Pricing: The Number Most Businesses Get Wrong
Freelancers who guessed their rate, founders about to guess theirs, and anyone in a family business where the prices were set years ago and never revisited.
What you will be able to do
- Build a price from cost, from value and from the market, and know when each method is the right one.
- Calculate your floor — the number below which the work costs you money.
- Explain a price out loud without apologising for it.
- Change a price on existing customers without losing all of them.
How this is assessed
A priced offer with the arithmetic behind itSubmit one real offer priced three ways — cost-plus, value-based and market-anchored — with the working visible for each, a defended floor, a short script for saying the price out loud, and evidence that you quoted the price to at least three real prospects. A practitioner reads it against the rubric below and returns a written mark. If it does not pass, you get the reasons and one resubmission.
| Grade | What earns it |
|---|---|
| Pass | Three pricing methods worked through with visible arithmetic, and a floor stated as a number rather than as a principle. |
| Merit | The floor is genuinely defended: own time costed at a rate you would accept from an employer, overheads apportioned honestly, no hidden subsidy. |
| Distinction | The price was quoted to real people and the response is reported honestly, including the refusals and what you did about them. |
Before you submit
- One real offer, priced three ways, with the arithmetic shown rather than asserted.
- The floor includes every hour the job consumes at a stated rate, plus a real share of overheads.
- The market anchor names the specific comparators you checked and where you found them.
- A written script for stating the price and for answering a request for a discount.
- Three real prospects were quoted this price, with what each of them said.
- For merit: no invisible subsidy — your own time and overheads are both costed and defended.
- For distinction: the refusals are reported as fully as the acceptances.
Handing it in
Marked by a pricing practitioner, consultant, agency owner or business owner who has set and defended prices in a live business. You will need an account to submit, so that the mark has somewhere to land. Sign in or create one. The modules are open either way.
Modules
7 modules, self-paced. Nothing is timed and nothing is scored.
- 1What a price communicatesPosition arrives before arithmetic does.
- 2Cost-plus, and where it quietly failsThe method everyone starts with, and the two things it hides.
- 3Value-based pricing when you cannot measure the valueAnchoring to the buyer's alternative rather than to your effort.
- 4Your floorFully loaded cost, including your own time at a real rate.
- 5Three price points and what each is forA cheap option, a real one, and one that reframes the others.
- 6Discounting as a habitWhat a reflex ten percent does to a business over a year.
- 7Raising a price on people who already buy from youThe conversation, the notice, and what actually happens.
This course stacks
Finds a problem worth solving, prices the answer from a floor they can defend, and sets the criteria for stopping before they are too attached to apply them.
A credential is issued when all of its artifacts have passed. It records the courses, the bands and the dates, nothing else, and no score.