Losing deals based on price might feel like a pricing problem – but it’s almost always a value problem.
I say that because I’ve seen it go both ways. I’ve had clients tell me they’re winning work even though they’re often the most expensive proposal (and told so). I’ve heard the opposite plenty of times too – deals lost with price given as the reason.
Usually it’s not price – it’s perceived value for the price.
What’s actually happening when you lose a deal on price
The problem may not be that your price was too high. It’s that the perceived value wasn’t high enough to justify the price.
For your buyer, the difference between two options that seemed comparable may then come down to the price between the two.
If one option feels visibly worth more, buyers will pay for it. When the options look much the same, there’s nothing left to separate them but the number – so price decides by default, not by preference.
Losing a deal based on value, not pricing matters because if a prospect tells you you’ve lost on price it feels like something that can be fixed in an afternoon, instead of a fix that realistically will take years to correct.
It’s also important to think about buyer psychology here. It may be true in some, but definitely not all cases where buyers themselves aren’t able to connect the dots between price, risk and value. So price becomes the easiest thing to link back to.
Research findings from LinkedIn’s B2B Institute puts it plainly:
“Buying groups will pay more, accept fewer features and compromise on performance to go with the vendor that feels safer to agree on.”
Read that again if you’ve ever sharpened a price to get a deal over the line. Buyers are not primarily looking for the best deal. They are looking for a choice they can defend; the ‘safe’ choice.
The same body of research found that when buyers were asked to rank what mattered most before committing, the top answer wasn’t “I felt confident the product would do the job.” It was “I felt I could defend the decision, even if it went wrong.” Defensibility outranked capability.
Which brings us to the part that should genuinely change how you think about this.
When a B2B purchase goes wrong, the research found that “companies like us recommended them” holds up roughly 10 times better as a justification than “they weren’t well known but were cheaper.”
So the cheaper option isn’t the safe choice. “I picked them because they were cheaper” is about the least defensible motivation someone could come up with.
If a buyer has told you you’ve lost on price, what they really mean is they haven’t been given enough to feel completely confident that you’re worth paying more for.
So, how do you fix it?
Sadly, as it is often is with B2B – this isn’t a quick and easy fix. But being mindful of and working through these points will put you in the best possible stead to overcome a price objection.
1. Be known to your buyer (and their colleagues) before they’re actively looking for you
I bang on about this all the time, but the reality is that the vast, vast majority of the businesses you want to work with aren’t buying today.
This was framed as the ’95/5 rule’ by Professor John Dawes at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, citing that roughly 95% of your potential buyers are out of market at any given time. Leaving a measly 5% who are.
That matters for price, because by the time a business is actually in market, the shortlist is largely assembled from memory. They go to the names they already know.
The LinkedIn and Bain research is blunt about the consequence. In their study, 81% of purchases went to a vendor that almost everyone in the buying group already knew. Only 4% went to a vendor known just to the person who recommended them.
This is important. Arriving as an unknown party competing against familiar ones kills your deals. It also means you are more likely to be compared on price, because there’s nothing else for your buying party to compare on.
It also means visibility with your main contact isn’t enough. Roughly half of the decision-making influence in a B2B purchase sits with people who never appear in your pipeline – finance, legal, procurement, operations. They’re the most risk-averse people in the process and if they’ve never heard of you they hold power in getting a sale over the line.
What this looks like in practice: showing up consistently, in the places the whole buying group looks, long before anyone is ready to buy. It’s the slowest thing on this list, the hardest to measure, and the easiest to get disheartened by.
2. Make the intangible tangible
If you sell a service, you’re asking someone to pay for something they can’t interact with before they buy it. All they have are promises from your team.
Most B2B marketing responds to that by promising harder. Better outcomes, bigger results, stronger partnerships. But a buyer who can’t picture the work can’t justify paying more for it, no matter how good the adjectives are.
So show the mechanics.
Your systems. Your process. What the first 30 days actually looks like. Who they’d be dealing with and when. The tools you use and why. What you need from them. The reporting rhythm. Escalation systems. What happens when something changes or doesn’t go according to plan.
