A tough truth in SaaS is many of us are now walking around at Damage Brands.
What happened? The pricing games, terrible renewal conversations, and rip-offs of 2022-2024
Look, for the most part, they worked
🤑 Customers were forced to pay 20%+ more over the past 2 years for products that added no appreciable new functionality
🥵 Customers were threatened if they tried to take their data with them
⏳ Customers were punished into multi-year contracts when they didn’t ask for them
Etc. Etc.
So be it, in some cases. There are times we have to do certain things to survive.
And maybe it helped the sales team, the CS team, the renewals team hit their number — for that quarter.
But those brands are now tarnished for their overly aggressive tactics toward existing customers.
Why does this matter?
Because study after study has shown we only buy >more< products from brands we trust and connect with.
Rip off your customers, they may renew. But will they buy your new marketing product? Your AI product? Your new analytics suite?
No. They won’t. They may renew if they are hostages, if it’s too hard to switch.
But we buy >more< from the vendors we trust.
HubSpot was very careful here for years, for example. Now, the average customers buys multiple products from HubSpot. Datadog did the same for yours.
Yes, suites are great. But it’s more than that. We have limited time and knowledge.
All things being equal, we buy more from the vendors we trust.
Did you break some of that trust the past 18-24 months?
Many of you did. Many. It will take years to rebuild it.
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