In long B2B sales cycles, you don’t wait for data to build your pricing. You build your pricing to generate the data.
"We've been live 6 months, we barely have any data yet. It's too early to find the right pricing."
That's what an early-stage founder told me. And he wasn't wrong to be cautious — with just 3 (big) deals closed, what could you really conclude?
But here's what was happening while he waited.
Traction was climbing. His new sales rep was on fire: 20 meetings booked at a single conference, 10 proposals for 3-year contracts already out the door. Plus a handful of design partners who'd used the product for a year… for free.
Then he called me back. He'd spotted the first problem himself.
Those 3-year proposals? The prices in them are already anchoring the deals. In long B2B cycles, the number you put forward today sets the deal that signs a year or two from now, whether you meant it to or not.
Then I showed him the second problem.
A year of design partners — his most engaged users — and not once did he float a price. Every one of those conversations could have handed him a willingness-to-pay signal. Instead, he collected 0 pricing insights, because he wasn't confident enough to show them even a draft price yet.
Here's the reframe: early-stage pricing isn't about finding the final number. You're right that you don't have the data for that yet. It's about building the packaging, the metric, and the sales narrative that turn every prospect conversation into evidence.
In long B2B sales cycles, you don't wait for data to build your pricing. You build your pricing to generate the data.
