The Price Test Most B2B Agencies Never Run

Key Takeaways on Price Testing

• In this guide I focus on price testing for B2B services and subscription models, including simple pricing A/B testing that any agency or consultancy can run without complex infrastructure.
• Used well, price testing lets you increase average deal size and profit while keeping close rates healthy, so revenue rises without blowing up your funnel.
• A basic test can run for one to three sales cycles, which often means 30 to 90 days, depending on how fast you move prospects from first call to signed contract.
• The safest first experiment is a modest price increase on new deals only - often 5 to 15 percent on a standard retainer - while holding your scope and sales process steady.
• Early wins often come from packaging tweaks rather than pure list-price jumps, for example splitting one big retainer into a core plan plus a clear premium tier.

What Is Price Testing?

Put simply, when I talk about price testing, I mean running controlled experiments where you change price or packaging and then watch what happens to revenue, profit, and lead quality. Instead of relying on "that sounds fair" during a proposal, you agree on a change, set a time frame, and measure the impact.

I see price testing as zooming in on one piece of a broader pricing strategy. Strategy covers your positioning, value narrative, contract terms, and where you sit in the market. Price testing focuses on a handful of numbers and packages inside that bigger picture and asks a narrow question:

"Does version A or version B make me more money from good-fit clients?"

It also helps to separate price testing from discount testing. Price testing touches your standard list price, tiers, or scope. Discount testing plays with temporary incentives such as "10 percent off for annual payment this quarter" or a waived setup fee. Both have value, but list price shapes long-term margin and brand perception far more than short-term promotions.

Consider a simple B2B example. Imagine you run a performance marketing agency. Your current "Growth" retainer is $5,000 per month, your average close rate is 50 percent, and you send about 10 qualified proposals per month. That gives you 5 new clients at $5,000 each, or $25,000 in new monthly recurring revenue.

Now you test a higher price for new proposals: $6,000 per month instead of $5,000. Close rate drops to 40 percent, but you still send 10 proposals. You now win 4 clients at $6,000, or $24,000 in new MRR. At first glance that looks worse.

If your delivery cost per client is $3,000 per month, profit tells a different story. At the old price you made $2,000 margin per client, so 5 clients produced $10,000 of profit. At the new price you make $3,000 margin per client, so 4 clients produce $12,000 of profit.

Lower close rate, fewer clients, more profit, and often less strain on your team. That is the kind of trade-off price testing helps you see clearly instead of arguing about it in Slack.

You can also test structure, not just the number. For example, you might move from hourly billing at $200 per hour to a $6,000 monthly package that bundles strategy, reporting, and a fixed set of deliverables. The logic stays the same: pick a controlled change, track outcomes, and compare.

Price testing also sits inside broader market validation work, alongside offer, messaging, and channel experiments. You are validating not just "will people buy," but "at what level and in what configuration does this offer perform best?"

Why Price Testing Matters for B2B Services

For agencies, consultancies, and B2B SaaS, pricing mistakes linger for months or years. You do not get thousands of tiny checkouts each week like a high-traffic online store. You get a smaller stream of high-value deals, long contracts, and complex sales conversations. That makes price per deal incredibly sensitive.

You want the ceiling, not the floor.
Most founders set prices to avoid losing deals, not to maximize profit. That creates "founder discounting," where every tough call ends with "let's shave 10 percent off and just close it." Price testing helps you find the level where good clients still say yes, even if a few marginal ones walk away.

Acquisition costs keep drifting up.
Paid search, outbound, events, and sales salaries usually climb over time. If your price per deal stays frozen while cost per opportunity rises, margin erodes quietly and your CAC payback period stretches out. A small 5 to 10 percent lift in average contract value can offset surprisingly large increases in acquisition cost.

Price is a filter for fit.
Underpriced services attract clients who expect the world for very little. That is painful for delivery teams and kills retention. A higher, tested price tends to pull in buyers who see you as a strategic partner, not "extra hands."

Small changes drive outsized profit.
In many pricing analyses by large consultancies, including McKinsey, a 1 percent improvement in realized price has been shown to increase profit by roughly 10 percent when costs are fixed. Your exact numbers will vary, but the pattern holds. Price improvements flow straight to the bottom line, while cutting costs or chasing more volume often hurts morale or quality.

