People put off pricing because it feels like the last step, something to decide once the product is real. It is closer to the first. A price is a claim about how much the problem matters, and it is the claim most likely to be wrong, so it is worth making early while being wrong is cheap. This week you write a number down.
Start with what they already pay for, because a small business owner has a sense of what things cost that is more reliable than any survey. In week two you found out what the problem costs her, in lost jobs or hours. In week five you heard what she uses now and what she has paid for before. Those two things bracket the price. A fix is worth something under what the problem costs and something over what the workaround costs, and the workaround is often free, which is why the bracket matters more than either end of it.
Then look at the shape of the business, not just the number. Some things are paid for monthly because they are used every day and the customer thinks of them as part of running the shop, the way she thinks of the phone bill. Some things are paid for once because they are a tool she picks up and owns, like a template or a set of forms. Some things are paid for per use because they only matter when something happens. A quote tool used ten times a day is a monthly thing. A document pack for opening a second location is a once thing. Get the shape wrong and the right number will still feel wrong to her, because it does not match how she already thinks about that kind of cost.
Now write the number. A real one, in dollars, with the shape attached: forty dollars a month, or two hundred once. Then read it next to the sentence from week three and ask whether the sentence earns it. Quotes while the customer is on the phone, for forty a month, to a shop that loses a job a month to slow quotes and would make a few hundred on that job. That reads as fair. The same forty for a tool that saves her ten minutes a week does not, and if that is what the conversations described, the number tells you something the conversations did not say out loud.
The number changes the conversations, which is the other reason to have it now. A person asked whether they would use something says yes because it costs nothing to say. A person told it will be forty a month says something more useful, usually a question. What does it do about the materials prices. Does it work on my phone. Can my other estimator use it. Each question is a feature request with a price attached, and you will find that some features are worth a higher number and some are not worth building at any number. You could not have learned that without the number.
A few pricing mistakes are common enough to name. Pricing low to be safe, which tells the customer the thing is not serious and leaves you unable to afford to support it. Pricing by what it cost you to build, which the customer does not know or care about. Offering a free tier before there is a paid one, which fills your time with people who will never pay. And giving it away to the five people from week five out of gratitude, which is generous and also means your first five customers taught you nothing about whether anyone will pay. Thank them with a discount if you like. Do not thank them with zero.
The number will be wrong. Everyone’s first number is. What matters is that it is written down, so that when it changes you know it changed and why. A price that drifts is a business that has stopped deciding.
Next week is about the first ten customers, and it will lean on the number, because the difference between someone who is interested and someone who is a customer is that the second one paid.
The guide before this one: Talk to five of them before you build anything. Next in the series: The first ten customers, without leaving your desk. The worksheet for this week: worksheet 6, one page of questions to answer on paper.