Agency pricing in Pipeline

Nebojsa Damjanovich
Nebojsa Damjanovich Member Posts: 10
edited July 2022 in Sales CRM #1

Hi, I think others are interested in this topic as well ...

I have a small agency with different pricing models. Mostly we have monthly subscription model, but a few hourly based Services as consulting and training. 

I almost always  made a mistake in pricing a deal - for example, how to calculate Deal value when it will be a mix of subscription and hourly based fees? Should it be a Total revenue earned in the first year or what?

Thanks for every comment on this topic!

  • Nebojsa

Comments

  • Jakob_9020
    Jakob_9020 Member Posts: 1
    edited April 2022 #2

    We only have subscription model, but I find the pricing in Pipedrive challenging anyway. Would be good if one were able to cuztomise it even more. 

  • Jon Morris
    Jon Morris Member Posts: 5
    edited February 2022 #3

    I owned an agency for years so have a decent amount of experience with this. With respect to the value put in to the deal section I would only put in  value when it is far enough in the deal stage. We used a BANT methodology which was an opportunity would not have a value unless it had a budget, the person we were speaking with had authority, there was a real need and the timing was short. 
     

    We generally would use the contract value for the entire deal. If the retained portion had a term for convenience or 30 day out, we would use the annual value. 

  • Nebojsa Damjanovich
    Nebojsa Damjanovich Member Posts: 10
    edited August 2020 #4

    I owned an agency for years so have a decent amount of experience with this. With respect to the value put in to the deal section I would only put in  value when it is far enough in the deal stage. We used a BANT methodology which was an opportunity would not have a value unless it had a budget, the person we were speaking with had authority, there was a real need and the timing was short. 
     

    We generally would use the contract value for the entire deal. If the retained portion had a term for convenience or 30 day out, we would use the annual value. 

    Thanks Jon!

  • Patrick Uhlmann
    Patrick Uhlmann Member Posts: 11
    First Comment
    edited February 2022 #5

    I'm Head of Sales by an agency with 70 employers. We have a lot of different products.

    We  always use the Value of the fist year.

    For example

    Website 15.000,-
    software 200,- x 12 months = 2.400,-
    consulting 390,- per month x 12 = 4.680,-
    SEO 390,- per month x 12 = 4.680,-
    Adwords campaign management 390,- per month x 12 = 4.680,-

    ......

    Deal value Pipedirve :  31.440,-

    To create a offer we user niftyquoter.

    We set the Deal value if the offer is send, to have forecast. 

    And we use the probabilities in the pipeline, that we have set cause of our insights dashboard.

    Of course this not the real value of a customer.

    But you have a very good balance to set a priority. Also you are able to calculate which time effort,
    marketing budget, and personnel costs is in a good balance to your Deals.  

     

  • Nebojsa Damjanovich
    Nebojsa Damjanovich Member Posts: 10
    edited August 2020 #6

    I'm Head of Sales by an agency with 70 employers. We have a lot of different products.

    We  always use the Value of the fist year.

    For example

    Website 15.000,-
    software 200,- x 12 months = 2.400,-
    consulting 390,- per month x 12 = 4.680,-
    SEO 390,- per month x 12 = 4.680,-
    Adwords campaign management 390,- per month x 12 = 4.680,-

    ......

    Deal value Pipedirve :  31.440,-

    To create a offer we user niftyquoter.

    We set the Deal value if the offer is send, to have forecast. 

    And we use the probabilities in the pipeline, that we have set cause of our insights dashboard.

    Of course this not the real value of a customer.

    But you have a very good balance to set a priority. Also you are able to calculate which time effort,
    marketing budget, and personnel costs is in a good balance to your Deals.  

     

    Thanks Patrick!

  • Inês Batata
    Inês Batata Posts: 2,087 PIPEDRIVE TEAM
    5 Likes First Anniversary First Answer Name Dropper
    edited February 2022 #7

    Hi @Nebojsa Damjanovich and everyone! What a cool exchange of ideas going on here :)

    Have you explored the Recurring Revenue feature? It allows you to split the total value of a deal into parts and also add non-recurring fees. Learn all about it here: Recurring Revenue feature.

  • Nebojsa Damjanovich
    Nebojsa Damjanovich Member Posts: 10
    edited August 2020 #8

    Hi @Nebojsa Damjanovich and everyone! What a cool exchange of ideas going on here :)

    Have you explored the Recurring Revenue feature? It allows you to split the total value of a deal into parts and also add non-recurring fees. Learn all about it here: Recurring Revenue feature.

    Thanks @Inês Batata ! In Subscription setup I can write Additional Payments but I must know the amount, but what if I know just the hourly price? So the real amount will be calculated every month put on invoice beside monthly subscription.

  • Dennis Powers_890
    Dennis Powers_890 Member Posts: 6
    edited February 2022 #9

    I'm lead sales for a small agency in Canada (10-15 employees). We've moved away from the subscription model to a certain extent and are now selling buckets of time that include blended rates for our core services - website maintenance/digital marketing/design services. We have these as products in Pipedrive. We also have our core services (dev, design marketing) at different rates in Pipedrive as products as well and will incorporate them into any project-based work we're bidding on.

    I currently try not to make any projections (quarterly, annually, lifetime) on any accounts. We just try to stay on top of new requests, change requests, and re-purchases for buckets of time in Pipedrive as best we can. The lifetime value of an account will be actualized over time and can be manually averaged out based on certain parameters when required. We don't project it. If there are any commissions going to sales staff they're based on what business actually closes. As we grow we may move to a Biz Dev and Acct Manager model with a gradual hand-off of the acct happening over the 1st year and commissions going to Biz Dev the first year and the Acct Manager from that point on, but we're not there yet.

