| Episode Type | Expert Insight Interview |
| Guest | Ann Padley, Senior Partner, Untapped Pricing |
| Guest Website | untappedpricing.co.uk/thepricingsprint |
| Listen | View on Sales POP! Podcast Page |
Most teams price by surveying competitors and landing somewhere in the middle. Ann Padley argues that habit hands strategy to rivals and ignores the psychology buyers actually use to decide.
In this conversation, Ann unpacks behavioral pricing — how framing, choice architecture, and structured testing shift conversion without changing margin. She walks through the jam study, the Goldilocks tier, customer-interview tactics, and where AI is breaking traditional pricing models.
Key Insights
1. Here is what you need to know about behavioral pricing.
Customers never weigh price on logic alone. Ann explains that buyers blend budget, alternatives, past experience, and how the offer feels in the moment. Sellers control the framing, the value story, the positioning, and the buying experience — but not the buyer’s history. Two identical prices can perform very differently because those uncontrolled factors push different buttons for different people. Treat pricing as a design problem, not a math calculation, and the same offer starts converting at much higher rates without a single discount.
2. Here is what you need to know about ditching competitor-based pricing.
Anchoring your price to the market hands strategy to your competitor. Ann warns that copying the row above or below in a comparison chart erases the differentiation your team built — service design, customer insight, the offer itself. Instead, root pricing in the value you deliver and the segment you actually serve. Choose a target buyer, understand their workflow, and price the outcome you produce — not your placement on a comparison chart you didn’t design.
3. Here is what you need to know about offering three clear options.
Binary pitches invite a no. Ann points to the Columbia and Stanford jam study, in which shoppers facing six jams bought ten times as often as those facing twenty-four and walked away more satisfied. Three tiers flip the buyer’s question from “should I buy?” to “which should I buy?” They also open a downward negotiation pathway and an upward upgrade route, all while keeping cognitive load within what humans can process well.
4. Here is what you need to know about the Goldilocks effect.
The middle tier pulls weight by sitting between two reference points. Ann explains that the top-tier anchors value upward, making the middle look reasonable, while the lowest tier makes the scope-versus-price tradeoff concrete. She warns against labeling tiers by company size — small, medium, large — because that anchors buyers on themselves rather than the choice in front of them. Let features and outcomes drive the comparison, then watch the middle tier do the converting.
5. Here is what you need to know about testing and customer interviews.
Ann recommends structured experiments over gut moves. Run A/B tests where data allows, and run customer interviews where it does not. Open with the relationship and the value experience — never lead with “what should we charge?” That early framing earns honest answers later. Bring in a third party when the team is too close to the offer, and watch for bias when it shows up. Customers reward genuine curiosity with sharp, useful feedback.
Pull Quotes
“Behavioral pricing is really this idea that customers don’t evaluate price in a purely rational, purely analytical, logical way.”
— Ann Padley, Untapped Pricing
“You can have two identical prices that can perform very differently.”
— Ann Padley, Untapped Pricing
“You’re letting your competitors essentially set your commercial strategy.”
— Ann Padley, Untapped Pricing
“We have unapologetic pricing. I would say it’s firm but fair.”
— Ann Padley, Untapped Pricing
Behavioral Pricing: Key Statistics from Untapped Pricing
| Statistic | Detail |
|---|---|
| 6 vs 24 jams | Shoppers in the Columbia/Stanford study were 10× more likely to complete a sale when shown 6 jams instead of 24 — and reported higher satisfaction with their choice. |
| 3 pricing tiers | The configuration that flips a buyer’s question from “should I buy?” to “which should I buy?” and outperforms binary or many-option setups. |
| 10 years | Some companies haven’t adjusted prices in a decade — ignoring inflation and rising costs that quietly compress margin. |
| 5 price changes | Anthropic’s Claude reportedly updated its pricing five times in the last year, illustrating how often AI-driven offers shift today. |
| 12 steps | The Pricing Sprint methodology — the framework Ann co-authored with Jenny Miller — maps 12 steps to unlock pricing power. |
| May 28 | Release date of “The Pricing Sprint, 12 Steps to Unlock the Power of Pricing” by Ann Padley and Jenny Miller. |
| 4 functions | Three-tier pricing serves four roles: decision flip, downward negotiation pathway, upgrade signal, and price anchoring. |
Related Resources
- Untapped Pricing — Book a free consultation with Ann Padley
- Sales POP! Podcast: Podcast
Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Coevera. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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