What Belda costs

What a credit is

On 2 October we read the pricing and help pages of six tools our buyers run, three of them CRMs, on the vendors' sites. Six of six sell a second thing under the seat, and they call it a credit. Six of six price the agent's work, or the data it fetches, in that credit. One of them says it in as many words: credits are the currency to perform activities throughout the platform.

A credit is a currency the vendor minted. What one buys differs by tool, so you learn a conversion table, one per tool. An e-mail address found is 1 credit in two of the six, 2 credits in a third, and half a credit in a fourth's worked example. A phone number is 10 credits in one tool, 5 in another, and 8 on top of the 1 in a third. A step of the agent's work is a tenth of a credit to 5 in one tool. In another it is 1 or 10 a record. In a third it is 10 for a prompt and 100 for one recommended lead. One of the six runs two meters at once: credits for the data it buys from its marketplace, and actions for the platform's work. A plan is a tier of each.

Then the credits run out, by design. In five of the six the month's unused credits lapse at the reset, and the sixth keeps part of them, capped. One of the six charges a stated 30 per cent more for extra credits than for the ones in the plan. Three of the six price extra credits as a monthly charge. One sells packs that do not expire. The plan page shows you the seat. The credits come on top, and you learn that after you sign.

The three places a credit meets you

The vendors' help pages say where the credit sits while a seller works. There are three places.

Before you press the button. Two of the six say the cost shows before you run. One shows the credits beside each option in its panel and a total estimate for the run, broken down by column. The other shows the credit cost in the sidebar while you build a workflow, and a confirmation of how many credits a run will use before it starts.

On the balance page. Five of the six keep the running balance on a usage page under billing or settings. An owner reads there how many credits the team has used of the month's total. The sixth says nothing on its public pages about where the balance shows.

When it runs out. All six describe it. One pauses its usage features until the next reset date. Another pauses enrichment, verification and phone reveals until the next billing cycle. A third skips the agent's runs and refuses a bulk run up front. In a fourth the assistant stops answering. In a fifth you buy a top-up. In the sixth a run keeps going past an empty balance only if an admin switched on automatic top-ups, which the vendor announced in its roundup of 21 September.

Each of the three is a place where a seller stops selling and does arithmetic.

What Belda puts in those three places

Before you press the button, Belda shows you what it is about to do. It reads 676 sites. It finds people for the 61 companies you said yes to. It sends four letters, three days apart. A seller sees no money figure on a working screen.

On the seller's screen there is no balance page, because there is no balance to watch while you work. The seat includes the agent's work for a normal month. We size that month on what a seller does, so a normal month stays inside it. The owner's bar is in Settings.

When the month's work is used up, the agent says so in one sentence on the thing it was doing. This month's agent work is used up, and the owner can add more in Settings. The owner gets one card with one button, and pressing it adds more. The agent refuses nothing in silence, and the seller still sees no price.

Where the money sits

In Settings, under Billing, and nowhere else. One bar for the month: the work used, 61 of 100. Under it is the list of every run this month. Each line says what the run cost us at list, what we earned on it, and which model did the work. That line is for the person who asks. Someone in IT or procurement will ask, and a vendor that hides the answer loses that deal. Under the list is one button, and pressing it adds a pack. A pack is EUR 50 of the agent's use, an estimate until the first external pilot pays, bought once by the owner. It is not a unit and it needs no table. We price the use in it at the vendors' list times 1.6, an estimate on the same terms, and the list in Settings shows that figure on every run. If your company already pays a model vendor and brings its own key, you pay the seat and we take no margin on that model's work.

The invoice says seats and packs. The model is on the list in Settings, and nowhere else.

Why we price it this way

We have three reasons.

The first is how we buy. No service we pay for shows us a price while we use it. The bill comes once a month and we read it once. We want Belda to feel like that to a seller. The alternative is a seller who stops at the button to work out what it costs, and a seller who stops at the button is not selling.

The second is that the price should follow the work, not the vendor's cost. A credit prices the agent's step at what the step cost the vendor, and that has nothing to do with what the step was worth to you. The unit we count is the work: how many companies it read, how many people it found, how many letters wait for you, how many meetings it booked. Those are the counts on the screen, and you can check every one of them.

The third is that the owner should see the money whole. The agent's work costs us money per run. The seat pays for a normal month of it, and a pack pays for more. We earn on the seat, and on the use at a margin over what it costs us. The list in Settings is where the owner reads the cost at list and the margin on every run, so we hide nothing about the money. We keep it where an owner reads it and off the screen where a seller works. The risk is ours. The models get cheaper, the margin on their work thins, and the seat has to carry the price. We would rather lose the pennies on a heavy month than put a meter between a seller and the button.

Where to start

Sign up with your work e-mail. You sign in with your Microsoft account. Say who you sell to in one sentence. The agent finds the first companies and drafts the first letter, and nothing leaves before you say yes.