You de-risk change.
Many founders fear "breaking the funnel" with a price move, especially after a bad experience. Price testing gives you a way to change one variable for a defined slice of the pipeline, watch the data, and roll back if needed. That feels far less risky than a full across-the-board update, especially if you pair tests with a simple change risk management and rollback plan.

Price Testing Methods That Work

There are many price testing methods, but not all make sense for B2B services with modest lead volume and long cycles. I usually group them into two broad categories: research-based methods and live experiments. A light research pass plus one or two live tests is often enough to move pricing in the right direction.

Surveys and willingness-to-pay studies.
Here you ask target buyers what they would pay for a given scope. This can run with past clients, lost deals, or a rented panel. Methods like the Van Westendorp price sensitivity model use four questions about "too cheap," "cheap," "expensive," and "too expensive" to map an acceptable range. To do this well, Conduct a survey with structured questions and a clear target segment. It is fast and low risk because it does not touch real proposals, but it relies on what people say rather than what they do, and people systematically misjudge their behavior on price.

Price laddering.
With price laddering, you present buyers with a series of price points and ask at each level whether they would still consider the offer. You can do this in structured interviews or surveys, often before launch. It is useful for spotting psychological thresholds - like $4,900 versus $5,100 - but still based on stated intent, not signed contracts.

Competitor analysis.
You review how peers price similar services, what they include, and how they present it. This is not price testing on its own, but it gives you a sensible starting range and helps avoid obvious underpricing or outlier positioning. The risk is copying a broken model without realizing it, which is why I treat competitor analysis as context, not a blueprint.

Live experiments on your site or landing pages.
If you show pricing on your website, you can run real product-style price testing for services too. For example, one group of visitors sees "From $4,000 per month," while another sees "From $4,500 per month," and you then track demo requests and conversion to deals. This gives you real behavior and relatively fast feedback if you have enough traffic, but it demands careful tracking so that SEO, paid, and outbound channels do not muddy the data. Your pricing page carries a lot of this workload - a focused guide to pricing pages that reduce tire-kickers can help you turn that page into a proper sales asset.

Packaging tests.
Instead of changing the raw price, you change what sits inside each tier. You might keep your "Core" plan at $5,000 but move some high-value deliverables into a new "Plus" plan at $7,500 and then watch how many buyers choose each tier and how satisfied they feel later. Packaging shifts often feel safer to buyers and are easier for sales teams to explain, but if you change both scope and price at once, it is harder to know which element drove the result.

For high-traffic SaaS with self-serve checkout, automated experiments can carry most of the load. For boutique agencies that send only 10 to 20 proposals each month, research plus slower, serial tests across those proposals usually works better.

Pricing A/B Testing Explained

Pricing A/B testing is the classic "version A versus version B" setup, but focused on price or packaging.

How it works.
You present two versions of the same offer with one clear pricing difference. Everything else stays as identical as possible. On a website, half of visitors might see $3,000 per month, half see $3,300 per month. In sales, one proposal template might show a three-tier structure, another shows two tiers, and reps alternate which one they send.

You then compare metrics such as demo or consultation request rate, proposal acceptance rate, average contract value, and margin per deal. Because you are watching what real buyers do rather than what survey takers say, this method often cuts through internal debate very quickly.

Why it is powerful.
Pricing A/B testing turns opinions into hypotheses. If enough prospects flow through each version, you can see whether higher prices actually harm revenue or whether they simply filter out poor-fit prospects while lifting total profit. It also nudges teams toward a culture where "let's test it" replaces endless pricing arguments.

Limitations and practical constraints.
B2B has quirks that make these tests trickier than in high-volume ecommerce. Sample sizes are small, so even a full quarter of testing can leave you with thin data. Results are directional rather than mathematically perfect. Seasonality and channel mix matter too: if version A happens to run during your quiet month and version B in your big conference season, B will look unfairly strong. You need decent CRM data and a sense of your seasonal patterns to adjust for this.

Sales behavior can also spoil experiments. If a rep believes the new price is "too high" and keeps verbally discounting it on calls, the test is broken. Before running pricing A/B tests, make sure sales is aligned on scripts, discount rules, and who can approve exceptions.

