pricing-strategy
phuryn/pm-skills
Analyze and design pricing strategies grounded in value delivery, competitive positioning, and willingness to pay.
What is pricing-strategy?
This skill helps you develop pricing strategies by understanding customer value, evaluating pricing models, analyzing competitor positioning, and estimating price sensitivity. Use it when setting prices, evaluating pricing models, preparing for a pricing change, or comparing freemium vs paid approaches.
- Understand core value proposition and quantifiable customer outcomes
- Evaluate 7 pricing models (flat-rate, per-seat, usage-based, tiered, freemium, freemium+usage, value-based) with examples
- Analyze competitive pricing tiers and identify positioning gaps
- Design pricing structure with tiers, feature gating, value metrics, and anchor pricing
- Estimate price sensitivity using Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter or competitor-based analysis
- Plan pricing experiments including A/B testing and founder-led sales conversations
How to install pricing-strategy
npx skills add https://github.com/phuryn/pm-skills --skill pricing-strategyHow to use pricing-strategy
- 1.Provide context about the product or service you're pricing
- 2.Share any available files (competitor pricing, survey data, financial models, usage data) or let the skill research competitors
- 3.Follow the step-by-step analysis: understand value delivered, evaluate pricing models, analyze competitors, design structure, estimate sensitivity, plan experiments
- 4.Review the generated pricing recommendation with assumptions and risks flagged
- 5.Validate key assumptions through A/B testing, founder conversations, or landing page tests before launch
Use cases
- Setting initial prices for a new product or service
- Evaluating whether to switch from flat-rate to usage-based pricing
- Comparing freemium vs paid approaches for a platform product
- Analyzing competitor pricing to find market positioning opportunities
- Designing tiered pricing structure with clear feature differentiation
- Product managers designing or revising pricing strategies
- Founders and startup leaders setting initial pricing
- Business strategists evaluating pricing model fit
- Teams preparing for pricing experiments or changes
pricing-strategy FAQ
The skill can use web search to research competitor pricing, or you can proceed with value-based pricing grounded in the quantifiable outcomes your product delivers to customers.
Use tiered pricing for products with distinct user segments and predictable usage; use usage-based for infrastructure or API products where customer consumption varies widely. Many modern SaaS products combine both.
It's a survey-based method that asks customers four questions about pricing (too cheap, cheap, expensive, too expensive) to identify the price range where customers perceive good value without quality concerns.
Yes, typically 15-20% off monthly pricing is standard in SaaS to encourage longer commitments and improve retention.
Track conversion rates by price point, monitor customer acquisition cost vs lifetime value, conduct cohort analysis, and run A/B tests on pricing pages to validate assumptions before full launch.
Full instructions (SKILL.md)
Source of truth, from phuryn/pm-skills.
name: pricing-strategy description: "Analyze and design pricing strategies including pricing models, competitive pricing analysis, willingness-to-pay estimation, and price elasticity. Use when setting prices, evaluating pricing models, preparing for a pricing change, or comparing freemium vs paid approaches."
Pricing Strategy
Design a pricing strategy grounded in value delivery, competitive positioning, and willingness to pay.
Context
You are developing a pricing strategy for $ARGUMENTS.
If the user provides files (competitor pricing, survey data, financial models, or usage data), read them first. Use web search to research competitor pricing if needed.
Instructions
-
Understand the value delivered:
- What is the core value proposition?
- What is the customer's alternative (and its cost)?
- What quantifiable outcomes does the product deliver? (time saved, revenue gained, cost reduced)
- What is the customer's willingness to pay based on that value?
-
Evaluate pricing models — recommend the best fit:
Model Best For Example Flat-rate Simple products, predictable costs Basecamp ($99/mo flat) Per-seat Collaboration tools, team products Slack, Figma Usage-based Infrastructure, API products AWS, Twilio Tiered Products with distinct user segments Most SaaS (Free/Pro/Enterprise) Freemium Products with viral/network effects Spotify, Notion Freemium + usage Platform products Vercel, OpenAI API Value-based High-impact enterprise tools Salesforce, Palantir -
Analyze competitive pricing:
- Map competitor pricing tiers and what's included
- Identify where your product sits (premium, mid-market, budget)
- Find pricing gaps or opportunities
- Note any industry pricing conventions
-
Design the pricing structure:
- Tiers: Define 2-4 tiers with clear differentiation
- Feature gating: Which features go in which tier? (Use value metrics, not arbitrary limits)
- Value metric: What unit do you charge on? (users, events, storage, API calls)
- Anchor pricing: Set the most popular tier to feel like the obvious choice
- Annual discount: Typically 15-20% off monthly pricing
-
Estimate price sensitivity:
- Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter (if survey data available):
- Too cheap → quality concerns
- Cheap → good value
- Expensive → starting to hesitate
- Too expensive → won't buy
- Alternatively, estimate based on competitor pricing and value delivered
- Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter (if survey data available):
-
Plan pricing experiments:
- A/B test pricing pages (different price points, tier names, feature bundles)
- Founder-led sales conversations to test willingness to pay
- Landing page tests with different price anchors
- Cohort analysis of conversion rates by price point
-
Output a pricing recommendation:
Recommended Model: [Model type] Value Metric: [What you charge on] | Tier | Price | Target Segment | Key Features | Positioning | |---|---|---|---|---| Key Assumptions: - [Assumption] → [How to test] Risks: - [Risk] → [Mitigation]
Think step by step. Save as markdown. Flag any assumptions that need validation before launch.
Further Reading
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