Tariffs continue to threaten international trade patterns and B2B SaaS companies are not immune. One of the key ways to defend, and even leverage these changes, is to move to value-based pricing and its corollary value based selling. Here is a quick guide to how you can use value-based pricing in a time of growing tariffs.

Our customers often come to us with a standard set of question about value and pricing. To help everyone answer these questions and to show how Ibbaka goes about answering these questions we are sharing a series of LinkedIn carousels. Here are the first six.

Do you need hybrid pricing?

Will your pricing become transparent?

Should you increase prices?

Good & bad discounting

Best practices in introducing new pricing

Quantify differentiation to capture more value

The resurgence of tariffs under the Trump administration’s 2025 trade policies has sent shockwaves through global industries. While B2B SaaS companies don’t ship physical goods, they’re far from immune. Clients grappling with disrupted supply chains, inflated costs, and regulatory chaos will inevitably reshape their spending priorities. Here’s how SaaS leaders can adapt pricing strategies to protect margins, retain customers, and even capitalize on shifting demand.

B2B AI Agents are attracting a wave of interest and investment. One of the best known examples is Intercom’s Fin AI with its outcome based pricing model. Ibbaka generated a value model for Fin AI and then looked at what this suggests about the pricing model. Generated value models are a recent innovation by Ibbaka where generative AI is used to generate value models from publicly available data.

There are three key axes for B2B AI applications that are leading to six basic approaches to application development. The three axes are: is use episodic or ongoing, does it support decisions or make decisions, and is the application intended for defined problems or open problems. This has a big impact on value and pricing models. Understanding where your application is placed frames value and pricing design.

Service as Software (SaS or SaaS) is emerging as a central pattern for the monetization of business AI. What services will be first to fall to this new paradigm? One possibility is Business Process Outsourcing of BPO. Companies are already used to blackboxing and outsourcing these services, have good performance metrics, and are cost driven. Established pricing models can be migrated to Service as Software.

Commercialization of B2B generative AI is coalescing around four patterns: Co-Pilots, Agents, Generators and Service as Software. Which pattern will dominate in 2025? How does one price each of these patterns? Prepare for change in 2025.

Our Wrapped 2024 webinar and podcast recap of cutting-edge strategies in AI monetization, Net Revenue Retention (NRR), and value generation for B2B SaaS. From expert tips, industry leader conversations and interviews - content to make you and your customers a sales and value creation powerhouse.

Edward Wong is taking on a new role at Ibbaka as Manager of Research and Community. In this post he talks about what the role means to him and the contribution he wants to make to Ibbaka, our customers and the wider value community.

Amazon is making some big plays as it tries to establish a growth flywheel for AWS in the generative AI era. This includes offering its own chips as alternatives to Nvidia, offering its own models, and supporting the idea that no one model will or should win. Amazon’s pricing for its own models is generally cheaper than the alternatives. How will this impact packaging and pricing in 2025? We offer some suggestions.

In a world where companies are transforming their offers and finding new ways to compete the Chief Value Officer (CVO) is emerging as a key role. Having a CVO is in your own and your customer’s interests. Ibbaka welcomes Karen Chiang, a co-founder, as CVO.

Is customer support the killer app for B2B generative AI? We have some early results from the AI Monetization in 2025 survey that suggest widespread adoption of this class of solutions. This is also where we are seeing the strongest evidence for outcome based pricing. Will the success of customer support cascade over into other B2B applications?

What ethical issues come up when one uses AI to inform pricing? As adoption of generative AI based applications starts to take off it is time to put in place plans to address and mitigate ethical issues such as transparency, bias, availability and environmental impact. This is part of an AI pricing strategy.

Good pricing requires good data, and one place that data comes from is market research. But what kind of research? Begin with a value model and quantify it with qualitative research and data analysis. Model your costs and test willingness to pay. And don’t forget to see what the competition is up to!

AI agents are emerging as a standard way to deliver AI functionality, especially in B2B. This has been underlined by Salesforce’s recent Agentforce announcements. Agent pricing is evolving from inputs and number of agents to actions and outcomes. This evolution is framing how we think about pricing generativeAI.

The customer value manager will play a key role in future SaaS. Going beyond what customer success, sales or pricing do, this role is accountable for ensuring that customers are getting value and that the vendor is getting paid appropriately. Ambitious young leaders should aspire to this role.

There have been large investments in AI since the release of ChatGPT 3.5 back in November 2022. VC firms have poured money into startups and existing firms have shifted R&D priorities to implement AI-based functionality. We are now seeing the emergence of second generation generative AI apps for B2B and new approaches to pricing. In the second edition of this survey we ask about shifting attitudes towards AI and emerging monetization paradigms.

Ibbaka conducted a survey to help inform the AI Monetization Roundtable with Michael Mansard from Zuora and Kyle Poyar from Growth Unhinged. The survey results are shared here. Key insights include (i) Pricing approaches for horizontal and vertical applications are diverging sharply , (ii) the most common approach to pricing is value based and (iii) The B2B SaaS community is divided on the future impact of generative AI.

Value-based selling has become a cornerstone strategy for many businesses. Executing this strategy effectively without a robust, detailed, validated, and configurable value proposition presents significant challenges. Central to overcoming these challenges is the development and utilization of value models. These models are essential for articulating the unique value a product or service offers and ensuring alignment with customer needs.

Second generation generative AI applications are appearing on the market and with that is coming a change in pricing. First generation applications tended to copy existing pricing models, but now that buyers and sellers are becoming more familiar with generative AI generative pricing is moving from consumption to hybrid and generative approaches.