Product managers: you have more impact on pricing than you might think
Maarten Laruelle I have run pricing transformations for 50+ scale-ups, and this is a pattern I see too often: product managers are making pricing decisions every day but do not realize it.
That feature you are planning to ship next quarter? It affects what you can charge. The metric you chose for your usage model? It determines how customers perceive value. The way you bundle capabilities into tiers? It defines your expansion revenue.
Product managers sit at the intersection of value delivery and value capture. But most only focus on delivery.
Three mistakes that cost real money
Shipping features nobody will pay for
Before greenlighting a feature, ask two questions: will the target segment actually pay more for this, and does the willingness to pay justify the engineering cost?
I worked with a B2B SaaS company that spent six months building an advanced reporting module. When they launched it, customers said “nice” and kept paying the same amount. The feature was useful, but it did not move the needle on perceived value. Six months of engineering, zero incremental revenue.
The fix is simple. Before you build, talk to customers about their willingness to pay. Not “would you like this feature” but “what would you pay for it?”
Choosing the wrong pricing metric
Your pricing metric is the unit you charge for. Users, seats, API calls, transactions, devices. The choice matters enormously, and product managers usually make this decision by default rather than by design.
A metric tied early in the value delivery chain offers less pricing power than one capturing end-stage outcomes. If your product helps customers reduce support tickets by 40%, charging per seat is leaving money on the table. Charging per ticket resolved gets you closer to the value the customer actually receives.
Adding value without updating the price
Every time you ship a feature and do not adjust the price, you are training customers to expect free value. Over time, this erodes your pricing power. The product gets better, but the price stays flat.
I see this constantly. A platform that was worth 200 euros per month two years ago is now worth 500 euros per month based on what it does. But nobody ever adjusted the price. Customers are getting an incredible deal, and the company is leaving 60% of its value on the table.
The real blindspot
Product managers tend to focus exclusively on value delivery: features, UX, customer requests. The blindspot is value capture. Understanding what customers truly value and making sure the pricing reflects it.
These are not separate conversations. Every product decision is a pricing decision. The roadmap is a pricing roadmap. The packaging is a product decision. Separating them is how you end up with a great product that is chronically underpriced.
What to do about it
Start with three things. First, audit your current roadmap through a pricing lens. For every planned feature, ask: does this increase willingness to pay, and if so, for which segment? Second, map your pricing metric to the value chain. Are you charging for something that correlates with the value customers actually receive? Third, request formal ownership of pricing decisions. Product managers should have decision-making authority over pricing, not just consultative input.
One of my B2B SaaS/IoT clients achieved a 10x price increase with 90% customer acceptance. The key was deliberate packaging and tiering, owned and driven by the product team. Not sales, not finance. Product.
Pricing is a product skill. It is time to treat it that way.
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