Competitive Intelligence Marketplace

ZoomInfo Featured in Forbes Article on Pricing

ZoomInfo is featured in a Forbes article on pricing strategy.  Excerpt:

As with all online search technology, Zoom still suffers from garbage-in, garbage-out syndrome. (One out of those six results turned up a guy who lived in Florida.) Company searches can be even shoddier. The Forbes.com profile lists magazine staff writer Victoria Murphy as a company board member (she would be surprised to hear it). Hiccups notwithstanding, big firms are still willing to pay an annual fee of $10,000 per license for Zoom's high-end "Power Search" service.

Now, Stern is heading downstream. In December, he launched two new tiers of service to appeal to small businesses and individuals: A less robust "Premium" version for $49 per month and a bare-bones, advertising-supported model for free. "We want to have a whole suite of products that are self-service, where people just use their credit-cards and that's it," says Stern, 51.

If online search is rocket science, selling a new product to the right customers at the right price is black magic, especially for inexperienced small companies. Casting the right spell can often mean the difference between a flier and a flop.

Pricing Where Competitive Intelligence Has Greatest Impact

From Parmelee Eastman's excellent "Knowledge is Power" blog comes this gem:

Because prioritizing pricing CI brings higher returns. According to a McKinsey study completed two years ago, the average Standard & Poor 500 firm would leverage a one percent rise in prices into an eight percent increase in operating profit while the benefits from a one percent decrease in operating expenses were 50% lower.

 

Pricing is actually quite complex and a price increase is not necessarily an across-the-board rise in listed prices. Other factors included in pricing for the ultimate buyer are shipping expenses, payment terms, return policies, volume breaks, promotional or trade allowances, segmentation pricing (as in fares requiring a Saturday night stay over vs. mid-week round trips), delivery times, and support such customization or installation.