Guest Blog: A Better Way to Position Your Pricing in B2B Negotiations
- PPS
- 19 hours ago
- 4 min read
Author: Todd Caponi
Have you ever received a real estate flyer in the mail with the headline “On the Market!” or something similar, advertising a house in your vicinity that has just gone up for sale? It features a beautiful picture of the home on the front. Flip it over, and it lists some of the traits of the home — the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, the square footage, the school district. But, more often than not, the price isn’t anywhere to be found.
I don’t know about you, but for me, it’s the first thing I look for, even if I’m not looking to move. Maybe I have a friend looking for a home in the area, or I simply want to understand the value of my own home. Price is the key element in filing this home into our brains. Is the realtor asking me to call them for the price? Do I have to sit down at my computer and look it up? They’re asking a potential prospect to do the homework. As a result, that flyer immediately goes into the recycling bin.
As a business-to-business salesperson, your pricing should be clear, easy to find, and easy to understand. And while your customer may want to negotiate your price, for any discount you agree to in the form of a concession you need to receive something of value in return.
I’ve developed a framework for clarifying your pricing model to customers that I’ve dubbed the Four Levers. These levers — Volume, Timing of Cash, Length of Commitment, and Timing of the Deal — represent the items that determine what you would be willing to pay them for in the form of a discount. In other words, they convey the idea that, while your price is your price, there are elements of value that you’re able to trade in exchange for what the customer values. Any price concession will reflect either a larger purchase, faster payments, a longer commitment, or a more predictably timed transaction.
This means that when you list your price, you need to include these four pieces of information.
1. The proposed price: The first and primary driver of your pricing model is Volume, or how much your customer commit to buying. The more products, services, technology, licenses, or whatever solution they commit to purchase, the better. If the customer commits to a smaller purchase, the price will be higher.
List the dollar amount, but along with it, explain what the price is based on. What is the “volume” component that drives the price? For example, “$150,500 per year for 500 user licenses, implementation services, 24/7 support…” adding, “The per-user price is based on a commitment to 500 licenses. The per-user price increases or decreases based on a larger or smaller up-front commitment.”
The message should be clear: Commit to more, and the price per unit will be lower. Commit to less, and the price per unit will be higher.
2. The timing of cash: Include a bullet point, a sentence below your pricing chart, or some other clearly communicated place where payment timing impacts the price. For example, state: “This pricing is based on up-front annual payments, paid NET30.”
It should be clear that any change to the timing of payment impacts the proposed investment.
3. The length of commitment: Similar to the timing of cash, clearly communicate how the commitment length impacts the price. You’re likely familiar with pricing pages on websites that clearly identify that committing on an annual basis to a solution lowers the price versus a month-to-month commitment. Clarify that in your proposal by adding, for example, “…and an annual commitment to the solution.”
Your price is based on the volume they commit to, how fast they pay, and the length of commitment. Even glancing at the pricing page should make it clear how the first three of the Four Levers impact the price.
4. Timing of the deal: I recommend holding off discussing the Timing of the Deal lever at this point in the proposal. Sharing this lever too early can cause a customer to make a wildly inaccurate guess, which doesn’t help anyone.
However, adding a sentence that ensures your price can change with your sound basis organizational pricing is important: “This pricing is based on the current price as of (today’s date).”
If your company makes a pricing change, a sentence identifying that the price is unlikely to stay exactly the same in perpetuity is helpful. Having a customer dig up your proposal five years later and say, “Okay, we’re ready to go!” hurts.
By sharing the Four Levers in your pricing model, you’re allowing the customer to adjust the price based on elements that maintain the integrity of your business and your other customers. Your customer understands your price, how it was determined, and what levers impact their price. Also, by providing transparency for the transaction you remove tension from your sales negotiation. And, importantly, you built trust along the way.
About the Author
Todd Caponi, CSP® is a multitime C-Level sales leader, a behavioral science and sales history nerd, and has led through two companies with successful exits. He now speaks and teaches revenue organizations and their leaders on leveraging transparency and decision science to maximize their revenue capacity as Principal of Sales Melon LLC. He’s the author of two previous award-winning books, The Transparency Sale and The Transparent Sales Leader. His newly released book is, Four Levers Negotiating: The Simple, Counterintuitive Way to Higher Deal Values and Lasting Trust (Matt Holt Books, Jan. 27, 2026).
