Justify Raising Prices: Make It Worth It
Build the case for charging more — which market your price has selected, what profit is at stake, and the moves that would justify a higher price — then lock in a short, tested shortlist. Adapted from Price is Just a Number, Willingness to Pay, and several chapters of Hidden Multipliers.
- Input
- Your current reality: what you charge, what your marketing promises, and who buys — pasted, in a file, a link to your pricing page, or drawn out by questions.
- Output
- A RAISE-PRICES.md: a rough higher target with the case for it, plus a locked, grilled shortlist of moves that would justify the higher price.
What this is about
Most founders charge too little. Often the low price is not a strategy. It is fear — embarrassment about missing features, the habit of pricing from your own build cost, or a quiet belief that you do not deserve a profit. The cost of this fear is large. A price increase adds no cost, so every extra dollar becomes profit. A 10% price rise can be a 100% profit rise.
This skill builds the case for a higher price. It does not debate whether to raise. It assumes the direction is up, and it works out how far and what would justify it. First it gets your real numbers on the table: what you charge, what you promise, and who buys. Then it reads that reality three ways. It shows which market your price has already selected — the $1, $10, $100, and $1,000-per-month rungs each pick a different customer, sales motion, and support model. It shows how much profit is at stake. And it asks the hard question: is your low price a real strategy, or just a flinch?
Next the skill brainstorms. Here it switches off judgment on purpose. It throws out a large menu of moves that could justify a higher price — move up a market rung, price on the value you create instead of the cost you save, build the drivers that make customers advocate for you, make your value visible, or repackage your tiers. You add your own ideas. Together you refine the list.
Then the mode changes hard. The skill grills every move. Is it truly a good idea? Does it fit your strategy? Can you build it? Do customers actually want it? Most moves do not survive, and that is the point. What remains is a short, tested shortlist you commit to. You keep the final call on the price itself. One valid result is to hold the number for now but adopt one or two moves that make you stronger and set up a raise later.
Example invocation
You can invoke the skill like this:
/asb-raise-prices We charge $12/mo for our SEO tool. Most customers are
solo bloggers and they churn fast. I think we're too cheap but I'm scared
to touch it. Here's our pricing page and homepage — help me work out how
much more I could charge and what it would take.
The skill reads your real prices, promises, and customers. It shows you which market your price has chosen and the healthier market above it. It builds the case for a higher target. It brainstorms the moves that would justify it, one at a time, with judgment switched off. Then it switches judgment back on and grills each move until a few strong ones remain.
One practical note: tell the skill where you are working. Name a directory when you invoke it, or point to your existing pricing and marketing files. The skill keeps its working file in that location. If you do not name a location, the skill asks before it creates anything.
From the source
The foundation of this skill is Chapter 5 of Hidden Multipliers: Price Is Just a Number — hiddenmultipliers.com — and the article it grew from:
- Pricing determines your business model — the order-of-magnitude price ladder. Each 10× rung of monthly price selects a different customer, sales motion, support model, and funding reality. This is how the skill shows which market your price has chosen and which one sits above it.
Supporting sources each supply a piece of the mechanism:
- Willingness to pay — the three kinds of desire behind a price: Love, Utility, and Coercion. The Love and Utility drivers are the menu of reasons a customer will pay more. This is the core of the brainstorm.
- Create more value, don't save money — price on the value you create, not the cost you save. The same product pitched as "grow revenue" instead of "save money" can carry several times the price. The skill uses this to reframe the value metric.
- Sometimes never compete on price — why a low price with no differentiation is a race to the bottom, and when a low price is a real strategy instead. The skill uses this to test whether a low price is fear or design.
- Many customers at a low price, or few at a high price? — how the choice of price sets the whole shape of the company. This grounds the market-ladder read.