How the Subscription Economy Has Evolved & 3 Ways to Shift Your Business

Despite a slight economic downturn in 2020, the subscription economy is continuing to grow and subscription-based companies are continuing to significantly outperform product-based rivals.

Over the past few decades, customers were happy with general product offerings and made products work for their business. Today’s customer has an expectation that products can:

Be customized to their wants and needs.
Consistently evolve and update with improvements.
Solve a particular problem that they are facing.

Instead of providing a product that has several offerings that could work for an organization, customers want a product that provides an experience and ultimately helps improves their organization.

If you are interested in how to shift to a subscription-based product offering, focus on the following steps.

How to Shift to Subscription Based Selling

1. Focus on Enhancing Your Business Relationships

By focusing on the unique needs of your customers, your business can increase its value and form stronger and longer relationships. Focus less on trying to sell your customers a product or service and focus more on what you can do to help them. When you approach your business relationships this way, you ultimately end up achieving your sales goals by upselling and cross-selling down the line.

2. Keep a Close Eye on Usage

Tracking usage helps you two-fold. First, you can determine how your customers are using your product by what their usage details look like. This makes it easier to make future recommendations and show that you are paying attention to your customers.

Secondly, you can bill customers based on usage. This shows customers that you aren’t billing them for unnecessary portions of your product that they aren’t using. It also allows you concentrate on any barrier’s customers are facing with the products by seeing what they aren’t using.

3. Be Flexible Yet Firm

This concept ties in with usage. When you don’t bill based on usage, you are creating limitations for customers that are not appealing. In contrast, if you are too accommodating and have no structure to your usage, customers can take advantage of that in a way that prohibits your sales goals. Focus on finding a happy medium that provides customers customization options but also keeps your organization making money.