A speaker recounts how their startup was initially behind but differentiated on customer service; competitors caught up, prompting the team to reassess value and pricing. The speaker independently negotiated a contract renewal with a major client, increasing their payment to about 8× the previous annual rate (disclosed as $6,700/month), surprising skeptical partners and giving the company financial breathing room.
Questions this video answers
About 8×
$6,700 per month
Chapters
So we were behind for a very long time. But the idea was that our customer service was just so much better than the competitors. But what happened after a while is we started to catch up. We started to get better at a bunch of things really, really fast. There's this mentality you have when you've just been obliterated by your customers. Well, you suck at this. Well, your thing's not good at this. Well, it's not good at this that you. You price yourselves way too low for the service that you are providing. We fought in conversation in order to make sure that we could actually get to the best output. And one of them was, we need to drive up our price. And the three partners were adamant, there is no way in hell anyone is going to pay what you're suggesting. They're going pay for this product. So I took it upon myself. I called up one of our biggest clients, I looked at what they were paying, and I jumped on a call with them. I said, all right, we're at contract renewal. This is great. You guys got a really easy discount when, you know, you guys started. But look, I want to show you all the metrics. And I lined up the metrics. I lined up the features that we were running, and I went to them. I. I ended up charging them about 8x what they were charging per year for the exact same functionality. And realistically, they got a ton of benefit up to that point. Came in the next morning, my CEO sitting at his desk, and I said, I want to call a meeting. We all went together, and I just slammed down a contract, and I said, here you guys go. What the hell is this? You're not raising their price to $6,700 a month. I said, we already did. They all signed it happily. And they all looked at me, and I. One of the partners, he looks at me and he goes, how the did you do that? And he says, what did you promise? What did you screw up on a roadmap? I didn't promise anything. Says, you're telling me that you got them to $6700 and you're not giving them one more feature? Yeah. He goes, guys, we got to raise our prices. And that gave us so much breathing room.
