Stop Asking Customers What They'd Pay (Do This Instead)
Maarten Laruelle Van Westendorp. Gabor Granger. Every pricing textbook tells you to survey your customers and ask: what would you pay?
The problem? They’re making it up. They have no reference point. No context. No idea what the outcome is actually worth to them. You’re asking someone to put a price tag on something they haven’t experienced yet.
Why “what would you pay?” doesn’t work
When you ask customers what they’d pay, you get an answer. But it’s a fiction. They’re anchoring on what they’ve paid for vaguely similar things, or they’re lowballing because that’s what rational people do when asked to name a price.
Survey methods like Van Westendorp and Gabor Granger were designed for consumer goods on a shelf. Not for B2B SaaS where the value is specific, compounding, and hard to compare.
The three-part method that works
Instead of asking for a number, have a conversation. Three steps.
1. Understand their goals
What does your customer want to achieve with your solution? Not the features they want — the outcomes. What results matter for their business? What does success look like in 6 months?
2. Measure the value
Not what your product costs, but what the outcome is worth. 10 hours saved per week. 20% less churn. €100,000 per year in savings. Get specific. If you can’t quantify the value, you can’t price against it.
3. Offer a percentage of that value
If they’re getting €20,000 in annual value, pricing at 10–20% (sometimes 30%) of that ROI is where the conversation actually starts. And it’s a conversation they’ll have with you — not on a survey form.
Conversations beat surveys
Surveys tell you what customers say. Real conversations show you what they actually want to do — and that’s infinitely more valuable.
The founder who prices well isn’t the one with the best survey design. It’s the one who knows the customer’s outcome better than the customer does.
Want to run this exercise for your own product? Let’s talk.