A competitor can claim your outcomes. They can’t claim your process, which is why making yours visible (on your website and through your sales process) is both the most useful thing for a buyer and the hardest thing for anyone else to copy.
Explain your price! A simple fix that may help you stop being compared on price. Nobody can defend a number they don’t understand. Show what’s included and what isn’t. Show what pushes the cost up and what brings it down. Give a sense of what a scope and engagement like theirs typically costs, and why.
A buyer who understands how you arrived at a figure is a buyer who can walk into a room and account for it. A buyer holding an unexplained premium can only say “they were more expensive.”
What this looks like in practice: think of this holistically first – you should be working to embed your process and ways of working throughout your B2B sales and marketing ecosystem. Then more practically, include a page or an article that walks through how you work, in enough detail that a sceptical reader could critique it. Plus a genuine attempt at explaining your pricing rather than “contact us for a quote”.
3. Have your customers tell your story
There’s what you say about yourself, and what others say about you. The latter is worth more.
Buyers are three times more likely to choose a vendor heavily recommended by peers or customers over one promising a better product or a lower price, according to the LinkedIn and Bain research.
Two things determine whether your proof actually works.
It has to be relatable. The instinct is to lead with your most impressive client, and the research says that instinct is wrong. A video testimonial from a company similar to the buyer was more than four times as influential as one from the market leader. A written testimonial, more than twice. When a prospect watches a testimonial from a business five times their size, part of them is thinking: of course it worked, look at their budget, team, resourcing etc. It tells them nothing about whether the same approach could work for them.
It has to be verifiable. A named client beats an anonymous one by a distance. “A leading manufacturer achieved a 40% uplift” is unverifiable, which means it carries roughly the weight of a claim you invented. Every anonymised case study was anonymised for a sensible reason, usually to get it approved — and the approval cost you most of its value. One client who will take a reference call is worth more than five logos.
What this looks like in practice: case studies pitched at the size and sector of the clients you actually want, named wherever you can get permission, with specific numbers and a real person connected to the words.
4. Talk openly about what can go wrong
Everyone markets the good version. Every case study ends well. Every process diagram flows left to right without interruption.
Meanwhile the person deciding is risk-sensitive, scanning for what happens when it doesn’t go to plan. So talk about it. How you work together when things change. How you address issues. How you handle a scope change. Where things could go wrong in work like this and how your team manages it.
It feels counterintuitive, because it reads like volunteering your weaknesses. In practice it does the opposite. A business that can describe exactly how it handles problems looks like a business that has handled problems. A business that only presents the clean version looks like one that hasn’t been tested; or isn’t being honest.
What this looks like in practice: one honest piece of content about common challenges, and how your team deals with them. Chances are competitors in your category won’t have this. This differentiates you, builds trust and moves towards showing why you’re worth paying more for.
An unfortunate truth
None of this is quick.
Awareness takes months and years to build. Trust takes time to build – and it compounds over time.
Discounting, by contrast, is an easy decision. It is the most tempting lever to pull. But discounting doesn’t fix a value problem. It just makes you the cheap option nobody can explain – and it hands the buyer who chose you the weakest possible answer for the day they’re asked why.
If you’re losing deals on price, the question isn’t whether to drop it. It’s why and how to make your value visible, and prove you’re worth paying more for.
Sources
- Buying groups will pay more, the defensibility ranking, the 10x justification finding, and the relatability figures — How to be Buyable in B2B and Fear of Messing Up, Mimi Turner and Jann Schwarz, LinkedIn B2B Institute (with the ANA, IAA and NewtonX), 2025–2026. 750 B2B buyers, qualitative and quantitative.
- 81% / 4% group familiarity, 3x recommendation, 4x prior success, hidden buyer influence — The Principles of Buyability, LinkedIn and Bain & Company, 2026.
- 86% of buyers begin the process with a shortlist already in mind, and 92% of them ultimately buy from that initial list – Google & Bain – B2B discovery to devotion
- The 95/5 rule — Professor John Dawes, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, published with the LinkedIn B2B Institute.
