How do I generate more sales for annual plans?

If you are a sales-generated business. And besides the obvious 15 to 20% yearly discount.

1. Incentive your sales rep to turnover not to the bullshit mrr metric (2 to 3 first months if monthly)
2. Incentive your CS team to upsell in the 2 first months a monthly client into a yearly client
3. Work on your pitch to showcase the benefits of a yearly subscribtion (data import, training sessions included...)
4. Do not offer free trial : this is critical advice.
5. If you are strugling to attract yearly clients, it may tell you something on your current product/set of features. Users may have one shot interest in your product rather than reccuring needs.

We were closing 30-40% of yearly deals one year ago. Now it is above 75%.

What have you tried so far? And can you provide any specifics of your plans? That would help to provide detailed suggestions.

If you're asking in a more general sense, rather than for a specific instance, then here are a few things you can try:

Call out the savings the user would get from an annual plan. Typically, if the savings are over $100, I would call out the dollar amount and if it's under, I would present it as a percentage. Depending on the amount, you could also get a bit creative by positioning it as getting 2 months free (assuming of course that the savings equals what 2 months would cost. This is just an example).

You could test out how it is presented on the page. For instance, if you have a slider or tab that toggles between monthly and annual subscription pricing/details, you could see if having the annual as the default has an impact.

You could send emails to users on monthly plans after a certain length of time (whatever length you feel they need to be sold on the value they're receiving) encouraging them to switch to annual.

You could test language in the initial signup process pushing users to the annual subscription. For instance, there could be a step that asks, "Would you like to save XX% every year by choosing an annual subscription?"

If you are trying to upgrade people who are already subscribers with a specific, dedicated promotion, you could include social proof by pointing out the number of people who choose annual subscription or some impressive metric for those on annual plans.

Hope that helps. If you have a specific product or service in mind with this question, I'd be happy to take a look and offer more customized recommendations. Feel free to reach out.

A yearly discount is a good way, and pre-selected yearly option. You could maybe even add special benefits to yearly subscribers.

Why?

What is your product?

Discounts?