a
[00:30:11] Nupur: warning label. They should. They really should. And I'll tell you why. So before we get into it, let me tell you what they are. You know how GitHub board reviews. They feel like they're trying to have a deep conversation over email. That's not great. No. No one likes that.
Engineers don't need a feed-based social network for coding. They need something fast, collaborative and actually built for productivity. And I think that's where Pure comes in. It lets engineers take control of how their code is reviewed, and it's really, I think, solving for two biggest. Pain points or headaches, however you wanna call it.
One is setting better context so your reviewer isn't guessing what you wrote and why it's looking weird in this weird looking syntax and function. And then the second one is managing discussions so that feedback doesn't turn into this [00:31:00] 50 comment thread that nobody wants to read. It just goes on and on.
And so the way that they describe it on Y Combinators. That it took the best parts of iMessage for organized, snappy conversations. Figma for real time collaboration. I know we all love Figma and Notion for that structured, narrative driven review, and then they built a code review tool that actually makes sense.
[00:31:22] Elle: Ooh. Okay. So for listeners, it's pierre.co. P-I-E-R-R e.co. I'm on the website now. I can't even see their messaging yet. I guess like my first impression is warning, the following experience may result in permanent eyesight and or eye color abnormalities. If you think modern code review is fine as is, turn back.
Okay. Before I click further, before I click further, they are outlining the exact challenge that they're set out to solve. I mean, you just said it, right? Like if, if you think modern code review is fine [00:32:00] as is, turn back.
[00:32:01] Nupur: Yeah. Well first off, they've rebranded as the pure Computer Company, which I think is brilliant.
Oh, I see that. I see that. Okay. Yeah, that's brilliant. That's a tongue in cheek move and it's right for their audience. It's got that perfect mix of nerdy, nostalgic, and self-aware that makes you instantly curious. So that's amazing. And that homepage, like absolute goal, it just grabs your attention immediately, right?
[00:32:25] Elle: Yeah. I mean, I haven't clicked it yet. There's a little spinning button that says Click at your own risk or something. What does it say? You should click it.
[00:32:34] Nupur: Click it. Alright. Okay. Clicking. Oh, oh yeah. That homepage, it's gold. It's grabbing your attention. It's too much. It's too much.
[00:32:44] Elle: There's like, um, static noise.
There are eyes like flowing across the screen. Bright neon light, not lights, but like bright neon text that's just jumping across the screen. It feels almost like [00:33:00] I took some kind of psychedelic drug. Yeah,
[00:33:04] Nupur: yeah. Just keep scrolling and scrolling. It's just gonna keep getting wilder. Every section's gonna be more over the top and honestly I just can't stop looking away.
Is that me? Is something wrong with me? I dunno. They got me where they wanted me. Oh, there's more.
[00:33:18] Elle: It gets more and more wild as you scroll. Okay. Tell me what's working. What are you liking about how the PMM. I took this messaging. I'll have to say though, I can't, it's so distracting. Once you click into it beyond the warning label, I'm so overwhelmed that I'm lost.
I'm like, where do I, where do I go? What do I, it's almost like they're making, maybe making a statement on the problem. I don't know. I'm gonna pause. I'm gonna let you tell me like, what's working, what's, what are you liking about it?
[00:33:52] Nupur: Yeah. Well, I mean, that's the part, right? It grabs your attention immediately.
I mean, and you can't blame them like they wanted to shock [00:34:00] you and they wanted to give you that experience. So they did warn you and they caught you where they wanted you to be. Like, you are there now on their website and we are talking about them today. But you know, there is like some things I feel like they could have done a little bit better, you know?
Obviously we wanna get a clearer picture of what they're building. 'cause they've got us on their website and we are talking about it. But finding that is a bit of a puzzle. You know, I wish the site made it more obvious that they were creating a better GitHub because that would be a game changer. You know, I had to piece that together from other sources, but it'd be creative.
That site just spelled it out a little bit more. And that said, this could just be their shock in our face. You know, they just wanna set the stage. Okay. Before rolling out more details and maybe that deeper explanation is gonna come soon. I mean, if you're still on the on the side, I would encourage you to click on docs.
[00:34:54] Elle: All right? Okay. Less overwhelming, more straightforward.
[00:34:59] Nupur: Very [00:35:00] clear. Very clear. So I wish the homepage on Docs had more product screenshots that would've pulled me in because if you click on one of them, you'll see that this is more traditional. I would almost say that they could skip this extra Docs homepage altogether and just drop me straight into a main page with a left hand menu.
And I mean, if you're still on there, you should also check out their change log because that's where things are are gonna be funny. I, I would say, oh yeah. So they have only one change log entry, it's called building a Brand. Funny that they are doing that. You know, traditionally I would say building a brand would've been a blog post, not a change log, but like, let's be real.
