When looking at your pricing, think about it through the lens of price setting and price getting.
Price setting is where you evaluate what to charge for your product or service based on the value it creates for your customers. That value is best measured by tying back to one of three categories:
Increased revenue
Decreased costs
Mitigated risk
Price getting is what happens when teams go to market with that price point. It’s how well your team can communicate your value and defend it when they’re sitting across from a professional buyer trained to squeeze every dollar out of a deal.
The hard truth is that most B2B teams are simply not equipped to play at that level. Sellers aren’t just facing procurement, they’re facing seasoned negotiators with scripts, tactics, and pressure-tested methods designed to wear them down. If your team lacks confidence or preparation, even a great offer will get chipped away until it is a fraction of the price you intended to capture.
Building pricing power means excelling in both price-setting and price-getting - because if you don’t know your value specific to each customer, you’ll have a hard time defending your prices and building pricing power.
Most businesses underestimate one of the most powerful tools at their disposal: talking to their customers. I find that customers are incredibly willing to share how they use your offerings and the impact it makes – it just takes asking the right questions.
Take one of our clients who literally sold dirt. They ran a quarry. On paper, it doesn’t get more commoditized than that, which makes it hard to differentiate and defend value. But when we dug deep into their customers’ challenges, the answer was simple: “Our trucks are always waiting in line.” Instead of jumping straight to a solution, we asked follow-ups: How long are you waiting? What’s the cost per hour for those trucks? What’s the downstream impact on the job site?
Once the customer connected those dots, the value of faster turnaround became obvious: the cost of delay was thousands of dollars per day. We worked to introduce an “express lane” service, basically TSA PreCheck for dump trucks, and they moved from being the lowest-priced vendor to the most valuable partner in the market. Creating those wraparound services was critical to create and grow their differentiation in a market perceived as commoditized.
That’s what value discovery looks like, and it needs to happen early. Too many teams wait until the proposal stage to throw in all their differentiators, hoping they will justify the price. But by then, it’s too late. If you haven’t already helped the customer quantify the impact of what you do, they’re going to compare you on features or worse, price.
If you’re looking to elevate your pricing, start by stacking and quantifying those differentiators. Ask:
How much time does this save the customer?
How much labor or overhead does it eliminate?
What kind of lift in revenue, visibility, or speed does it unlock?
This level of simplicity can transition you from selling a product to communicating value: increased revenue, decreased costs, or mitigated risk for the business.
Procurement isn’t the enemy: it’s a game
When I first started selling into large organizations, procurement felt like a brick wall. Just when I thought the deal was done, they’d show up with a lower quote from a competitor or push back hard on pricing and everything would stall.
What I’ve learned since then is this: procurement isn’t the enemy. They’re just playing their role.
At Holden Advisors, we categorize buyers into four types:
Price buyers – genuinely focused on finding the lowest cost
Value buyers – looking for ROI and strategic fit
Relationship buyers – want simplicity, trust, and peace of mind
Poker players – either a relationship buyer or a value buyer, pretending to be a price buyer to get a lower price
That last category is where procurement typically falls. They're simply following a playbook, and it's a good one that has been effective for many years. They'll tell you you're too expensive. They’ll go silent. They’ll say things like, “I’m disappointed... I thought we were partners.” They'll wait until quarter-end to pile on the pressure.
It’s easy to take those tactics personally, especially when you care about the deal. But that’s the trap. The moment you respond emotionally, you give up leverage.
When you recognize that this is a structured negotiation, not a personal rejection, everything shifts. You stop scrambling to justify your price. You stop reacting. And instead, you start defending value with clarity and confidence.
Use Give-Gets to protect your price
When a buyer pushes back on price, most sales teams instinctively offer a discount. They want to keep the deal moving. They want to be agreeable. But here’s the problem; you just taught them that your price was negotiable all along, and they’ll remember that.
This is where Give-Gets can be an extremely helpful tool. It works like this: if someone asks for a lower price, you say yes but only if something of value comes off the table.
Maybe that means removing a dedicated account manager. Maybe it’s reducing service levels, limiting customization, or extending delivery timelines. The exact trade-off depends on your business. But the principle is the same: price needs to be aligned to value, and if price gets reduced, so does the value you’re delivering.
If the buyer agrees to those reductions without hesitation, they probably were just looking for the cheapest option and now you know. But more often, they push back: “Wait, I still want that support. I still need that timeline. I still value those extras.”
In that moment, you’ve shifted the conversation and are no longer debating cost. You’re discussing what your solution is worth.
This strategy does more than protect your margins. It resets expectations. It teaches the buyer that pricing isn't arbitrary, it’s tied to what they receive. And it prevents the dangerous cycle of discounting just to win the deal.
Recognize when you’re in the game
When you're negotiating with procurement, you're not just closing a deal, you're usually playing poker. And like any good game, the players have strategies. They’ll go silent for weeks. They’ll play good cop/bad cop. They’ll act disappointed, surprised, even offended by your price.
The sellers who win in these moments are the ones who recognize what’s happening and know how to respond. Strategic patience is your advantage, and when you’ve done the work to uncover value, tie it to outcomes, and defend it with confidence, you don’t need to chase or panic… You just play the game.
