A comprehensive playbook for B2B SaaS pricing strategy — from research and packaging architecture through financial modeling, testing, sales enablement, and launch.
Build the evidence base for your pricing decisions. Audit the competitive landscape, quantify willingness-to-pay across segments, and synthesize insights into a recommendation brief.
Map the competitive pricing landscape, identify customer segments, and establish your current pricing performance baseline.
Conduct Competitor Pricing Audit
Map every direct and adjacent competitor's pricing model, tiers, value metrics, and public rate cards to establish your competitive pricing context.
Map Customer Segments and Buyer Personas for Pricing
Identify 3-5 distinct customer segments with different willingness-to-pay profiles to inform tier design and packaging decisions.
Analyze Current Pricing Performance Baseline
Benchmark your current win rates, ACV, discounting patterns, expansion revenue, and churn by pricing tier to establish a pre-change baseline.
Quantify what customers will pay using Van Westendorp, conjoint analysis, qualitative interviews, and synthesize findings into a recommendation brief.
Run Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Analysis
Deploy a four-question survey to 100-200 respondents per segment to identify psychological price thresholds and the acceptable price range.
Deploy Conjoint Analysis for Feature Packaging
Use choice-based conjoint analysis to quantify how customers trade off features against price, revealing optimal tier composition.
Conduct Qualitative Pricing Interviews
Interview 15-20 customers, prospects, and churned accounts to understand the emotional and organizational dynamics behind pricing decisions.
Synthesize Pricing Research into a Recommendation Brief
Combine competitive audit, Van Westendorp, conjoint, and qualitative insights into a single decision document with recommended pricing architecture.
Design the structural elements of your pricing model — value metrics, tier composition, feature fencing, add-ons, and enterprise frameworks that align price with customer value.
Choose the unit of measurement that scales price with customer value and design the billing mechanics around it.
Identify and Evaluate Value Metrics
Select the unit of measurement that scales price with customer value, choosing between per-seat, usage-based, or hybrid models.
Decide Freemium vs. Free Trial vs. No Free Option
Evaluate whether a free tier, time-limited trial, or demo-only approach best serves your acquisition funnel and unit economics.
Design Annual vs. Monthly Pricing Psychology
Set the annual-to-monthly price ratio and billing mechanics to maximize annual commitments without blocking monthly adoption.
Architect Good/Better/Best tiers, determine feature placement, design add-ons, and establish enterprise pricing frameworks.
Architect Good/Better/Best Tiers
Design a three-tier packaging structure where each tier targets a distinct segment with clear upgrade triggers.
Define Feature Fencing Strategy
Determine which features belong in each tier using value-to-cost ratio analysis and conjoint utility scores.
Design Add-On and Usage-Based Components
Structure optional add-ons and metered components that capture expansion revenue without overcomplicating the base tiers.
Create Enterprise and Custom Pricing Framework
Validate pricing decisions with rigorous unit economics, expansion revenue projections, discount policies, and sensitivity analysis to ensure every tier is economically viable.
Calculate tier-level unit economics, model expansion revenue, and forecast the revenue impact of proposed pricing changes.
Model Unit Economics by Tier
Calculate LTV, CAC, gross margin, and payback period for each pricing tier to validate that every tier is economically viable.
Build Expansion Revenue Projections
Model expected expansion revenue from tier upgrades, add-on adoption, and usage-based growth to project Net Revenue Retention.
Forecast Revenue Impact of Pricing Changes
Build scenario models showing revenue impact of proposed pricing changes on new business, existing customers, and blended ARR.
Design discount policies, multi-year contract incentives, grandfathering financial models, and stress-test pricing resilience.
Design Discount Policy and Approval Matrix
Create a structured discount framework with clear thresholds, approval levels, and guardrails to prevent margin erosion.
Structure Multi-Year Contract Incentives
Design pricing incentives for 2-3 year commitments that balance revenue predictability with appropriate price escalation.
