workbook

Pricing Strategy & Tier Design Workbook

A practical, interactive workbook to choose pricing approaches (value, retainer, hourly, project, subscription), design tiered offers with anchor pricing, run simple pricing probes, and capture margin scenarios. Save and revisit your answers to run experiments, compare alternatives, and turn insights into next steps.

Interactive Tool

Pricing Strategy & Tier Design Workbook

Use this guided workbook to map customer outcomes to value buckets, design up to three tiers with anchor pricing, run low-cost pricing probes, and capture margin scenarios. Enter numbers and notes so you can compare options, save experiments, and iterate. Help text next to each field gives examples and simple formulas you can apply immediately.

Who is filling out this workbook? Use a name that helps you find this entry later.
Describe the product or service in one sentence, focusing on the primary customer outcome (for example: 'Monthly bookkeeping for freelance designers that reduces hours spent on invoicing by 60%').
Describe a measurable outcome customers get from this offer (e.g., 'Reduce invoicing time by 10 hours/month').
Estimate how valuable this outcome is to customers.
Second measurable outcome (optional).
Choose the model you want to evaluate first.
Give the lowest tier a short name (e.g., Starter, Basic).
List what a customer gets in this tier. Be concrete — features are selling points.
Enter a price in your preferred currency. For services you can use monthly, per project, or hourly as appropriate.
Enter typical hours required so you can compare time-based cost.
Include materials, subcontractor fees, software costs, or other direct expenses per sale.
This is often the mid option and can be used as the anchor price.
List what makes Tier 2 more valuable than Tier 1.
Enter the price you plan to charge for Tier 2.
Typical hours for Tier 2.
Direct costs per sale.
Name the premium option (e.g., Pro, Premium, Concierge).
What exclusive or high-value elements justify the premium price?
Premium price.
Typical hours for Tier 3.
Direct costs per sale.
Anchoring helps nudge buyers toward the middle or desired option.
Write a short outreach script or question to test willingness to pay (example: 'If a service delivered X outcome reliably, would you consider paying $Y per month?'). Keep probes short and specific.
How many customers did you ask? Aim for at least 5–20 quick probes for a preliminary signal.
Count how many people signaled willingness to pay or gave a price near your target.
If respondents gave numbers, enter the average. Use this to compare against your tier prices.
Estimate the annual dollar benefit or savings your offer provides to a typical customer (used for value-based thinking). Example: if your service saves a business $12,000/year, enter 12000.
What percent of the customer's estimated benefit will you capture? A conservative starting point is 5–20% depending on how easily they can capture the value themselves. Enter a number like 10 for 10%.
Multiply the estimated annual benefit by the percent you entered (example: 12000 * 0.10 = 1200). Enter the result here so you can compare it to your tier prices.
Use this area to capture your margin math. Simple formula: Gross margin % = (Price - Direct costs) / Price * 100. Example: price 1200 - costs 400 => margin = (1200-400)/1200 = 66.7%.
Calculate using the formula above and enter the percent.
List 2–4 specific next steps (e.g., run 10 pricing probes, create landing page for Tier 2, test a 14-day trial, update deliverables). Be specific and time-bound.
1 = low confidence, 5 = ready to publish
1.0 10.0
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