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Skills from A Smart Bear

Set Your Price

Three skills, run in sequence, that build the value and desire behind your price and then charge for it — so customers value you more, love you more, and pay you more, for the right reasons. Adapted from The pricing chapters of Hidden Multipliers.

What this is about

Most founders get pricing wrong in one of two ways. Some price too low, out of fear. Others raise the price the wrong way — they trap customers who want to leave. This workshop fixes both. It sets your price in the right order. You build real value and real desire first. Then you charge for it. You end with customers who value you more, who love you more, and who therefore pay you more.

Jason Cohen built these methods over twenty years of pricing his own products. They come from the pricing chapters of Hidden Multipliers.

The workshop holds three skills. Run them in order. Each one produces a file. The next one uses that file. This way the work builds up instead of scattering. You finish with a price you can defend and customers who are glad to pay it.

One idea runs through all three: price to the desire you create, not to the cost you cut, and never to a trap. A customer who loves you pays more and cheers when you profit. A customer you coerce pays only until a better option appears, then leaves at once. This workshop aims for the first kind.

How to run it

  1. Pick one strategy. Start with More or Less. There are three self-consistent ways to price: the best product at a premium, a high-value product at a fair price, or a minimal product that is very cheap. Most companies mix two or three by accident, and the mixed signals confuse customers. This skill makes you choose one and align the whole company behind it. It writes PRICING-STRATEGY.md. This is the frame the next two steps work inside.
  2. Build the desire. Next run Willingness to Pay. It maps why customers pay. There are three kinds of desire: Love (they advocate and want you to thrive), Utility (a clear, rational reason), and Coercion (they are trapped). The skill walks the full list of Love and Utility drivers with you, and you mark what is true today. Then you choose the one or two kinds of desire to own and build. It writes WILLINGNESS-TO-PAY.md. This file names the value your customers really pay for.
  3. Charge for it. Now run Justify Raising Prices. It builds the case for a higher price and the moves that earn it. Hand it your WILLINGNESS-TO-PAY.md: the Love and Utility drivers you chose to own become the ready-made case for the higher number, so you do not start from scratch. It writes RAISE-PRICES.md — a rough higher target and a short, tested list of moves.

What you get at the end

You get a price you can defend, for the right reasons. Your strategy, your product, and your promise tell one story. You know the exact desire your customers pay for, and you are building more of it. And you hold the case for charging more — a case built on value you create, not on a customer you trap. That is the whole idea: you raise the price, and you earn it.

The files, at a glance

The sequence is a chain of files. Each step hands its file to the next:

PRICING-STRATEGY.md → WILLINGNESS-TO-PAY.md → RAISE-PRICES.md.

The steps

This workshop runs several skills in sequence, and some rely on others (like asb-rude-qa) — install the whole set before you begin: run npx skills add asmartbear/asb-skills, or ↓ download all skills as one ZIP. More install options →

  1. More or Less

    Solves the mixed signals in your pricing.

    Your current reality: what you charge, what your marketing promises, and which market segments you serve — pasted, in a file, or drawn out by questions. A PRICING-STRATEGY.md: the strategy you committed to with its consequences accepted, plus a keep / stop / start plan ordered by how much each mismatch contradicts your one story.

    asb-more-or-less

  2. Willingness to Pay

    Not why they pay — which kind of why.

    Your current reality: who pays and, in your own words, why they buy and stay — pasted, in a file, a link to your pricing page, or drawn out by questions. A WILLINGNESS-TO-PAY.md: each paying segment sorted into Love, Utility, or Coercion, then a committed strategy — the drivers you will own, the attributes you will deepen, and the coercion you will drop.

    asb-willingness-to-pay

  3. Raise Prices

    Most founders price too low, out of fear.

    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. 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.

    asb-raise-prices