Pricing.
How companies decide what to charge — pricing strategy, models, and the discipline of capturing the value you create.
Pricing is the decision of what to charge — and, underneath it, how a business chooses to capture the value it creates. It spans strategy (where you sit in the market), models (subscription, usage, tiers, and packaging), and execution (the willingness-to-pay research and the discipline of revisiting price as the product and the market move). It is the rare lever that is high-impact, low-capital, and almost always under-managed.
It’s also the most under-loved lever in modern company-building: a single point of price drops almost entirely to the bottom line, yet most companies set price once — by gut or cost-plus — and never return to it. Strategy of Finance covers the frameworks, the models, and the operator stories, from value-based pricing to packaging and tiering, that make pricing decisions stick.
Essays 22
The Credit Index reads: the coding tools Pricing Who still gets to keep 75%+ gross margins? Pricing What you charge for matters more than what you charge Pricing “Unlimited*” — the asterisk is the business model Pricing The price didn't change. Your bill did. Pricing The AI pricing plateau Pricing Should you meter at all? Pricing How to move a meter without a mutiny Pricing How to buy AI without overpaying Pricing Credits are how AI hides its prices Pricing Almost no one can charge for outcomes Pricing AI pricing is just COGS finally showing up Pricing AI gives, AI takes: the new physics of non-physical businesses AI in Finance Strategy is a branch of pricing — Jean-Manuel Izaret on the inversion Podcast Summary The art of custom pricing in B2B software Pricing The science and art of pricing Pricing A guide to pricing methodologies Pricing The evolution of pricing strategies Pricing Between the commodity and the one-off — Tim Smith on pricing as a discipline Podcast Summary The power of price anchoring Pricing The 1% challenge — Per Sjöfors on pricing as the unread P&L line Podcast Summary The IPO masterclass lives before the bell — Rakib Azad Podcast Summary
Episodes 3
EP 030 Jean-Manuel Izaret BCG EP 030 - Unpacking Trust, Fairness and Value in Pricing with JMI, Senior Partner at BCG Jul 6, 2024 1 hr 53 min EP 027 Tim Smith Wiglaf Pricing EP 027 - Pricing Done Right with Tim Smith, Author & Pricing Expert at Wiglaf Pricing Jun 3, 2024 1 hr 18 min EP 026 Per Sjöfors EP 026 - Mastering the Science of Pricing with Per "The Price Whisperer" Sjöfors, Pricing Expert May 19, 2024 1 hr 9 min
Related questions
Reviewed- Why is pricing the most underrated lever in a business?
- Because a point of price drops almost entirely to the bottom line, while the same effort spent on volume or cost usually doesn't. Most companies set price once, by gut or by cost-plus, and then never revisit it — leaving margin on the table every quarter. Pricing is the rare lever that's high-impact, low-capital, and almost always under-managed.
- What's the difference between cost-plus, competitor-based, and value-based pricing?
- Cost-plus prices off your costs — simple, but it ignores what the customer will actually pay. Competitor-based prices off the market — easy to benchmark, but a race to the average. Value-based prices off the outcome the customer gets — the hardest to do, and the only one that captures the value you actually create. The pricing experts SoF has talked to — Tim Smith, Per Sjöfors, and BCG's Jean-Manuel Izaret — converge on the same point: anchor on value, use data to find it, and treat pricing as an ongoing discipline.
- How often should a company revisit its pricing?
- Continuously, not annually-by-accident. Markets move, your product adds value, and your costs change — yet most pricing is frozen at whatever felt right at launch. The discipline is to test and adjust on a cadence: packaging, tiers, and price points reviewed regularly, with willingness-to-pay data refreshed rather than assumed. Treating pricing as 'set and forget' is how companies quietly under-earn for years.
- Is pricing a science or an art?
- Both, and the good operators refuse to choose. The science is the quantitative work — willingness-to-pay research, elasticity, segmentation, and the models that turn data into a defensible number. The art is the behavioral and strategic judgment — anchoring, packaging, and how a price signals quality. Lean only on the data and you miss how buyers actually decide; lean only on instinct and you leave money on the table.