Model Grandfathering Financial Impact
Quantify the revenue impact of different grandfathering approaches for existing customers during a pricing change.
Build Pricing Sensitivity Scenarios
Test pricing assumptions with real buyer behavior through A/B experiments, fake door tests, and closed-lost analysis before committing to a full rollout.
Structure controlled experiments to validate pricing assumptions with real buyer behavior before full rollout.
Design Pricing A/B Test Plan
Structure controlled experiments to validate pricing assumptions with real buyer behavior before full rollout.
Run Fake Door and Willingness-to-Pay Experiments
Use lightweight behavioral experiments to validate pricing before committing to infrastructure changes.
Validate Pricing with Closed-Lost Analysis
Analyze closed-lost deals for pricing-related patterns to validate that proposed changes address real buyer objections.
Design grandfathering policies, rollout sequences, migration paths, and communication templates for existing customers.
Develop Grandfathering Policy for Existing Customers
Create a structured grandfathering policy that balances customer retention with revenue optimization during pricing transitions.
Build Price Increase Rollout Strategy
Design the sequenced rollout plan for communicating and implementing pricing changes across new and existing customers.
Create Customer Migration Paths
Design clear transition paths that map existing customers from legacy plans to the new pricing structure.
Design Price Increase Communication Templates
Equip your revenue teams with pricing calculators, objection handling guides, ROI models, discount workflows, and training programs to sell the new pricing confidently.
Build pricing calculators, FAQ guides, and ROI models that help sales and CS teams handle pricing conversations consistently.
Build Interactive Pricing Calculator
Create a self-serve pricing calculator that helps prospects estimate costs based on their usage profile and needs.
Create Pricing FAQ and Objection Handling Guide
Develop a comprehensive FAQ and objection response playbook for sales and CS teams to handle pricing conversations consistently.
Develop ROI Calculator for Sales Conversations
Build an ROI model that quantifies the business value of your product relative to its cost for use in sales and renewal conversations.
Implement discount approval workflows, sales training programs, and deal desk escalation processes.
Design Discount Approval Workflow
Implement a CRM-enforced workflow that routes discount requests through the appropriate approval chain based on discount level.
Train Sales Team on New Pricing and Positioning
Run structured training sessions that equip the sales team to present, justify, and negotiate the new pricing confidently.
Create Deal Desk Escalation Process
Establish a deal desk function that handles non-standard pricing requests, complex enterprise deals, and exception approvals.
Execute the pricing rollout with staged deployment, internal enablement, customer migration, and ongoing monitoring to catch issues early and optimize continuously.
Build the pricing page, coordinate internal enablement, and execute a staged rollout with monitoring gates.
Build Pricing Page and Public-Facing Assets
Design the pricing page, feature comparison table, and supporting content that converts visitors to buyers under the new pricing.
Execute Internal Launch and Enablement
Coordinate the internal rollout across sales, CS, support, marketing, and product teams before any external communication.
Roll Out Pricing to New Customers
Execute the staged rollout of new pricing to prospects and new customers with monitoring gates at each stage.
Establish pricing dashboards, quarterly review cadences, competitive monitoring, and continuous iteration frameworks.
Establish Pricing Metrics Dashboard
Build a real-time dashboard tracking the key pricing metrics that indicate whether the new pricing is performing as modeled.
Implement Quarterly Pricing Review Cadence
Establish a recurring review process that evaluates pricing performance, competitive changes, and optimization opportunities every quarter.
Build Competitive Pricing Alert System
Set up automated monitoring for competitor pricing changes, new market entrants, and pricing-related industry shifts.
Plan the Next Pricing Iteration Cycle
Establish guidelines for enterprise deals that require custom pricing, volume discounts, or non-standard packaging.
Stress-test the proposed pricing against macroeconomic, competitive, and adoption scenarios to validate resilience.
Create segmented communication templates for announcing pricing changes to different customer cohorts.
Establish the framework for continuous pricing evolution with annual major reviews and quarterly minor optimizations.
