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Free minibook · PDF, 25 pages
6 Pricing and Payment-Term Breakthroughs
Somewhere a buyer has your quote in a drawer. She wants what you sell, and she isn't stalling on price. She's stalling on everything around the price. This free minibook is about those barriers, and six times in history a seller removed one and buying changed.
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By Todd Hagopian, who has led business transformations at Berkshire Hathaway, Illinois Tool Works and Whirlpool.
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Who it's for
People who set offers, terms or quotes for a business whose customers want what it sells and still buy slowly, haggle hard, or don't buy at all. The answer here is the structure of the offer: when the buyer pays, how they pay, who pays, what they risk and what's included. Not the price level.
Not for you if your problem is that the price itself is too low. That's Are You Underpricing?. The six levers are an editorial synthesis built from documented history, not a framework the author has tested in the field. Use them as a checklist and test them on your own deals.
What you'll learn
- Find the Friction Fee
- Post the Price
- Charge for Proven Savings
- Break the Cash Cliff
- Simplify the Price and Who Pays
- Take the Risk
- Price the System
Plus a final action plan and a worksheet you can use the same week.
Key takeaways
- Buying costs more than your price. The Friction Fee is everything a buyer spends to say yes besides the price: time, cash they don't have this quarter, risk to their job, effort to decode your quote.
- Answering a stalled deal with a discount cuts the one number the buyer wasn't fighting and leaves every real barrier standing.
- The six levers: post the price, charge for proven savings, break the Cash Cliff, simplify the price and who pays, take the risk, and price the system.
- Guarantee only what you've measured. Done with a weak product, a guarantee is a liability with a marketing budget.
- Launch one lever at a time on new quotes, and compare against a held-back group quoted the old way.
From the book
Somewhere a plant manager has your quote in a drawer.
She wants what you sell. She told your rep so. The old machine is loud, costly and one bad week from failing. Your quote is fair. And it's been sitting there for four months.
She isn't stalling on price. She's stalling on everything around the price. The number is bigger than she can sign for. She can't prove the savings to her owner. She doesn't know what the extras will cost. She's afraid that if the new machine fails, it's her name on it.
Every one of those is a cost. She pays it in time, risk and political capital before she pays you a dollar. When the cost of saying yes is higher than the cost of waiting, she waits.
Todd Hagopian, Make Buying Easy, from the prologue "The Quote in the Drawer"
Frequently asked questions
Why do good prospects stall?
Because buying costs more than your price. The Friction Fee is everything a buyer has to spend to say yes besides the price itself: time to compare, cash they don't have this quarter, risk to their job if it fails, effort to decode your quote and fear they're being overcharged.
They agree on the value. Why don't they sign?
Because the cash leaves all at once. The Cash Cliff is an up-front payment bigger than the buyer can fund at once, even when the total cost makes sense. They're not refusing the price. They're refusing the jump.
Should I offer a guarantee?
Only if you can afford for it to be tested. A guarantee moves risk from buyer to seller. Done with a good product, it's the strongest signal you can send. Done with a weak one, it's a liability with a marketing budget.
Related free minibooks
Are You Underpricing?
Find where your pricing leaves profit behind, and test a fix before you roll it out.
Read more
Plug the Profit Leaks
Find the customers and products quietly draining your margin, then fix, reprice or exit.
Read more
The Rules Worth Breaking
Find the industry assumptions capping your growth, rank them and test one before anyone else does.
Read moreRelated reading on the blog
- B2B Pricing Strategy: Value over Cost-Plus
- Decoy Pricing: Add a Tier Nobody Buys
- What Is One Point of Price Worth?
Go further
This minibook is one piece. 10-Minute Transformation: Diagnose and Destroy Your Profit Killers (Koehler Books, out February 23, 2027) carries the full ten-minute diagnostic, the twelve business types, the five structural upgrades and a complete 90-day playbook.
The full library
Two ways to get it. Preorder now and it ships on release. Or buy on launch day, February 23, 2027, and get three free audiobooks (10-Minute Transformation, Stagnation Assassin and The Unfair Advantage) plus the full minibook library, on the honor system. Preorders don't include the launch-day bonuses.
About the author
Todd Hagopian, The Stagnation Assassin, is VP of Product Strategy and Marketing. He has led business transformations at Berkshire Hathaway, Illinois Tool Works, and Whirlpool Corporation, with $3B+ shareholder value across five turnarounds. He speaks to leadership teams on business transformation, turnarounds, and breaking stagnation.