Features
Part of Pricing validation: what a too expensive no and a not worth it no each mean
6 plain facts about pricing validation questions
Pricing validation questions: six practical facts cover budgets, comparisons, decision authority, price reactions, answer scoring, and questions to avoid.
Pricing validation questions can get an instant, sincere, useless answer. The wrong one, “What would you pay?” produces a number from nowhere. The questions below are arranged by what each one is actually testing, and each comes with a way to score the answer, because an answer you cannot score is an anecdote.
Ask them in roughly this order. The early ones establish whether a price is even possible; the last one is the only one that contains a number.
Six plain facts about pricing validation questions
- Asking what a buyer spent in the past can reveal a figure and a budget line item; asking what they might spend invites a hypothetical answer.
- A named budget and the person who controls it are stronger evidence than a promise to find the money.
- Buyers can compare an offer with named alternatives they already pay for.
- A current solution may cost time or money, and a new offer may replace that expense or add to it.
- Who approved a similar purchase, what they needed to see, and how the organization prefers to be billed reveal parts of its buying process.
- A stated price should be presented once, then the buyer’s reaction recorded and scored as strong, weak, or discard; “What would you pay?” invites a guess without consequence.
What to take away
- Ask about the past and about other people's money before you ask about yours. Both are things the buyer knows.
- Score each answer as strong, weak, or discard. A strong answer names a number, a person, or an event. A weak one is an opinion. A discard is a hypothetical.
- The question with your price in it is asked last, once, and followed by nothing.
Does a budget exist
"What did you spend on this problem in the last twelve months, and on what?"
Budget question answers
Strong
- Spend last year
- Figure and line item
- Which budget
- Named budget, controller
- New budget line
- Duration and sign-off
Weak
- Spend last year
- Not much or a lot
- Which budget
- Probably operations
- New budget line
- It happens
Discard
- Spend last year
- Would definitely spend
- Which budget
- We would find money
- New budget line
- Would be easy
“Which budget would something like this come out of?” Strong: a named budget and who controls it. Weak: “probably operations, I think.” Discard: “we would find the money.” If this question draws a blank twice in a row across buyers, the site's Pricing Validation guide describes the risk: the category may not have an established budget.
"When did you last create a new budget line for something, and what did it take?" Strong: a story with a duration and a sign-off. Weak: "it happens." Discard: "it would be easy for this."
What they compare it to
"What else do you pay for that solves a problem this size?"
Comparison question answers
Strong
- What else you pay for
- 2-3 named, rough prices
- Current way cost
- Defensible estimate
- What you'd stop paying
- Named subscription or role
Weak
- What else you pay for
- One thing, no price
- Current way cost
- Too much
- What you'd stop paying
- Some time
Discard
- What else you pay for
- Nothing like this exists
- Current way cost
- Never thought about it
- What you'd stop paying
- Nothing, this is extra
"What does the current way of handling this cost you, in hours or money?" Strong: an estimate they can defend, even a rough one. Weak: "too much." Discard: "I have never thought about it," which is itself a finding: a cost nobody has counted is a cost nobody feels.
"If you replaced the current way, what would you stop paying for?" Strong: a named subscription, contractor, or role. Weak: "some time." Discard: "nothing, this would be extra." A price that has to be additional rather than substitutional needs a much stronger case.
Who decides
"Who signed off the last purchase of about this size?"
Decider question answers
Strong
- Who signed off
- Name and role
- What they needed to see
- Document, comparison, trial
- How billed
- Monthly, annual, per unit
Weak
- Who signed off
- It depends
- What they needed to see
- Just a conversation
- How billed
- Whatever works
Discard
- Who signed off
- I can approve it
- What they needed to see
- They trust me
- How billed
- No reason given
"What did that person need to see before they signed?" Strong: a document type, a comparison, a trial period. Weak: "just a conversation." Discard: "they trust me."
"How does your organization prefer to be billed for things like this?" Strong: monthly, annually, per unit, with a reason drawn from their accounting. Weak: "whatever works." This is one of the few forward-looking questions worth asking, because it is about their process, not their preference, and the answer usually decides your structure.
