What separates B2B sellers who win big in price negotiations

Just how often do B2B startups get their pricing right? Not nearly often enough, according to the authors of a recently released book.

Madhavan Ramanujam, co-founder and general partner at VC firm 49 Palms Ventures, and Eddie Hartman, partner and board member at consulting firm Simon-Kucher, argue that while many startups obsess over building great products, they routinely neglect pricing execution. This leaves significant revenue on the table.

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Part of their new book, Scaling Innovation: How Smart Companies Architect Profitable Growth (published by Wiley in July 2025), shows how even strong go-to-market teams falter when it comes to pricing strategy – especially in high-stakes B2B negotiations. From setting the wrong anchor to conceding discounts too quickly, these common missteps add up to lost margin and weakened positioning.

But the good news, the authors say, is that these pitfalls can be avoided. In the excerpt below, they share three negotiating tactics that helped one global software-as-a-service (SaaS) company they worked with more than double its average deal size, without changing its product or customer base.

This excerpt from the book is published with permission from Wiley and has been moderately edited to reflect Tech in Asia’s editorial guidelines.

Which negotiation tactics should we use?

Although numerous books have been dedicated to soft skills in negotiation, we believe mastering just a few key strategies is sufficient to drive favorable results. They include these three particularly useful tactics: anchoring, the consistency trap, and forced trade-offs.

Anchoring

Anchoring occurs when the seller (yourself or your sales team) sets a higher reference point that influences subsequent offers, shifting the negotiation in the seller’s favor. The principle is simple: If you aim high, you’ll end up higher; if you aim low, you’ll only go lower.

This tactic is especially effective in the early stages of negotiation as it shapes the buyer’s perception of what is achievable right from the start.

In the case of the SaaS company, for example, we trained its sales teams to say something like, “Companies like yours have typically paid us in the low seven figures, with a typical return on investment of at least 10x,” when asked about pricing early in the conversation.

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Such a comment not only sets a high reference point but also acts as a lead qualification tool. If a prospect reacts negatively to your pricing, it’s better to know early on as this allows you to focus on more promising opportunities.