There’s a whole body of research on how the brain responds to prices — and most of it has nothing to do with the number itself.
It’s about presentation, framing, and structure.
In this episode, I’m sharing the tactics from that research that I personally applied in my old firm and that I think could meaningfully change how prospects respond to your proposals.
Listen below.
0:48 A lot of what I know on this topic came from Nick Kolenda, a consumer psychologist whose research on pricing psychology is extensive and genuinely well-supported. I’d recommend checking him out.
2:03 If you’ve followed my content for any length of time, this one might sound familiar. But I keep coming back to three-tiered pricing because it works — at my old firm, inside Future Firm Accelerate, and in almost every coaching conversation I have about pricing.
3:27 Price anchoring is closely tied to three-tiered pricing. The first number a prospect sees sets a mental reference point, and every number they see after that gets evaluated against it.
5:41 Here’s one straight from Kolenda’s research that sounds almost trivially simple — remove the dollar sign and commas from your prices. The psychology behind it is worth understanding.
7:01 For custom pricing, non-round numbers tend to work better — and it comes down to perceived precision. A round number like three thousand can feel like a guess rather than a calculated figure.
8:42 You can also use your three-tiered structure strategically to steer clients toward the scope that works best for your firm right now.
10:07 Look at your current proposal process through the prospect’s eyes. Are any of these principles showing up — or are you just putting a number on a page and leaving the rest to chance?