The number
"For [outcome], delivered [how], the price is [number] [structure]." Then silence.
This is not a question, and it is scored differently. Record what filled the silence, in their words, then use the scoring categories below:
| What you heard | Score as |
|---|
Score the silence
What filled the silence?
Deposit, date, or order -> Yes at this number
Wants it, cannot justify -> Too expensive: positioning or proof
| What you heard | Score as |
|---|---|
| Accepts the stated terms or asks how to proceed | Strong signal: the stated price did not immediately stop the conversation; it is not proof of a purchase. |
| Says the price is too high but would pay that amount for another solution | Weak: likely an offer mismatch; the price may fit the problem, but this offer does not. |
| Says the price is too high and would not pay that amount for another solution | Weak: a price or perceived-value problem. |
| Changes the subject, offers only hypothetical praise, or gives no interpretable reaction | Discard: the response does not show how the buyer reacts to the stated price. |
The follow-up separates the middle two rows: “Would you pay that for something else that solved this?” A yes points to an offer mismatch; a no points to a price or perceived-value problem.
Ask the number once per buyer. A second, lower number in the same conversation is a discount, and a discount after hesitation ruins the reading and teaches the buyer that hesitating works.
Questions to ask yourself before any of the above
"What is my floor, from my own figures?" If you cannot answer in one number you cannot interpret a refusal.
Before the conversation
- What is my floor, in one number?
- Which result changes the price?
- Which result changes the offer?
- Is everything I will say true?
"Which result would make me change the price, and which would make me change the offer?" Write both before the first conversation. The offer test has the same rule and for the same reason: a prediction made after the result is not a prediction.
“Is everything I am about to say true?” No invented deadline, no queue that does not exist, no strikethrough price nobody paid. Section 5 of the FTC Act prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices. The FTC's Advertising FAQs: A Guide for Small Business addresses truthful advertising; a claim can be deceptive when it is likely to mislead a reasonable consumer and is material to the consumer's decision. The answers are only readable if the conversation was honest, and the early customers you would be deceiving are the ones you can least afford to lose.
Questions that sound like price research and are not
Why it fails
- What would you pay for this?
- A guess with no consequence, anchored by your framing
- Is [number] reasonable?
- Invites politeness
- Would you pay more for [feature]?
- Hypothetical stacked on hypothetical
- How much is this problem worth to you?
- Nobody has done that arithmetic
Ask instead
- What would you pay for this?
- What did you spend on this last year?
- Is [number] reasonable?
- The number, then silence
- Would you pay more for [feature]?
- What do you pay extra for now, and why?
- How much is this problem worth to you?
- What does the current way cost you in hours?
The pattern is the same throughout the site's customer interview guide: swap a judgment about the future for a fact about the past. The anchoring problem in the first row is related to framing: wording can affect how a person interprets a question. The framing effect describes this general phenomenon; it is not survey-question-writing guidance.
Fake price research
Ask instead
- What would you pay?
- What did you spend last year?
- Is this number reasonable?
- The number, then silence
- Would you pay more?
- What do you pay extra for?
- What is it worth?
- What does current way cost?
Why it fails
- What would you pay?
- Guess with no consequence
- Is this number reasonable?
- Invites politeness
- Would you pay more?
- Hypothetical on hypothetical
- What is it worth?
- Nobody has done that math
Common questions
How many buyers do I need to ask?
Enough to hear the same comparison twice from people who do not know each other. Two independent answers naming the same category are worth more than ten from one referral chain.
What if the buyer asks me what I think it should cost?
Give the number. Deflecting reads as uncertainty, and you came for the reaction to a number, not for their guess.
Should I ask these of existing customers?
The budget and comparison groups, yes; they know more now than they did before buying. The number, no. Existing customers are not a test of a new price, and the clean test of an increase is on new customers only.
Do these work for consumer products?
The "who decides" group collapses into one question about who else at home has a say. The rest work as written, and the comparison group becomes the most important, because consumers measure against whatever they do now more readily than against a rival product.
