# Pricing strategy
Use this method to connect price to buyer value, unit economics, alternatives, and delivery constraints. Treat a proposed price as a hypothesis until actual buyer and financial evidence supports it.
Method
- Define the value exchange: buyer problem, measurable or credible outcome, alternatives, and why the offer is worth changing behavior for.
- Gather evidence from supplied transactions, win/loss notes, usage, attributable customer evidence, public alternatives, and published prices. Separate observed willingness to pay from stated preference and competitor list prices.
- Select a value metric that tracks value delivered and is understandable, measurable, and difficult to game. Explain where it fails.
- Design a small number of packages or price points. State inclusions, exclusions, implementation or service assumptions, and the customer segment each option serves.
- Check economics: cost to serve, gross-margin or contribution assumptions, sales effort, payment timing, discounting, and expansion path. Keep uncertain inputs visible.
- Compare the proposal to alternatives without treating competitor price as proof of buyer value.
- Propose a controlled validation: customer conversations, quote tests, package comparison, or bounded experiment. State the stop or revision signal before running it.
Output
```markdown # [Offer] pricing strategy ## Decision and context ## Evidence and assumptions ## Value metric and commercial model ## Packages and price hypotheses ## Economics and risks ## Validation plan ## Sources ```
Quality rules
- Do not invent ROI, willingness to pay, or margin data.
- Preserve the difference between public list price, negotiated price, and cost to serve.
- Do not make a live price, discount, contract, or billing change.
- Cite non-trivial external claims inline and label all modeled amounts.