The Packaging Review: Auditing a Draft Pricing Sheet for the Six Common Mistakes
Objective: Given a draft 5-tier pricing sheet for a B2B SaaS tool, apply the lesson's mistake framework to flag cost-plus pricing, feature-gating essentials, and a mismatched billing model.
You're the product marketer on PolicyBazaar's advisor-facing SaaS tool for independent insurance agents. A sales-led draft pricing sheet has landed in your inbox for review before it goes live.
The draft has 5 tiers, gates lead-assignment (a core workflow) behind the third tier, and bills flat-rate regardless of advisor book size. Audit it against the lesson's framework and flag every issue.
Before you start
What you'll need
Free path (everything below is enough to finish)
Comment threads make findings easy to route back to sales and product for revision
The process
3 steps
Step 01 of 03
Cost-plus pricing anchors price to internal cost, not customer value. If the product saves a customer far more than the price charged, most of the value goes uncaptured.
The draft prices the tool at ₹2,000/month because that covers hosting and support cost with a margin. An advisor using it closes 3 extra policies/month worth ₹45,000 in commission. Is ₹2,000/month cost-plus or value-based?
Procedure
- Find the sentence in the draft that explains how the price was set
- Compare the stated price to the estimated value delivered (commission uplift)
- Add a comment flagging the gap between price and value if it exceeds 10x
Draft note: 'Priced at ₹2,000/mo to cover server + support costs with 20% margin.' Comment: Cost-plus. Advisor's own numbers show ~₹45,000/mo commission uplift — price captures under 5% of delivered value. Re-anchor to willingness-to-pay research, not internal cost.
Healthy
A price set from willingness-to-pay research or a fraction of measurable value delivered (e.g. 10-20% of the uplift).
Unhealthy
A price justified entirely by internal cost-plus-margin with no reference to what the advisor actually gains.
What this means
Any pricing rationale that cites only internal cost, with no customer-value reference point, is a cost-plus red flag regardless of the dollar amount.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| The pricing rationale doc never mentions customer outcomes, only internal costs | Run a Van Westendorp survey with 10-15 existing advisors before finalizing the price | half day |
Step 02 of 03
Flat rate is simple but scales poorly with customer size. A billing model should match how much customer usage actually varies.
Advisor book sizes range from 20 to 2,000 policies under management. The draft bills every advisor the same flat ₹2,000/month regardless of book size. What does flat billing do to a 20-policy advisor vs. a 2,000-policy advisor?
Procedure
- Note the smallest and largest advisor book sizes from the draft's customer list
- Estimate whether the flat price feels fair to the smallest advisor and cheap to the largest
- Comment recommending a hybrid model (base fee + per-policy tier) if the gap is large
Draft: flat ₹2,000/mo for all advisors. Comment: A 20-policy advisor pays the same as a 2,000-policy advisor. Small advisors may churn on price; large advisors are hugely underpriced. Recommend hybrid: base fee + per-policy-band multiplier.
Healthy
A billing model where price scales with book size, so small advisors aren't priced out and large advisors pay proportionate to value received.
Unhealthy
Flat pricing across a 100x range in customer size, which either overcharges the smallest segment or leaves massive revenue on the table with the largest.
What this means
Flat rate only works when customer usage is genuinely similar; a 100x variance in book size is a strong signal a hybrid or usage-based model fits better.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Small customers churn citing price while your largest customers barely notice the bill | Segment the customer base by usage and model a hybrid base-plus-usage price for the next review cycle | half day |
Step 03 of 03
Never gate features necessary for customers to experience core value in the starter tier. Gate features that amplify success, not features that enable it.
Lead assignment, the workflow that routes a new insurance lead to the advisor, is gated behind Tier 3. Without it, what can a Tier 1 advisor actually do with the tool?
Procedure
- List every feature included in Tier 1
- For each, ask: can the advisor achieve the tool's core promise (closing more policies) without this feature?
- Flag any feature where the answer is 'no' as miscategorized, regardless of its current tier
Tier 1 features: contact log, policy renewal reminders, document storage. Missing from Tier 1: lead assignment (gated to Tier 3). Flag: Without lead assignment, a Tier 1 advisor cannot receive new leads at all — this is the tool's core promise, not an amplifier. Move to Tier 1 with a volume cap instead of a hard gate.
Healthy
Tier 1 includes every feature required to experience the product's core promise, with volume or scale caps as the upgrade path instead of feature walls.
Unhealthy
A core workflow like lead assignment, without which the product delivers zero value, sits behind a paywall two tiers up.
What this means
If removing a feature from the starter tier means a customer cannot experience the product's core promise at all, it's an enabling feature and belongs in every tier.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Starter-tier customers churn within the first month without ever using the product's core workflow | Move the gated core feature down to Starter with a volume cap instead of a hard paywall | dev ticket |
Final deliverable
An annotated pricing sheet (Google Doc with inline comments) flagging every cost-plus, billing-model, and feature-gating issue found, each with a specific fix recommendation.
See a reference example
Chewy Autoship Business Tools, pricing sheet audit (excerpt) FLAG 1 (cost-plus): Price justified by hosting cost only, no reference to retailer's reorder-rate lift. FLAG 2 (feature-gate): Autoship scheduling gated to Tier 2, but it's the tool's core promise. Move to Tier 1. FLAG 3 (billing model): Flat fee across retailers ranging 50-5,000 SKUs. Recommend usage-based tier.
Success criteria
You're done when you can:
- Identifies at least one instance of cost-plus pricing rationale
- Correctly distinguishes an enabling feature from an amplifying feature in the gate audit
- Flags the billing-model mismatch against the stated usage variance