Most New Zealand tech companies don't lose money offshore because their product is too weak. They lose it because their price is too low - and they set that price at home, in New Zealand dollars, long before they ever met an offshore buyer. The good news: pricing is the fastest lever you have. The hard part is being brave enough to pull it.
I've spent 20 years selling NZ tech into bigger markets. I built Emendo and sold it to McKesson, then the 14th-largest company on the Fortune 500, and since then I've watched a lot of good Kiwi companies quietly leave a fortune on the table - not on the deals they lost, but on the ones they won at half of what they were worth.
Your price is anchored to the wrong things
When you set your first price, you almost certainly anchored it to two things: your costs, and what your New Zealand customers would pay. Both feel sensible. Both are the wrong reference point for a bigger market.
An offshore buyer can't see your costs and doesn't care about them. They're comparing you to their alternatives and to the value you create in their world - a world that is usually larger, more expensive to operate in, and more willing to pay than ours. Price to that, not to what felt reasonable in Auckland.
Price to value - it's your highest-leverage number
Here's the figure that should stop every founder in their tracks. McKinsey's pricing research found that for the average company, a 1% improvement in price - with volume held steady - lifts operating profit by about 8.7%. Not revenue. Profit.
No other lever moves the bottom line that hard. A 1% cut in costs or a 1% bump in volume doesn't come close. Yet pricing is the number most Kiwi founders touch the least and defend the weakest. Simply put: if you're going to obsess over one input before you expand, make it price.
Mind the currency trap
There's a quiet tax hiding in how you quote. The New Zealand dollar has been trading around 60 US cents, so a price that reads as bold at home shrinks the moment it's converted. Quote NZ$1,000 to a US buyer and they see roughly US$600 - about 40% smaller than the number that felt brave to you.
First fix: quote in the buyer's currency. Set the price in US dollars, pounds or Australian dollars against their value and their alternatives - not by converting your NZD number and hoping.
Second fix: localise the packaging, not just the number. A larger market often wants a more complete offer. Give them one that's genuinely worth the higher price, rather than the same product with a bigger sticker.
The discount reflex quietly kills your margin
Kiwi humility is lovely at a barbecue and expensive in a sales meeting. The instinct to sharpen the pencil, throw in a discount to get the deal over the line, or apologise for the price reads very differently offshore. To a buyer in a bigger market, a fast discount doesn't signal generosity - it signals that you didn't believe your own number.
Hold the price. If you have to move, trade something for it - a longer term, a case study, a reference call - rather than simply giving margin away. Every point you discount comes straight off that 8.7% leverage, in the wrong direction.
A simple way to test a higher price
You don't need a pricing consultant to start. You need your next five offshore conversations.
Set a new price in the buyer's currency, benchmarked to the value you create and the alternatives they'd otherwise buy. Quote it - the real, higher number - to the next five prospects. Then watch what actually happens to your win rate, not what you fear will happen. Most founders find the good deals still close, and the ones that don't were rarely going to be good customers anyway.
If you want a structure for it, NZTE's SaaS pricing model template is a solid, free starting point for pricing to value instead of cost.
Not sure your foundations are ready to travel?
My free International Readiness Scorecard - about 20 minutes, self-scored, instant - shows you whether your commercial foundations, pricing included, are strong enough to expand before you commit budget to a market.
Take the free scorecard → Or map the gaps with the Foundation Diagnostic →The reset isn't a bigger number for its own sake. It's charging what a bigger market already believes you're worth. So before your next offshore quote goes out, ask yourself one question: are you pricing for the value they see, or for the costs you can't stop thinking about?
Pricing leverage: McKinsey & Company, "The power of pricing" - for the average company, a 1% improvement in price lifts operating profit by approximately 8.7%, holding volume constant. Market-size multiples (2025, countryeconomy.com): Australia is roughly 5x New Zealand's population and 7x its economy; the United States roughly 64x population and 118x economy. Currency: the NZD/USD rate is indicative (around US$0.60 in 2025) and moves daily - check the live rate before quoting. NZTE SaaS pricing model template referenced as a practical, free tool for value-based pricing.