態度：關於產品定價的6篇必讀文章

As the story goes, legendary Tonight Show host Johnny Carson once interviewed renowned salesman Zig Ziglar. Carson was ready to put Ziglar to the test.

據說，《今夜秀》傳奇性節目主持人約翰尼?卡森（Johnny Carson）曾採訪過知名銷售大師齊格·金克拉（Zig Ziglar）。卡森親自對金克拉進行了測試。

「They say you』re the world』s greatest salesman,」 said Carson. 「How about you sell me something — say this ashtray?」

「大家都說您是世界上最偉大的銷售員，」 卡森說道，「您向我銷售一樣東西怎麼樣？就拿這個煙灰缸為例吧。」

「Before I can do that,」 replied Ziglar, looking at the ashtray. 「I』d have to know why you want it.」

「在這之前，」 金克拉看著煙灰缸回答，「我得知道您為什麼想要買它。」

「I guess it』s well-made, it looks pretty nice, and it』s a good ashtray,」 replied the talk show host.

「我認為它做工精緻，外觀漂亮，是個很好的煙灰缸。」這位脫口秀節目主持人回答。

「Alright,」 responded Ziglar, 「but you』ll have to tell me what you think it』s worth to you.」

「好的，」金克拉答道，「但您得告訴我您認為它值多少錢。」

「I don』t know,」 thought Carson, 「I guess $20 would be about right.」

「我不知道，」卡森思考了下說，「我認為20美元比較合適。」

「Sold!」 Ziglar exclaimed, smiling.

「成交！」金克拉脫口而出，喜色溢於言表。

Whether this exchange is fable or fact, it unpacks a lot of what it means to price a product: from the interactive approach to the layered, fact-finding line of inquiry. For startups, pricing a product or service is a doorway you must walk through — or users might abandon you at the threshold.

無論這個交易是虛構還是事實，都能總結出很多產品定價的訣竅：從互動方式到抽絲剝繭，不斷詢問，直到達到目的。對於初創公司來說，產品或服務定價是必須要跨過的一道門檻，否則你可能還沒接觸到用戶，就直接被拒之門外了。

Here at the Review, we』ve spotlighted several keen minds that have nimbly navigated the process of pricing for years — and have built careers and companies doing so. Instead of having you hunt for them in our archives, we』ve assembled the six most impactful actions a startup can take to get their pricing right. Our goal, as always is to help you get smart fast and apply what you』ve learned to make an immediate difference in your company or career. Or, in this case, to help you avoid buying — or selling — $20 ashtrays. Here we go!

本文聚焦了曾精心鑽研定價流程數年之久且已成功建立起自己的事業和企業的敏銳專業人士。為了省去你在檔案庫里再行研究這些文章的麻煩，本文羅列了能夠幫助初創公司進行合理定價的6條最具影響力的捷徑。其目標是幫助你快速積累智慧，運用所學知識成就企業或職業夢想。或者，幫助你避免本文中提到的購買—或銷售—20美元煙灰缸的尷尬。下面開始逐一進行介紹！

Nail price before product. Period.

謹記，在產品開發之前確定價格。

Building around price is the way forward according to Madhavan Ramanujam, a board member and partner at consultancy Simon-Kucher & Partners. At the firm, he』s managed 125+ pricing projects for companies ranging from rising startups to the Fortune 500 — and has surveyed them, among others. Here are a few findings:

西蒙顧和管理諮詢公司（Simon-Kucher & Partners）董事及合伙人馬德哈萬·帕德瑪班納（Madhavan Ramanujam）曾表示，根據價格構建產品才是正確的行進之路。他在公司曾負責過125個以上定價項目，無論是新興初創公司還是財富500強公司皆有涉獵，這些公司最後都取得了顯著成功。其研究結果如下：

· ~80% of respondents said they were under price pressure.

· ~60% even said they were in a price war.

· The top way companies planned to respond to price pressure was to release new products and services in order to survive.

· Yet 72% of these innovations did not meet their revenue or profit targets, or even failed completely.

約80%的受訪者認為自身面臨價格壓力。

約60%的受訪者甚至稱他們身處價格戰之中。

公司應對價格壓力的最佳方式是發布新產品和服務，以求生存。

但其中72%的創新無法滿足其收入或利潤目標，甚至完全失敗。

Ramanujam asserts that new products fail for many reasons, but the root of the problem is the failure to put the customer』s willingness to pay (WTP) for a new product at the very core of product design. Most companies postpone pricing decisions until after the product is developed, hoping they』ll make money rather than knowing they will. Here』s how not to fall into that trap:

帕德瑪班納表示，新產品失敗的原因不一而足，但根本問題是未將客戶對新產品的支付意願（WTP）放在產品設計的核心位置。大多數公司都將定價決策推遲到產品開發出來之後。此時，他們只能希望自己能夠獲得利潤，而不是胸有成竹自己一定會獲得利潤。下面說明了如何規避這個陷阱：

Ask someone if they like a product. Then ask them if they like it at a price point, say $20. The whole conversation changes.

