🔀 Your price isn't the problem

This week in The Pivot: You launch, they try it, they love it, and they don't buy. "It's too expensive", they say. But they're lying to you. It's not about the price at all.

Hey friends 👋

Every Monday in The Pivot, we share one anti-pattern we’re seeing from founders in the Traction Lab ecosystem, and the quick redirect that makes all the difference—in just 250 words.

Here’s this week’s:

The anti-pattern:

Founders think pricing objections are a pricing problem, but it’s usually a value problem.

They hear “this is too expensive” and immediately think about lowering prices or adding features—when what customers are really saying is “this isn’t worth it to me.”

So they end up in a death spiral of feature bloat and price drops that never fix the core issue.

The fix:

When customers balk at your price, don’t adjust the price. Interrogate the value.

Ask: “What outcome were they actually buying?” If they’re not converting at $5/month but will spend $300 on related equipment, the problem isn’t affordability. Either you’re solving the wrong problem, or your solution doesn’t create enough value to justify the spend.

They’re telling you the problem’s not worth solving. Believe them.

Fix the value prop—or find customers with a more severe problem.

The tool:

We call it The Netflix Test: if your target customers pay for Netflix ($15/month) without blinking but won’t pay your $5/month price, you’re not competing on price—you’re losing on perceived value.

Compare your value creation to what they already pay for willingly. If they’re spending money adjacently, the problem isn’t the dollar figure.

The problem is your value prop.

Until next week,

—jdm