Most pricing conversations start with the question: “What should we charge?”

The better starting question is: “What are users already paying — in time, money, and friction — to solve this problem without us?”

That number is the floor.

Every product that solves a real problem has a workaround landscape beneath it. The workaround might be a consultant, a spreadsheet, a half-dozen tools duct-taped together, or just hours of manual work. Whatever it is, it has a cost. Sometimes it’s a direct dollar cost. More often it’s a time cost with a calculable dollar value.

That cost sets the floor below which your product is obviously worthwhile — no sales conversation required. At a price lower than the workaround cost, the only question is whether your product works. The price comparison is automatic.

The math is usually more in your favor than it looks.

Take a professional who earns $150/hour. A two-hour task done manually costs $300 in labor. A tool that does it in ten minutes for $50/month is worth $250/month in saved labor at baseline usage — and $250 is the floor, not the ceiling.

Most pricing anchors against software alternatives: “Competitor X charges $49/month, so we should charge $39/month.” But if the real alternative is manual work at professional billing rates, the software alternative is the wrong reference point. The workaround is the right one.

This changes the conversation about “is this too expensive?”

Tools priced against the workaround cost aren’t expensive — they’re obviously cheap. The objection isn’t price; it’s trust. Does it actually work? Does it do what it claims? Is the time savings real in my specific situation?

These are different objections than “this costs too much.” They’re solvable with proof, not discounts.

The corollary is that tools priced below the workaround cost shouldn’t need to sell on price. If you’re charging $99/month for something that saves four hours of work at a $100/hour billing rate, you’re priced at roughly 25 cents on the dollar of value delivered. The conversation should be about proof, not price.

If you’re struggling to close deals at a price that’s obviously below the workaround cost, the problem is almost never the price. It’s that buyers don’t believe the value claim yet — or don’t understand it.

Find the workaround. Calculate its cost. Price your product well below that number. Then focus entirely on proving you deliver the value you’re claiming.

That’s the whole playbook. Everything else is execution.