The 75th Percentile Pricing Rule
Price near the top of your market's span and staff backwards from the outcome you promised
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 63%
Roach's rule inverts the usual pricing question. Instead of asking what the market will bear, she asks what you must invest in the product to maximise the transformation it can create — then prices to fund that. The mechanism runs backwards from delivery: decide how you want to staff the product so you can dramatically over-deliver, cost that staffing, and set price accordingly. The positional heuristic is the 75th percentile: every market has a low end and a high end (Walmart and Louis Vuitton), and she consistently recommends landing near the top of that span. Her argument against the alternative is that underpricing doesn't buy volume, it buys the wrong signal — you look like a novice rather than the best in the world at what you do. The test of a correct price is asymmetry: what the client spends should feel insignificant compared to the outcome they achieve.
Origin
Extracted from Young and Profiting
Core principles
- 01What a client spends should feel insignificant next to the outcome they get
- 02Underpricing mispositions you as a novice, it doesn't win you volume
- 03Every market has a low end and a high end — you choose where you sit
- 04Price is an input to delivery quality, not just a revenue lever
- 05Human-delivered products and no-touch digital products need different pricing strategies
How to run it
- 1
Define the outcome the price must be dwarfed by
Start from the transformation. When someone invests in your product, service or program, what they spend should feel really insignificant in comparison to the outcome they achieve.
Pro tip If the price and the outcome feel comparable in size, the offer isn't ready to be priced.
- 2
Decide how you'll staff the delivery
Ask what you want to invest in this product to maximise its potential for transformation. Roach prices by looking at how she wants to staff a product and what that investment requires to way over-deliver.
Pro tip Staffing is the input that makes the outcome possible — price it in rather than discovering the gap later.
Watch out A high-touch staffed product and a no-touch digital product demand very different strategies. Don't carry one's pricing logic into the other.
- 3
Map your market's span
Identify the low end and the high end of any product or market you're operating in. Roach's shorthand: there's Walmart and there's Louis Vuitton.
Pro tip You can be the kind of brand you want to be and place yourself where you want to be — the span is a choice, not an assignment.
- 4
Price at the 75th percentile
Roach always leans on the high end and recommends pricing at roughly the 75th percentile of the market's span.
Pro tip Leaning high is the default, then adjust for the specific outcome and client experience you deliver.
Watch out This is a heuristic, not a formula — Roach is explicit that pricing is a complex conversation that depends on the outcome clients get.
- 5
Check the positioning signal
Verify your price makes you look like the best in the world at what you do, not a novice. Roach's core caution is that many founders underprice believing it will bring more business.
Pro tip Ask what your price alone tells a buyer before they read a word of your copy.
Watch out Underpricing mispositions you in the market — it doesn't just cost margin, it costs credibility.
In the wild
Roach sells high ticket: people spend $30,000, $50,000, $80,000 to join her products. She reports onboarding almost 200 clients across two months at those levels. Buyers cite trust in her and her organisation and alignment on values as the reason — she was one of the few openly saying which things were unknown and which were being tested. The prices sit at the top of the span, and the delivery is staffed to match.
→ Roughly 200 clients onboarded in two months at $30K-$80K price points, with buyers naming integrity and consistency rather than price as the deciding factor.
A coach with a program mid-market decides that dropping the price will bring in more clients. Volume doesn't arrive. Instead the low price repositions them: prospects read it as the signal of a novice rather than the best in the world at the work, and the reduced revenue leaves nothing to staff delivery properly, so results soften — which further weakens the case for raising the price later.
→ Neither more clients nor better positioning — the discount buys a novice signal and a thinner delivery at once.
Common mistakes
Underpricing to win volume
Roach's direct observation: a lot of people underprice their business thinking they'll get more business because of it. What it actually does is misposition them in the market as a novice.
Pricing without a staffing plan
The price is what funds the delivery that produces the outcome. Setting it without deciding how the product will be staffed leaves no room to over-deliver.
One pricing strategy for every offer type
A no-touch digital product and a staffed high-ticket product with real client delivery require very different strategies. Applying one rule to both misprices at least one.
Is it for you?
Best for
Service or program founders setting or resetting a price on an offer with real human delivery and a defined client transformation.
Not ideal for
Commodity or purely no-touch digital products where there is no delivery cost to fund and price is set by market competition.
From the transcript
“when someone invests in one of your product services or programs you want what they spend to feel really insignificant in comparison to the outcome…”
“I always recommend that people price in like the 75th percentile of like the span because when you look at any product any Market there's…”
“a lot of people underprice their business and then they think that they'll get more business because of it and a lot of times what…”
From the episode
Kelly Roach: Designing a Balanced Life for Family-Focused Entrepreneurs
Kelly Roach