詢問某位用戶是否喜歡這個產品，然後再詢問他是否能夠接受某個價位，如20美元。這樣，整個對話的性質就發生了變化。

In his Review article, Ramanujam calls this a willingness-to-pay talk, which about 80% of companies don』t do, according to a Simon-Kucher study. 「Ask at the onset whether or not people would pay for the product you intend to develop,」 Ramanujam says. 「Frontloading this question is powerful because customers won』t be in the mindset of negotiating price. Instead, they』ll give you objective feedback that you can use to prioritize what you』re building.」

帕德瑪班納在其評論文章中將此稱為支付意願談話，而根據西蒙顧和管理諮詢公司的調查，大概有80%的公司都忽視了這一點。「一開始便詢問用戶是否願意支付您計劃開發的產品，」 帕德瑪班納指出，「提前提出這個問題意義重大，因為客戶此時還沒有準備議價。相反，他們會提供一些客觀的反饋，您可以利用這些信息來優化所構建的產品。」

Weave in price sensitivity into your feature preference surveys.

在特徵偏好調查中囊括價格敏感性問題。

Over the years, Patrick Campbell has seen startups and multinationals alike labor to perfect products only to casually raise their finger to the windwhen it comes to determining their price. So he launchedPrice Intelligently to help SaaS companies, such as Atlassian, Hubspot and Insightly, boost revenue from and knowledge of their users, particularly through surveys.

近些年來，帕特里克?坎貝爾（Patrick Campbell）注意到初創公司和跨國公司都在很努力地完善產品，但在確定產品價格時卻是靠隨意臆測而斷。因此他創立了Price Intelligently公司以幫助Atlassian、Hubspot和Insightly 等SaaS公司，尤其通過調研等方式來提高其來自用戶的收入，並幫助他們了解自己的用戶。

Of course, there』s nothing more dreaded or beloved in the world of marketing than the online survey. Campbell and his company have sent over 15 million surveys, and have studied what』s worked and not worked along the way. Which brings us to our favorite tactic from Campbell, which is involves how he designs his feature preference surveys:

當然，在營銷市場中讓人又愛又恨的莫過於在線調查了。坎貝爾及其公司曾發布了超過1500萬份調查，並研究了其中的成敗得失。這裡面會看到坎貝爾一些有價值的策略，其中涉及到他如何設計特徵偏好調查：

To start, focus surveys to test two elements — features and price sensitivity — with a relative preference methodology.

首先，採用相對偏好方法進行調查並專註於兩個方面：特徵和價格敏感性。

To test relative preference, list a set of features — including one that gauges price sensitivity — to evaluate and hone in on the extremes. Then, ask survey takers to identify the least and most important of the options. Here』s an example:

在測試相對偏好時，列出一些特徵（包括衡量價格敏感性的特徵）來評估和確定用戶偏好。然後提問受訪者以確定其最關注和忽視的選項。示例如下：

The beauty of this approach is that it efficiently extracts people』s preferences in a question. It falls between the multi-step or multifaceted question (which can be time-intensive and burdensome to complete) and the simple, lightweight question (which may not return the depth of response you seek).

此方法的妙處在於通過提問方式有效獲取人們的偏好信息。這包括採用層層深入或環環相扣方式（完成起來可能費時又繁瑣）以及簡單輕鬆的問題（可能無法達到預期的回答深度）。

Map how your product』s price correlates to a marketing- or sales-intensive strategy.

詳細規劃產品價格與營銷密集型或銷售密集型策略的關聯。

Mark Leslie is no stranger to the Review. The Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer and founding Chairman and CEO of Veritas software has shared his advice on the arc of company life, challenging incumbents and the sales learning curve.

馬克?雷斯里（Mark Leslie）對於本評論來說並不陌生。他是史丹福商學研究所（Stanford Graduate School of Business）的講師以及華睿泰（Veritas）軟體公司的首席執行官，曾分享過有關公司生命軌跡、挑戰現有競爭對手和銷售學習曲線方面的建議。

Here, he offers a simple framework that can bring a go-to-market strategy into focus — one that can help startups smartly deploy limited resources when a product is first launched and a company has one chance to make a strong, first impression.

他在此提出了一個專註於上市策略的簡單框架，有助於初創公司在首次推出產品，以及公司有機會營造深刻的第一印象時，智能地部署有限的資源。

The first step in the framework? Price.

