📖 Book
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Paid
Intermediate
Why we picked it
When you are the only one selling something like your product, cost-plus and competitor benchmarks give you nothing to anchor on, and this book is the clearest case for the alternative: figure out what customers will actually pay before you finish building, then shape the product around that. Ramanujam ran pricing for hundreds of launches at Simon-Kucher, so the willingness-to-pay conversations he describes are practical, not theoretical. Treat it as a starting point for how to run those conversations, not a formula to copy.
From
Wiley (2016)
by Madhavan Ramanujam and Georg Tacke
Book, ~240 pages
- Have the willingness-to-pay conversation with customers early, before the product is done, so price shapes what you build instead of being an afterthought.
- Different customers value your product differently: segment by willingness to pay rather than forcing one price on everyone.
- Design the product and its packaging around the price customers will bear, not the other way around.
Open
amazon.com →
✍️ Essay
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Free
Beginner
Why we picked it
Patrick Campbell built ProfitWell on more pricing data than almost anyone in SaaS, and this piece distills his core idea: find your value metric, the thing customers actually pay for that scales as they get more value. It is practical and data-backed, aimed at early software founders who need a first pricing structure that grows revenue instead of capping it. Read it as a framework to test on your own customers, not a formula.
From
LTSE (Long-Term Stock Exchange)
by Patrick Campbell
~10 min read
- Pick a value metric that rises as the customer gets more value, so price scales with the outcome you deliver.
- Per-seat pricing often breaks because shared logins hide real usage and it stops reflecting value.
- Gather willingness-to-pay data from real personas before you set a price, rather than guessing off cost or competitors.
Open
ltse.com →
📄 Article
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Free
Intermediate
Why we picked it
If you started cheap to win early deals, this covers the follow-up problem: how to raise prices on existing accounts without triggering mass churn. Kyle Poyar of OpenView lays out the concrete signals that it is time to raise, and the mechanics (grandfathering, stair-stepping steep increases, transparent notice) that keep customers. It is a tactical checklist, so use it as a starting point and size the moves to your own base.
From
OpenView
by Kyle Poyar
~12 min read
- Signals it is time to raise: no pushback on price, customers say you are surprisingly cheap, and pricing has not moved in years.
- Grandfather loyal customers or give a grace period, and stair-step increases above 50 percent instead of all at once.
- Lead the announcement with the added value, not the cost, and give enough notice for people to plan.
Open
openviewpartners.com →