Mm-hmm. Nothing about this company is traditional. And I love that they just own it. These straight up leaf placeholders, instead of pretending there's more that's just so on. Brag for their audience. Just look at that a hundred percent. They're not going for, you know, the enterprise button up play. They're just leaning [00:36:00] into the chaos almost making a mockery of the usual approach.
That's what the developer community wants. They eat that up, they value authenticity and Pure has that part nailed. And by the way. I don't know if you wanna do this, but I mean, if you, if you're feeling wild today, click on the brand article. There's another warning label. That's right. And it says, warning.
Do you wanna see more or do you wanna
[00:36:26] Elle: Yes, I like aggressive colors and noises. No, that sounds
[00:36:31] Nupur: bad. Well, I, I see the one. No, that sounds bad because honestly, I clicked on it once and I'm not about to resume this audience. It's totally fine with whatever madness comes next.
[00:36:43] Elle: I clicked, I, I clicked. Yes. And that was a.
Immediate mistake.
[00:36:47] Nupur: Yeah. It's just hilarious. But
[00:36:51] Elle: it's, they're absolutely making a mockery of the current kind of, uh, status quo. Absolutely. But like extreme.
[00:36:59] Nupur: Well, I mean, if I [00:37:00] had to sum up my experience with peers so far, authenticity and audience nailed it. They know exactly who they're speaking to. They lean all the way in.
Positioning and competitive differentiation. That means work. Right now it's all wives. I'd love to see a picture of Y pure, especially for new users. And then I would say the user journeys are a little bit of a maze, so the shock and awe factor is great. I love it. But at some point you want more, and that's always not so easy to find.
But for now, this approach totally works. They're banking on that word of mouth and the developer community to fuel adoption, which is I think. Smart product led move, but long term they'll wanna make it more clear about what peer actually is because eventually people will come with their answers, not just the experience.
I. I think you're
[00:37:48] Elle: spot on. I know you mentioned puzzles, and I think that's also clearly so intentional as they scale. Yeah. I predict that they're gonna have some diminishing returns, so they're gonna have to, and to your point, like they, [00:38:00] it must be part of their rollout, right? Like I'm sure they plan on coming, coming out with something more clear.
But for now, just really diving hard into. The shock value. Wow. Shout out to PR pmms out there. You guys are super, super creative. Great job with the storytelling way to dive into delivering a differentiated web experience. Um, super cool. Okay, so Nupur, before we go, I just wanna have a gratitude moment and say thank you so much for your willingness to share.
Your knowledge and expertise on pricing and all things product marketing. You're such an inspiration to me and the PMM community. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. And I wanna turn it over to you. What, pmms, maybe one or two, three, pmms have really inspired you and your work and made an impact on your career.
Well,
[00:38:57] Nupur: uh, you are just far to guide. I feel like I'm [00:39:00] not deserving of so much kindness, but you was such a big influence on me as well. You're doing amazing work with this podcast and, and with everything that you're doing over in your career as well. If I had to think about people that I want to extend my, you know, heart for gratitude to, I would say Vanna, who I think we both know, she's had a big influence.
You know, she's never been a direct manager, but. Every conversation that I have with her has just made me a better manager. She has this incredible ability to draw insights out of me just by asking the right questions and why I gave me the new direction. She's one of the most insightful people I know.
And then there's Claire by, she's incredibly sharp and one of the most impressive things about her is how she's. Built this magnetic circle of top talent. People just naturally gravitate to wherever she is. And that's not love. It's a skill. And creating that kind of influence and loyalty really speaks volumes about her leadership [00:40:00] and impact.
Um, and then finally, Sani, who was, uh. The CM of Twilio back in the day, and she's one of the most genuinely accessible leaders I've ever worked with. People love her, they adore her. You know what's special about her? She's really great at creating lasting memories for everyone she works with. Everyone has a special memory with Sarah, and that's kind of, you know, that's a genuine connection.
It's just rare. Likability matters a lot, and I think she embodies it in a way that makes her. Not just a great leader, but someone people truly want to follow. Yes.
[00:40:36] Elle: Oh, I could not agree more. Yes. And I'll, you mentioned three women who I also had the privilege of working with and for, and I could not agree more.
So amazing. Yes. Uh, okay. Newport, one, one last question for you. Where else can we find your expertise? Is it just best to follow you on
[00:40:56] Nupur: LinkedIn? Yes, LinkedIn for now. So just hit me [00:41:00] up. We are looking for full step product marketers and if that's something that's of interest, please reach out. I'm always happy to chat.
[00:41:07] Elle: Awesome. Thank you again Newport, and thank you PMM listeners for coming on this adventure with us today. I hope this episode leaves you with inspiration to take into your next step of your journey.