此框架的第一步是什麼？價格。

「Price is determined by how the customer values the product or service. Simply stated, it』s how much is the customer willing to pay, which is tied to the return-on-investment that the customer realizes,」 says Leslie. 「For example, you can』t afford to 『sell』 a $2 tube of toothpaste. To prove it, just take the total cost of the salesman and divide it by the number of sales calls in a year. That』s why no one goes door-to-door saying, 『Let me explain the benefits of Crest over Colgate.』 But, say you』ve got a product that costs $100,000 to build, you need to sell it for $200,000. Now you』re in a sales-intensive go-to-market strategy.」

雷斯里指出：「價格是由客戶對於產品或服務的估值決定的。簡單地說，也就是客戶願意支付的金額，這與客戶所實現的投資回報緊密聯繫在一起。例如，如果一管牙膏銷售2美元，你可能承受不起。要證明這一點，只需計算下銷售員的總成本併除以每年的銷售電話數量。因此沒有人會一家家上門推銷說，『讓我來解釋下佳潔士相比高露潔有哪些優勢』。但是，如果你產品的成本是100000美元，就需要銷售200000美元。現在你使用的就是銷售密集型上市策略。」

To get started, ask yourself: 「Is this a large or small economic decision for the buyer?」.

開始之前，請先思考一下：「這對買家來說是較大還是較小的經濟決策？」

Know how your product』s price impacts how and what you ship.

了解產品價格對產品交付方式及內容的影響。

Before becoming an investor, Jocelyn Goldfein led engineering teams at Facebook and VMWare. She shipped a lot of software — at companies ranging from three to 10,000+ employees. Over her career, she』s built software that』s been given away for free and sold for $50M license fees — and just about every price point in between. In her Review article she focuses mainly on how to structure releases, but observes astutely why a product』s price will determine and influence how your team develops and ships software.

在踏足投資領域之前，喬斯林·戈德費恩（Jocelyn Goldfein）曾擔任Facebook和 VMWare公司的工程團隊負責人。她交付過許多軟體，跟擁有3到10000名以上員工的公司都打過交道。在整個職業生涯中，她既開發過免費軟體，也開發過價值 5000萬美元授權費用的軟體，當然還有各種介於這兩種價格之間的軟體。在其評論文章中，她主要關注如何架構軟體版本，但也敏銳地審視了為何產品的價格將會決定和影響團隊開發和交付軟體的方式。

If you sell software at a high price tag, chances are you are selling to businesses that are buying your software based on their need. The more expensive your software is, the more mission critical it is for your customers, and the more likely you have to optimize for reliability, functionality and a predictable schedule.

如果你所銷售軟體的價格過高，很有可能成交的企業是那些基於其需求購買你軟體的企業。你的軟體越昂貴，客戶的任務越關鍵，而你也越有可能不得不去優化軟體的可靠性、功能性，並提供一個可預測的進度表。

But as the price of software goes down — from millions to thousands, to hundreds, to freemium and free — your market goes higher volume and involves smaller businesses or consumers. For these products, schedules can be less important since people will generally accept your latest enhancements whenever they materialize. The influence of a single customer is small, so you might deprioritize a niche platform or bugs that affect only a few people.

但如果軟體價格從數百萬下降到數千、數百、免費增值到免費，市場佔有率將會擴大，可能會覆蓋更小規模的企業或消費者。對於這些產品來說，時間表可能變得不再重要，因為用戶一般將會接受在任何時候發布的最新增強功能。單個客戶的影響力較小，因此對於只會影響到少數人的利基平台或漏洞，你可以降低其優先順序。

As a rule of thumb, expensive software means predictability is key while shipping. Customers need your product. If you have a lower (or no) price tag, focus on UX. Users who don』t need your product have to want it.

一般來說，昂貴軟體本身就能夠說明交付期間的可預測性非常關鍵。客戶需要你的產品。如果產品價格較低（或免費），則應關注用戶體驗。不需要你產品的用戶可能會迫不得已購買。

Be selective about incentives and discounts.

選擇性提供促銷和折扣。

Amazon famously drove up its purchase volume by offering free shipping for all orders over $25 (after an increase to $35 and back down to $25 in 2017). Free shipping is an attractive incentive because it appeals to anyone who is getting something mailed to them. But what』s an equivalent offer for startups that don』t offer physical products — and where free shipping makes no sense?

通過為所有超過25美元（中間曾提高到35美元，然後在2017年又降回25美元）的訂單提供免費配送，亞馬遜（Amazon）極好地提高銷售量。免費配送是一項比較有效的激勵手段，因為這對於需要郵寄到家的買家來說非常有吸引力。但對於不提供有形產品的初創公司來說，免費配送沒有任何意義，那麼他們應該如何效仿呢？

When Alex Rampell was the CEO of alternative payment startupTrialPay, he observed and tested a number of different experiments around incentives and discounts, and found three strategies to be particularly effective:

亞歷克斯·蘭貝爾（Alex Rampell）是替代支付初創公司TrialPay的首席執行官，他曾觀察並測試了許多有關促銷和打折的實驗，最後發現了3個特別有效的策略：

· Never ASK people for a 「coupon」 code. And get rid of your 「coupon」 field in your checkout flow. You』ll lose customers and revenue if you ask them to go hunting on Google for coupon codes.

