When Discounting Becomes the Default, Something Else Is Missing
In most B2B transactions, both sides fall into familiar roles. Sellers talk about features, advantages, and outcomes. Buyers compare options and push for concessions. Procurement teams are trained to focus on cost, and sellers respond accordingly.
The result is an adversarial dynamic. One side “wins” on price, the other gives something up. Even when a deal closes, trust is thin and relationships can feel more transactional versus partner oriented.
What’s often overlooked is why price takes over so easily in the first place. It’s not because buyers don’t care about results. It’s because price is usually the only thing that feels concrete and comparable.
Rethinking “Good-Better-Best” for Professional Services Pricing
Pricing professional services has always been part science, part art, and often, part anxiety. Whether you lead a law firm, design studio, accounting practice, IT consultancy, or advisory group, the same challenge surfaces again and again: clients want transparency, but your value is built on expertise, judgment, and trust which are things that don’t fit neatly into a price sheet.
Yet the market is changing. Clients are more informed, procurement teams are more involved, and competitors are packaging services with newfound clarity. That’s why an old concept—the “Good-Better-Best” pricing model—is quietly making a comeback, this time reshaped for the professional era.
Why Your Customers Fixate on Price—and What You Can Do About It
For CEOs and marketing leaders at small to mid-sized B2B companies, few challenges are more frustrating than hearing, “It’s just too expensive.” Especially when your solution is more advanced, more thoughtful, and delivers better long-term outcomes than lower-priced competitors.