In practice, typical B2B setups include testing two price points on a standard retainer for new inbound leads only, experimenting with two layouts on your pricing page (for example, three tiers versus a single "starting from" plan plus a custom quote option), or trying two proposal designs that use different anchoring - such as leading with a premium option in one and the mid-tier in another.

How to Test Prices Step by Step

Even a light program needs structure. Here is a simple nine-part process that shows how to test prices without creating chaos.

1. Define the objective.
   Pick one primary goal. Do you want higher profit per client, higher total revenue, better-qualified leads, or a different mix of tiers? A clear goal keeps you from declaring any random result a "win."
2. Choose your method.
   Base this on lead volume and risk tolerance. A smaller agency might mix a short survey with a serial live test across the next 15 proposals. A higher-volume SaaS business might go straight to an online experiment.
3. Identify your ICP and segments.
   Decide who is in the test. You might restrict it to one clear segment such as US-based tech companies with 50 to 200 staff. If the test works, you will know exactly where you can roll it out first.
4. Choose the specific prices or tiers to test.
   Avoid random numbers. Use existing deals, rough cost models, and competitor context to set a sensible range. A common pattern is "current price versus current price plus 10 percent" or "current two-tier setup versus three tiers with a higher anchor plan."
5. Align sales, marketing, and customer success.
   Before anything goes live, brief the teams who talk to buyers. Share the goal, the exact price points, who is in the test, what scripts to use, and what counts as an exception. Confusion here is one of the fastest ways to ruin results and annoy prospects.
6. Launch the test across your chosen touchpoints.
   This could be your website pricing table, calendar booking page, proposal template, or a fixed quote type in your CRM. Change only what you must for the test and keep other variables stable. Do not redesign an entire page while you are also changing price.
7. Track the right metrics.
   For B2B services, I typically watch lead volume, number of proposals, close rate by variant, average contract value, gross margin per deal, and any early churn warning for subscription or retainer clients. Keeping a simple weekly log helps you overlay notes such as "big conference this week" or "new outbound campaign started here," so you can put the numbers in context.
8. Analyze results with healthy skepticism.
   Wait until you have a reasonable number of opportunities through each variant. There is no magic threshold, but calling a winner after three deals is asking for trouble. Look for patterns, not perfection. If one version wins on both margin and close rate, excellent. If it wins on margin but loses some volume, check whether total profit still rises.
9. Implement, monitor, and then test again.
   When you pick a winner, roll it into your standard playbook for that segment and hold it steady for a while. Monitor results over one or two more cycles to confirm the pattern. Then pick the next question you want to test, such as a higher premium tier or a new incentive for annual prepayment.

Common Price Testing Mistakes

Most price testing mistakes come from rushing or trying to be too clever. In B2B, I often see the same traps.

One is running tests with no clear success metric. If you do not decide up front whether you care more about profit, revenue, or lead quality, you can "spin" almost any result, and that kills trust in the process.

Another is changing scope and price at the same time. Moving to a new package and new price in one jump makes learning fuzzy. You can do it, but you should be honest that the goal is a full repositioning, not a clean test of price alone.

Ignoring segments is also common. Enterprise and mid-market buyers react very differently. Running one test across all segments and then generalizing the result is risky; slicing data by size, industry, and channel gives a much clearer view.

Teams also tend to call tests too early. The first two or three wins at a higher price feel great, and it is tempting to declare victory. Then month three is quiet and panic sets in. Giving tests time to breathe is essential.

Internal systems are another weak point. If you change prices but do not update your website, sales decks, proposal templates, and billing system, people will quote the wrong numbers and confuse clients. That is how you end up discounting back to the old level by accident.

Finally, many teams forget about discounts and add-ons. Your realized price is list price minus discounts plus any paid extras. If reps keep discounting heavily or throwing in extra work for free, your neat test on paper may never show up in the numbers. And while testing on new business is usually safe, raising prices mid-contract without a clear value story and notice period is a quick way to damage trust, so I prefer to use tests on new deals first and only then design a careful approach to renewals.

Final Thoughts on Price Testing

Price testing is one of the few growth levers that does not need a new headcount, a new channel, or a big software budget. It asks for clear thinking, agreed rules of the game, and a willingness to trust data over ego. For B2B services especially, where each deal carries real weight, that can be a quiet advantage.

