Pricing interview questions that don't ask "would you pay?"
When to use this
Before setting or changing a price. Pricing interviews go wrong when they ask people to predict their behaviour. They go right when they ask about spending that already happened.
The questions
- How do you handle this today? Establish the baseline before any numbers.
- What does that cost you each month, in money and in hours? This is the number your price competes with.
- Who signs off on spending like this, and how? Reveals the purchase process and its ceiling.
- What was the last tool you bought for your work? How did you decide? Real purchase behaviour, not intentions.
- What would you need to see to justify a new expense here? Outcomes, proof, a trial period.
- Which parts of the problem are worth paying to solve, and which are fine as they are? Separates the core from the nice-to-have.
- If the price were higher than you expected, what would you do? Look for "find a cheaper tool" versus "do without" versus "pay anyway".
- Have you ever cancelled something because of price alone? Tells you how price-sensitive they really are.
- Anything I should have asked?
What not to ask
- "Would you pay $X?" and "How much would you pay?" Answers are guesses that flatter you.
- Van Westendorp's four questions can work in a survey with hundreds of responses; in an interview of ten they mostly produce noise.
Run this interview
Ten Interviews can hold these conversations for you. Send one link; each customer gets a ten-minute text interview with an AI that follows up on their answers; you get the transcripts and a synthesis with quotes. The first three are free.