Last week we made the pricing for Eloqua’s software product packages public on our website for the first time: The starting prices range from $1450 to $10,000 per month, depending on the level selected. What if an Enterprise buyer hears of an SMB buyer making a purchase at 1/10th the price? Won’t you be excluded from deals based on the price being seen as too high (or too low)? Unfortunately, these arguments are based on an incorrect assumption that without talking to our sales team, buyers will not have the ability to form these perceptions of our price. MORE >>

We’ve all seen this situation play out: one of your average salespeople calls you with great news. It turns out the Smith account finally called me in! They’re ready to move forward and want us to present next Wednesday!”. We all know what this is. It’s the dreaded bake-off, where three other vendors, including the favorite, will attend, pitch, and essentially help the customer to squeeze more discount from that favorite. Whether or not the best reps show up is another question I’ll handle in a future blog – turns out they do go, but play by a wildly different set of rules). ”  . MORE >>

When it comes to evaluating price, most of us don't have a clue what we're doing. According to Priceless author William Poundstone , much of our strategy boils down to "just winging it," and that's not an effective way to do business: “People tend to be clueless about prices. Contrary to economic theory, we don’t really decide between A and B by consulting our invisible price tags and purchasing the one that yields the higher utility. How can you stay ahead of the curve and price your offerings the smart way? 1) Using Comparative Pricing. Let's begin! 1,499. MORE >>

The average price of permission-based e-mail lists for medium and large businesses decreased from $288 per CPM to $273 per CPM this fall, according to Worldata’s Fall 2010 List Price Index. Despite the drop in price, permission-based e-mail for medium- and large-size companies remains the highest-priced domestic category for e-mail list rentals. Tags: Sales & Marketing Aggregated Email Database Business Aggregated Postal and Email Databases Ray Tesi Worldata Worldata's Fall 2010 List Price Index The Aggregated Email [.]. MORE >>

As a follow-up to a recent piece I wrote about why prospects want pricing first , I found an interesting article by Dave Brock and supporting article by Ardath Albee. Dave Brock, President and CEO of Partners In EXCELLENCE, just wrote a good piece on his Partners in Excellence blog titled, Price is Never the only decision criteria! As a top sales consultant, Dave has been encountering an increasingly number of clients’ reps that cite Pricing as the first thing customers want to know. 100% of the time, the response is Price! And I wait…. but there’s silence. MORE >>