Many commercial discussions look, at first sight, like they are about price. The customer thinks it is too expensive, sales wants room to close the deal, finance looks at margin, operations worries about capacity and management of course wants volume, but preferably also predictability. Somewhere in that tension, a price is created that feels logical at that moment. Sometimes with good arguments, sometimes under time pressure, sometimes because nobody wants to lose the deal. And that is often exactly where the problem starts, because such a price is rarely just a number at the bottom of an offer. The model below illustrates how pricing decisions influence customer behaviour and ultimately shape commercial outcomes.
Price is also a signal. To the customer, to your own sales organisation and to the rest of the company. With your price, you show which behaviour you value. You show what commitment is worth. You make clear whether volume, speed, certainty, flexibility or strategic cooperation really make a difference. If that is not clear, every deal starts to stand on its own. And as soon as every deal stands on its own, the deal is often won by the person with the most pressure, the shortest deadline or the strongest argument. That may feel commercial and entrepreneurial, but over time it can go quite wrong, because I see this happening in many B2B organisations: there is a price list, a margin policy or an approval process, but not a real pricing strategy.
As a result, every deal is judged separately. A short term market opportunity gets a lot of attention because there is revenue to win. A customer who wants to move fast gets room because speed feels attractive. And an existing customer who wants to commit for several years sometimes receives almost the same commercial treatment as a customer who only wants to buy today and be free again tomorrow. That may sound practical, but actually it is not right, because if a short term spot deal receives almost the same value as a multi-year cooperation, why would a customer commit? If maximum flexibility is hardly more expensive than certainty for both sides, why would a customer give certainty? And if a customer who waits, doubts or pushes hard finally gets the same or even better conditions than a customer who plans ahead and commits volume, then you should ask yourself which behaviour you are actually rewarding as an organisation.
Many organisations say they want partnerships. They want long term relationships, predictability, better planning, more stable margins and customers who want to build together. But sometimes their pricing logic tells a different story. It actually says: wait a bit longer, keep your options open, negotiate hard and check again towards the end of the quarter what might still be possible. Then you should not be surprised if customers start playing that game, because professional B2B customers are not stupid. They learn quite quickly how your commercial system works. If urgency pays off, they create urgency. If commitment brings little benefit, they stay flexible. If escalation helps, they escalate. And if a short term opportunity gets more internal energy than a calm multi-year agreement, then you are organising yourself that customers feel less and less reason to commit early or for the longer term.
With that, I am not saying that spot deals are wrong. Not at all. In many markets you simply need them. They can help to use capacity, take market opportunities, open new customers or create temporary additional volume. But a spot deal should be treated as a spot deal, with a price and conditions that fit short term flexibility, uncertainty and limited mutual commitment.
A multi-year deal is different. There is value in it that you do not always see directly in the first price line. Certainty. Planning. Less renegotiation. Lower commercial cost. Better alignment between customer and supplier. More room to improve together. If that value is not visible in the commercial structure, you make it almost rational for the customer not to commit. And that is where, in my opinion, many pricing discussions go wrong: too much focus on today’s price and too little focus on the behaviour you create for tomorrow.
A good pricing strategy is therefore not only about protecting margin. It helps customers to choose. Not by pushing them into a corner, but by making clear what different choices mean. If you want maximum flexibility, then a different price and a different risk profile should come with it. If you want certainty and commitment, then that should be a different conversation, with different conditions and a different value exchange. And if you want partnership, both sides need to bring something to the table. Not only in words, but also in behaviour.
That is often where the weakness is. Many commercial organisations like to talk about partnership, but do not always make clear what reciprocity should come with it. Then partnership becomes a friendly word for discount, flexibility and extra service. While a healthy partnership actually requires clear agreements. What do we commit to? Which risk do we share? Which volumes or intentions are realistic? Where can both parties hold each other accountable? And what is the value of certainty compared to opportunity? Without that conversation, price remains mainly a negotiation. With that conversation, price becomes part of your strategy.
This also asks something from leadership. You cannot expect sales to find the perfect balance in every deal between volume, margin, customer relationship, risk and strategic value if the organisation itself does not give clear guidance. Then every account manager becomes his or her own pricing strategist. One gives more room to protect the relationship. Another one holds strongly to margin. A third one escalates internally because the deal is supposedly strategic. And before you know it, a pattern starts where exceptions become normal.
Not because people are not doing their job, but because the system leaves too much room for randomness. That also makes this topic sensitive. Pricing discipline can quickly sound hard, as if you become less customer focused or less entrepreneurial. But I believe the opposite is true. A clear pricing strategy makes you more reliable. Customers know better what to expect, sales knows better what makes sense, finance understands why certain choices are made, operations can plan better and management gets growth that does not only look good on paper, but also makes sense in margin, predictability and execution.
Pricing discipline is therefore not a brake on commerce. It is a condition for healthy growth. The question is not only whether you can win a deal. Very often you can, especially if you give enough room. The better question is which behaviour you reward when you win that deal in this way. Because if you reward short term flexibility as if it is long term commitment, you are not building a partnership. You are training the market to stay non-committal. And if you call every deal strategic, the word strategic will slowly lose its meaning.
Healthy commercial growth therefore asks for more than customer focus and negotiation room. It asks for choices. Which customers do we want to commit? For which behaviour do we want to give better conditions? Where is flexibility valuable, but also more expensive? Which deals help us move forward, and which deals only fill the revenue for a short moment? These are not easy conversations, but they are needed. Because in the end, your pricing strategy shows what you really believe as an organisation. Not in the presentation, not in the yearly sales meeting and not in the nice words about partnership, but in practice. In the deal you do accept. In the exception you no longer make. In the customer you reward for commitment. And in the short term opportunity where you maybe say no because the long term is more important.
Pricing is therefore not an Excel exercise. It is steering behaviour. From your customer, from your sales organisation and, to be honest, also from yourself.
Recognisable? Then it is probably time to not only look at your prices, but especially at the behaviour your pricing model creates. At Grounded Consultancy I help commercial teams to make exactly that sharper: where pricing logic, customer segmentation and sales behaviour strengthen each other, and where they work against each other. Not with thick reports, but with clear choices that steer commercial behaviour in the right direction again.