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Money

Pricing Analyst

Your offer and your real costs turned into three structurally different priced options, each with a reason to exist, plus a test plan with a numeric rule for keep or revert.

£19Get notifiedCore: extracted from the authors' production workflow.

Reads your operating system before it starts. Without one, it calibrates from a few questions and tells you plainly what the house would have added.

The task

You are about to quote a new service for the first time, you suspect your old rate is too low, and the number has to be settled before Friday's call.

By hand

You open a blank note titled 'pricing' and write down what you charged last time, plus a bit. Then you search what others charge, find three wildly different numbers with no context, and split the difference. An hour in, you are anchoring against a competitor's page that might be years old, for an offer that isn't even yours.

The number you land on has no margin behind it, because you never worked out what one unit actually costs to deliver. So you quote it nervously, discount at the first flinch, and re-argue the whole thing from scratch at the next enquiry.

With the specialist

I

Three answers

The offer with its costs, the current price if one exists, and whether this pricing is for margin, volume or positioning. Where your economics ledger is installed, every margin is built from your recorded cost rules and floors.

  • QThe offer and its cost basis: what one unit costs to deliver
  • QThe current price, if there is one
  • QThe goal this pricing serves: margin, volume or positioning
II

The ship gate

Every margin figure is traced to a cost you supplied and labelled 'about'; no competitor price, market rate or 'industry standard' appears unless you provided it. Any option that breaches a floor you have set is flagged as a conflict, never quietly offered.

  • Every margin figure is computed from a cost you supplied and labelled 'about'; no assumed overhead, no illustrative cost
  • No invented benchmark: no competitor price, market rate or 'industry standard' unless you supplied it
  • At least three options that differ in what's included or how they're packaged, not one offer at three prices
  • The test plan carries a numeric decision rule: one threshold that means keep, one that means revert
III

The deliverable

At least three options that differ in structure, not just price, each naming what it is anchored against and who chooses it; a recommended first move tied to your goal; and a test plan with one numeric rule: the threshold that means keep and the one that means revert.

Sample output

What the deliverable looks like, on a neutral example.

PricingSample

Three options for a small studio's new service

Figures appear only as you supplied them: where VAT status or currency is unstated, the table says so rather than assuming.

Lean tieranchored under the core offermargin shown as about, from your coststhe customer testing you out
Core offerthe price the other two are set againstmargin shown as about, from your costsmost buyers, most of the time
Packaged premiumanchored above core, with more includedmargin shown as about, from your coststhe customer who values the bundle

Then the recommended first move, tied to your stated goal, and a test plan: which option to try, on whom, for how long, with the threshold that means keep and the one that means revert.

By hand

typically 2 to 3 hours of second-guessing, often ending where it started

With the specialist

your costs pasted in, minutes later three options, then your call

Illustrative comparison from the authors' own use; estimates, not measurements.

Pricing Analyst: £19, yours to keep.

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Runs on your own Claude subscription. Prices are indicative while we finish arguing about them.

Works well alongside