nobody wants to buy lead gen

tuesday we sat down as a team to fix our pricing.

the old standalone price didn't make sense anymore. what we were delivering had grown. the way we described it hadn't.

and when we dug in, the problem wasn't only the number. it was the name.

we were calling it lead gen. cold email. those words come with a price tag already attached in the buyer's head, and it's a small one. everyone's been pitched lead gen. everyone knows a guy who does it cheaper.

so we changed what we say we do. we don't sell lead gen. we build the client's whole go to market engine... the leads, the revenue, the partnerships.

same work underneath. different conversation on top.

the reasoning came out of my mouth on the call and i still think it's the core of it.

"people are always willing to spend money on making more money, right? and versus like saving money right. where when people are trying to save money, that's limited, right? because you can only save so much."

think about it from the buyer's side. a tool that saves you ten percent has a ceiling. you can only cut so much. a thing that grows revenue has no ceiling in your head. you'll find the budget, because the budget pays for itself.

it's like the difference between a coupon and a raise. nobody drives across town for a coupon. people move cities for a raise.

everyone thinks pricing is a spreadsheet problem. cost plus margin, check the competitors, pick a number. but the number is downstream of the frame. frame it as a cost to cut and you'll be compared to the cheapest guy. frame it as an engine that makes money and you get compared to the money.

so here's where we landed.

the tiers on the site are $15k, $25k and $33k, each a three month engagement. the direction i gave the team was to lead with the middle one, the two icp package, and only step down if the prospect pushes back.

two smaller lessons from the same hour.

one. a client had agreed to a higher number than we'd quoted. the easy move is to go back to the old price. we didn't. we honored the number they agreed to and added extra value on top. if someone tells you what it's worth to them, believe them, and then over deliver.

two. test higher prices with prospects who have visible capital. a founder who just raised, a company that's hiring, a firm that's growing in public. you don't learn your ceiling by asking the people with the smallest budgets.

there's a version of this for every founder reading. if you sell software that saves time, ask what the saved time turns into. more deals closed? more customers served? sell that. if you sell a service that cuts cost, find the revenue on the other side of the cut. the buyer has a growth budget and a savings budget, and only one of them gets bigger when things go well.

none of that works without the reframe first. if you still describe yourself as the cheaper option, raising the price just makes you the expensive cheap option.

long term, ai is going to make the task layer of every service cheaper. writing the email, finding the list, booking the meeting. if that's what you sell, your price only goes one direction. if you sell the outcome, ai makes you better at delivering it and the price can hold.

you can see how we put it together on the offer page... what's in each tier and what the engine does.

so read the first line of your own sales page. does it describe a task someone could do cheaper... or an outcome they'd find the money for?