    We did use Bidsketch and Google Docs/Slides to create our various offers but have recently moved to Proposify which allows us to show a little of our creativity in our proposals and has a nifty integration with Pipedrive :)

    Hope this info helps.

     

  • Nebojsa Damjanovich
    Nebojsa Damjanovich Member Posts: 10
    edited August 2020 #10

    I'm lead sales for a small agency in Canada (10-15 employees). We've moved away from the subscription model to a certain extent and are now selling buckets of time that include blended rates for our core services - website maintenance/digital marketing/design services. We have these as products in Pipedrive. We also have our core services (dev, design marketing) at different rates in Pipedrive as products as well and will incorporate them into any project-based work we're bidding on.

    I currently try not to make any projections (quarterly, annually, lifetime) on any accounts. We just try to stay on top of new requests, change requests, and re-purchases for buckets of time in Pipedrive as best we can. The lifetime value of an account will be actualized over time and can be manually averaged out based on certain parameters when required. We don't project it. If there are any commissions going to sales staff they're based on what business actually closes. As we grow we may move to a Biz Dev and Acct Manager model with a gradual hand-off of the acct happening over the 1st year and commissions going to Biz Dev the first year and the Acct Manager from that point on, but we're not there yet.

    We did use Bidsketch and Google Docs/Slides to create our various offers but have recently moved to Proposify which allows us to show a little of our creativity in our proposals and has a nifty integration with Pipedrive :)

    Hope this info helps.

     

    Hi Dennis, 

    I'm very grateful for your comment and I would like to contact you direct (if it's possible and if I will have further questions because I like your approach a lot!!!

    Basically you are selling packages/products for fix price which contains different services. So, you organise your resources in that frame. Am I right?

    How come that you are not offering this as a monthly subscription, even with online payment as SaaS??? I see that this is a new agency model. 

    Thanks again!

    Nebojsa

  • Dennis Powers_890
    Dennis Powers_890 Member Posts: 6
    edited August 2020 #11

    I'm lead sales for a small agency in Canada (10-15 employees). We've moved away from the subscription model to a certain extent and are now selling buckets of time that include blended rates for our core services - website maintenance/digital marketing/design services. We have these as products in Pipedrive. We also have our core services (dev, design marketing) at different rates in Pipedrive as products as well and will incorporate them into any project-based work we're bidding on.

    I currently try not to make any projections (quarterly, annually, lifetime) on any accounts. We just try to stay on top of new requests, change requests, and re-purchases for buckets of time in Pipedrive as best we can. The lifetime value of an account will be actualized over time and can be manually averaged out based on certain parameters when required. We don't project it. If there are any commissions going to sales staff they're based on what business actually closes. As we grow we may move to a Biz Dev and Acct Manager model with a gradual hand-off of the acct happening over the 1st year and commissions going to Biz Dev the first year and the Acct Manager from that point on, but we're not there yet.

    We did use Bidsketch and Google Docs/Slides to create our various offers but have recently moved to Proposify which allows us to show a little of our creativity in our proposals and has a nifty integration with Pipedrive :)

    Hope this info helps.

     

    Hi Nebojsa,

    I accepted your LinkedIn request :) 

    We try and stay away from fixed bid if that's what you mean. The blocks of hours are retainer-based and have a set price, but we work time-and-materials within them. We make recommendations for the appropriate package (or block of hours) based on what we understand as their requirements from us over time, but we leave the choice up to them as to how big a block of time they'd like to purchase, how often they purchase, and the discounted they receive. We're in a volume-based business :)

    We've been building this side of our business for a number of years, and the biggest challenge we've come across is that our clients can't seem to work within a set number hours per month model that matches the subscription model. Flexibility and communication are key for our clients. If they want to use 100 hours of our time one month and only 5 hours the next, we have to come up with a plan and a way to manage our resources that matches their needs.

    We're probably straying from a typical Pipedrive-type of conversation here. I look forward to chatting further on LinkedIn. 

  • Inês Batata
    Inês Batata Posts: 2,087 PIPEDRIVE TEAM
    5 Likes First Anniversary First Answer Name Dropper
    edited August 2020 #12

    Hi @Nebojsa Damjanovich and everyone! What a cool exchange of ideas going on here :)

    Have you explored the Recurring Revenue feature? It allows you to split the total value of a deal into parts and also add non-recurring fees. Learn all about it here: Recurring Revenue feature.

    @Nebojsa Damjanovich yes, that would be the best way to do it. Unless you prefer to create multiple deals, one for every month, but that kind of defeats the purpose of using Recurring Revenue. 😉

  • Inês Batata
    Inês Batata Posts: 2,087 PIPEDRIVE TEAM
    5 Likes First Anniversary First Answer Name Dropper
    edited August 2020 #13

    Hi @Nebojsa Damjanovich and everyone! What a cool exchange of ideas going on here :)

    Have you explored the Recurring Revenue feature? It allows you to split the total value of a deal into parts and also add non-recurring fees. Learn all about it here: Recurring Revenue feature.

    @Nebojsa Damjanovich yes, that would be the best way to do it. Unless you prefer to create multiple deals, one for every month, but that kind of defeats the purpose of using Recurring Revenue. 😉