Pricing Models, Customer Experience, and the Shrinking Importance of the Tech Stack

When opportunity strikes, you sometimes have to be willing to get your nose bloody.

Scott McCorkle

1 I had the opportunity to work for Scott, and those years were a master class in product, scale, and leadership. Scott has always had a straightforward way of seeing where the market is heading, and one of the themes he emphasized in his talk is especially relevant for anyone building or selling modern software: while technology still matters, its relative influence is shrinking. What’s rising in its place is the customer’s experience (CX).

Scott shared story after story from enterprise software clients in which the product didn’t win because it had the most features or the most elegant architecture, though those things do matter. It won because the company delivered an experience that solved real problems, built trust, and removed friction. That shaped much of the conversation at the tables where we discussed how pricing strategy and go-to-market models intersect with experience.

Public Pricing vs. Value-Based Pricing

One of the liveliest discussions centered on the pros and cons of public, fixed pricing versus outbound sales motions that rely on value-based pricing. Both are viable, but each brings different risks, requirements, and growth dynamics.

Fixed, public pricing is familiar and simple for buyers. It works well when margins are strong and there’s enough cash to fund growth without relying on outsized deal values. But for many SaaS companies—especially those in competitive spaces—fixed pricing can constrain opportunity.

In markets where alternatives are cheap or easy to build, companies that grow too slowly risk getting leapfrogged. Momentum matters, and public pricing doesn’t always give you the financial fuel to keep up.

Value-based pricing takes a different path. Instead of a one-size-fits-all model, pricing flexes based on the value a customer receives and the outcomes they’re trying to achieve. This can produce substantial margin—margin that can be reinvested into product, services, and scale. It’s also why enterprises often pay far more than smaller companies using the same product. They have more to gain, and the platform is solving deeper, more complex problems.

The email industry provides a great example. Companies like Mailchimp thrived on transparent self-service pricing and an outstanding user experience. ExactTarget, by contrast, succeeded with value-based pricing and a hands-on sales motion. Both grew rapidly, but ExactTarget ultimately captured the enterprise market, in large part because value-based pricing gave them the resources and flexibility to invest aggressively in solutions, services, and relationships.

Trust and Authority: The Multiplier Effect

Regardless of the pricing model, trust and authority determine how far a company can go. ExactTarget invested heavily in analyst recognition, enterprise RFPs, and relationship-driven account management. Those wins built a foundation of authority that created even more wins downstream.

Mailchimp followed a different path: self-service growth, social listening, delightful branding, and a famously polished user interface. They earned trust by delivering a consistently great experience at scale.

Different approaches, same principle: trust first, technology second.

Self-Service vs. Sales-Driven Growth

Self-service models succeed when product experience is extraordinary. If users can onboard themselves, see value immediately, and find joy in the workflow, you can win without a large sales team. Slack is a modern example of a self-service product that broke into the enterprise, something that usually requires human-led sales. Their product experience, pricing, and PR momentum gave them an unusual path into executive offices nationwide.

Sales-driven growth is different. Today, prospects arrive more educated than ever. By the time they talk to a salesperson, they’ve researched competitors, compared reviews, and watched demos. Salespeople are no longer educators so much as problem-solvers who remove final barriers and navigate organizational complexity.

There are two archetypes in modern sales teams:

• The tenacious hunter who’s relentless in pursuit
• The long-tenured advisor who wins through trust and experience

Both can drive short-term revenue, but only the second form builds durable relationships. In fact, pushing the wrong customers into the wrong products often causes long-term harm that exceeds any short-term sales bump.

Everything Comes Back to Customer Experience

Whether your growth model leans toward self-service, sales-driven value pricing, or a hybrid, the universal truth remains: the experience you create determines your trajectory. Self-service requires a spotless product. Sales-driven growth requires talented people who build confidence and clarity.

Cutting human touchpoints may save money, but every dollar saved must be reinvested in experience—UX, onboarding, documentation, community, awareness, brand, and support. The companies that win are the companies that understand where experience matters most for their audience and price accordingly.