· Contact information has long-term value if you can get it. It』s worth turning off some users in order to get more data (e.g., email addresses) for other customers that can help you segment them going forward.

· If you don』t have anything to offer as a bonus, find a complementary partner that you can work with to offer something unique. Rampell found that companies would partner and readily give away gift certificates (if well-qualified, like after a higher dollar purchase) in exchange for new customers. Checkout rates increased by 15% to 25%.

· If they think they can find a discount opportunity that』s just a click away, they will go hunting at your peril. Playing into this game doesn』t just dilute your income with unnecessary discounts. It sends people out of your checkout flow where they might get distracted and abandon the process altogether.

切勿要求買家輸入「優惠碼」。取消結算流程中的「優惠券」欄目。如果你要求買家通過搜索Google來尋找優惠碼，則將會丟失客戶及營收。

如果能夠得到客戶聯繫信息，這些信息將會帶來長期價值。可以適當關閉一些用戶來獲取其他客戶的更多數據（如電子郵件地址），從而幫助進一步細分客戶群體。

如果無法提供其他優惠獎勵，可尋找一位互補性合作夥伴來提供一些獨特的增值服務。蘭貝爾發現各公司願意與其他夥伴合作並提供禮品券（如果符合資格，例如達到較高的購買額度）來換取新客戶。成交量提高了15%到25%。

如果發現只需點擊一下就能獲得折扣機會，他們就會願意嘗試一下。這種方法不僅不會因提供不必要的折扣而減少收入，由於會讓用戶離開結算流程，它還有可能使用戶受到干擾並放棄整個流程。

When you ask your user for a coupon code, you』re basically giving them an IQ test asking Are you dumb enough to pay full price or would you rather pay less?

當你要求用戶提供優惠碼時，其實是在考驗他們的智商「如果有優惠選擇，你會愚蠢到全額支付么？」

All that said, discounts aren』t inherently bad. They can be incredibly effective if you position them correctly.

總之，折扣本質上不是壞事。如果運用得當可以發揮驚人的效果。

Design A/B tests on price with international users in mind.

設計A/B測試定價策略，將國際用戶考慮在內

When Gixo co-founder Selina Tobaccowala joined SurveyMonkey in 2009, 85% of its business was done in English. It was solidly a domestic company making slow inroads overseas. A little over five years later, the company was supporting 17 different languages and 28 currencies.

Gixo聯合創始人瑟琳娜·塔帕可瓦納（Selina Tobaccowala）於2009年加入 SurveyMonkey公司，此時該公司85%的業務都是採用英語處理，基本上還是一家國內公司，海外業務進展緩慢。僅在5年之後，該公司就可支持17種不同的語言和28種貨幣。

It』s challenging enough to come up with one price for a product, let alone for several global markets. The truth is payments and pricing are vastly different around the world. You have to do a lot of customization as you start thinking about conversion rates and international conversion funnels. And for technology companies with global aspirations, that hurdle is an inevitability.

為一種產品設定一種價格已然很難，更不用說為多個國際市場設定多個不同價格。事實上，全球市場的支付方式和價格存在很大差異。考慮轉化率和國際轉化漏斗時必須進行區別對待。而對於具有全球業務的技術公司來說，此阻礙是不可避免的。

One key piece of advice from Tobaccowala is to design A/B tests so that pricing and packages will always be the same for the same users. Most A/B testing platforms are cookie-based. This is a problem internationally where more people access websites from multiple devices. This means many of them will see multiple versions of your pricing page — which could send harmful mixed messages — at a time when you』re just building your brand in a new market.

塔帕可瓦納的一個主要建議是設計A/B測試，以便為同一用戶提供相同的定價和套餐。大多數A/B測試平台都是基於Cookie的。這是一個國際性的問題，越來越多的用戶通過多個設備訪問網站。因此許多用戶將會看到多種版本的定價頁面，如果你正打算在新市場中打造品牌知名度，這可能會造成信息混淆併產生不良影響。

The solution that Tobaccowala proposes is to be consistent and persistent on the user level instead of the cookie level. This is something to consider doing if you re going to invest in building price experiments anyway, but especially important for international users.

塔帕可瓦納提出的解決方案是，保持用戶級別而非Cookie級別信息的一致性和持久性。如果你正在進行價格實驗可以考慮這一點，但對國際用戶來說尤其重要。

本文由戈壁創投編譯自firstround.com

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