You can start very small. A sensible first experiment might be a 10 percent price increase on your main retainer for new inbound leads over the next 20 proposals, or adding a higher "Plus" tier above your current flagship plan to see how many buyers climb the ladder. As your analytics and SEO programs mature, steady organic traffic and clean attribution will only make these tests faster and more reliable. Clean tracking with consistent UTM parameters (see our guide to UTM governance) and clear conversion goals makes it much easier to compare price variants fairly.

Frequently Asked Questions About Price Testing

Think of this section as a quick reference you can skim between calls. Each answer is short, focused, and grounded in B2B service reality.

What is the difference between price testing and discount testing?
Price testing changes your standard list prices or how you package scope, then watches how that affects close rate, revenue, and profit. Discount testing keeps list prices the same but changes temporary incentives, such as 10 percent off for annual prepayment or a waived setup fee. Overusing discounts in B2B can train buyers to wait for deals and anchor your value lower, so I treat discounts as supporting levers and list price as the main driver.

Can small B2B service firms benefit from price testing?
Yes. Even if you only send a handful of proposals each month, you can run "serial" tests: for example, charging your next 10 qualified opportunities a slightly higher price while tracking close rate and qualitative feedback. Many small agencies have added meaningful monthly margin simply by proving that a modest increase does not scare away the right clients.

Is price testing ethical if prospects see different prices?
Ethics comes down to fairness and transparency. In B2B, buyers already expect some customization based on scope, contract length, and complexity, so different prices by segment are normal. The real risk lies in quietly charging two very similar companies wildly different amounts without a clear reason. To stay on solid ground, keep tests within a reasonable range, be consistent by segment, and avoid any discrimination based on sensitive traits.

Can I run price tests on marketplaces or third-party platforms?
You can, but with limits. On platforms like freelance sites, software directories, or app stores, you often have less control over traffic flow and how offers appear, and terms of service may restrict frequent price changes. That makes structured tests harder. Many B2B firms treat these platforms as lead sources, then do the serious price testing on their own site, landing pages, and proposal process where they have more control.

What tools can help automate price testing?
In practice, I think in terms of capabilities rather than specific products: you need analytics or BI to track funnel metrics, some way to run pricing experiments on your website, CRM and proposal workflows that let you version quotes, and reporting that ties prices to margin and churn. Platforms like Prelaunch’s Price Testing can automate multi-price-point experiments and collect structured buyer feedback. Many teams start with basic web analytics, clear UTM tracking, spreadsheets, and CRM reports, then add more specialized pricing infrastructure only once the basics are working.

Does price testing affect SEO or paid campaigns?
Changing the number in your pricing table does not harm SEO on its own. Problems arise if you constantly rewrite core page copy, titles, or URLs, which can confuse search engines and users. For paid campaigns, it helps to coordinate tests with ad copy and landing pages so your price promises match. Clean tracking with consistent UTM parameters and clear conversion goals makes it much easier to compare how each price variant performs across both organic and paid traffic.

How often should I run price tests?
You do not want constant price churn that leaves your team and clients dizzy. A useful rhythm for many B2B firms is to review pricing quarterly or when clear triggers appear, such as a sharp change in costs or demand. Run a focused test, pick a winner, let it settle, and only start the next experiment once you have enough data and internal buy-in.

Can I test pricing for retainers or subscriptions?
Yes, retainers and subscriptions are excellent candidates. You can test higher prices on new contracts, introduce a premium tier with extra value, or adjust minimum commitments. For existing clients, many teams "grandfather" current pricing for a period and only roll changes into renewals with clear communication. After any change, watch churn, expansion revenue, and upgrade patterns closely.

What are good signs that my service is underpriced?
Signals include very high close rates, prospects accepting proposals without negotiation, comments like "this is cheaper than we expected," and stressed delivery teams despite strong client outcomes. Low profit relative to the results you create is another red flag. I treat these as prompts to design a structured test, not as proof that prices should double overnight.

Is it better to test prices before or after launching a new offer?
Ideally, both. Before launch, you can use surveys, interviews, and simple landing pages with waitlists to get an initial sense of willingness to pay. After launch, live tests with real buyers on your site and in your proposals give you harder data. A hybrid approach works well: use early research to define a sensible price range, then refine within that range through ongoing price testing once the offer starts to generate real pipeline.