You have done the hard work. You ran a great discovery phase, you built a detailed WBS, and you calculated a profitable price.

Now, you put it all into a PDF and send it to the client with a single price tag at the bottom: $75,000.

At that moment, you have lost control of the sale.

You have forced the client into a binary decision: “Yes” or “No.”

When faced with a single, large number, the human brain immediately tries to find a point of comparison. Since you haven’t provided one, they will compare you to:

In all three scenarios, you are likely to lose, or at least face brutal price negotiations.

There is a better way. It’s called Tiered Pricing, often known as the “Good, Better, Best” strategy.

By presenting three strategic options, you change the client’s central question from “Should we hire them?” to “Which option should we choose?”

This article dives deep into the behavioral psychology of pricing. We will show you how to use “anchoring” to make your target price look like a bargain and how to structure your proposals to maximize deal size without feeling slimy.

Table of Contents

  1. The “Take it or leave it” failure trap
  2. The Science of Anchoring: Why context is everything
  3. Designing Option 3: The “Anchor” (Best)
  4. Designing Option 2: The “Target” (Better)
  5. Designing Option 1: The “Safety Net” (Good)
  6. Naming Strategy: The psychology of labels
  7. How devtimate visualizes tiered pricing
  8. Checklist
  9. FAQ

The “Take it or leave it” failure trap

When you send a single price, you are behaving like a commodity provider. You are saying: “Here is the cost of the bricks to build your house.”

This forces the client into a defensive mindset. They become focused on cost reduction. They start looking at line items and asking, “Do we really need this login feature?”

You are now negotiating downwards from your only price. Every dollar they shave off is a dollar of profit lost.

Professional service firms don’t sell commodities; they sell solutions to business problems. Since there is always more than one way to solve a problem, there should always be more than one price.

We previously discussed why tiered estimates double your win rate. Now, let’s look at how to construct them psychologically.

The Science of Anchoring: Why context is everything

Humans are terrible at judging absolute value. We are excellent at judging relative value.

How do you know if a $50 bottle of wine at a restaurant is expensive? You look at the menu.

The $200 bottle is the Anchor. It exists not necessarily to be sold, but to reframe your perception of the other prices.

In software sales, you must create your own anchor.

If you want to sell a project for $75,000, you cannot just present $75,000. You must present something significantly more expensive next to it so that $75,000 feels like the smart, safe choice.

This utilizes the “Compromise Effect” in psychology. When presented with three options, people tend to avoid the extremes (the cheapest feels risky, the most expensive feels indulgent) and gravitate toward the middle option.

Your job is to engineer the three options so that the “middle option” is exactly the project you want to build.

Designing Option 3: The “Anchor” (Best)

Strategy: The Dream Scenario

You build your proposal backwards. Start with the most expensive option.

This option should include absolutely everything the client asked for, plus things they didn’t ask for but would love to have. It should be the “Rolls Royce” version of the project.

What to include:

The Price: It should be shockingly high. If your target price is $75k, your anchor should be $120k-$150k.

The Goal: Do not expect them to buy this. The goal of Option 3 is to make them gasp when they see the price, so that when they look down at Option 2, they feel a sense of relief.

(Note: Sometimes, about 10% of the time, a client with a large budget will actually buy the anchor. That’s a massive win for your margins.)

Designing Option 2: The “Target” (Better)

Strategy: The Goldilocks Zone

This is the project you actually plan to build. It is the perfect balance of value and cost.

What to include:

The Price: This is your calculated, profitable price (e.g., $75,000).

The Goal: When compared to the massive Option 3, this option should look incredibly sensible. The client thinks: “I don’t need the on-site workshops or the accelerated timeline for $150k. I just need the core software. $75k seems like a great deal for that.”

You have successfully framed $75,000 as a “deal.”

Designing Option 1: The “Safety Net” (Good)

Strategy: The Painful MVP

This option exists to capture clients who truly have budget constraints. Instead of losing the deal entirely when they say “That’s too expensive,” you have a pre-built downsell.

What to include:

The Price: Significantly lower than the target, perhaps $45,000 - $50,000.

The Goal: This option should feel a little uncomfortable. It should solve their problem, but they should look at it and think, “Hmm, I really wanted those extra features in Option 2.”

If they choose this option, you still win the client, cover your costs, and you have built-in upsell opportunities for Phase 2 later via Change Requests. It is infinitely better than a “No.”

Naming Strategy: The psychology of labels

Do not call your options “Bronze, Silver, Gold.” That sounds cheap and generic.

Your names should reinforce the business outcome of choosing that option.

When the client looks at the middle option, they shouldn’t just see “Standard”; they should see “The outcome I want.”

How devtimate visualizes tiered pricing

Creating three separate detailed estimates in Excel for every prospect is too much work. Most agencies don’t do it because it takes too long.

devtimate solves this by making tiered pricing the default workflow.

  1. Build the Master Scope: You create the full, detailed breakdown of the “Anchor” (Option 3) first.
  2. Clone and Cut: You clone that estimate to create Option 2. You simply uncheck the “nice-to-have” modules to reduce the scope and price instantly.
  3. Repeat for MVP: You clone it again for Option 1 and cut it down to the bare bones.
  4. Side-by-Side Presentation: devtimate generates a proposal link that shows the client the three options side-by-side, highlighting the differences in scope and price clearly.

This turns a strategic pricing exercise that used to take days into a 20-minute workflow.

Start creating psychological pricing proposals with devtimate.

Checklist

✅ Never send a proposal with only one price option.
✅ Always build your options backwards: design the most expensive “Anchor” first.
✅ Make the Anchor (Option 3) shockingly expensive to reframe value.
✅ Ensure your Target (Option 2) is the most balanced, “sensible” choice.
✅ Make the Safety Net (Option 1) functional but slightly painful (a true MVP).
✅ Use outcome-based names for your options, not generic labels like “Gold/Silver.”
✅ Always present these options live on a call (following the “No-Email Rule”), don’t just send the link.

FAQ

1. Isn’t this manipulative?
No. Manipulation is tricking someone into buying something they don’t need. Tiered pricing is about giving the client control and clarity. You are transparently showing them: “If you want X, it costs Y. If you want less, it costs less.” You are helping them make an informed trade-off between their budget and their desires.

2. What if they choose the cheapest option?
That’s a win! You acquired a customer, the project is profitable (because you cut the scope correctly), and you have a foot in the door. Most clients who start with an MVP eventually upgrade to the features in Option 2 later.

3. What if they want features from Option 3 but the price of Option 2?
This is the start of a healthy negotiation. You say: “We can definitely add that premium feature to Option 2, but it will increase the price by $X. Or, we can swap it out for a different feature to keep the price the same.” You are now negotiating scope, not just discounting your rate.

4. How much should the price gaps be?
A good rule of thumb is that the middle option should be roughly 1.5x the cheap option, and the expensive option should be 2x-3x the cheap option. (e.g., $50k / $75k / $150k). The gaps need to be significant enough to denote a real difference in value.

5. Doesn’t creating three estimates take too long?
It used to. But tools like devtimate allow you to build one master scope and then quickly “clone and subtract” to create the other tiers in minutes. The extra time spent on strategy pays for itself tenfold in higher close rates and larger deal sizes.

Pricing is not math; it is psychology.

By presenting a single price, you are leaving money on the table and letting the client frame the value. By structuring “Good, Better, Best” options, you take control of the frame.

Anchor high, guide them to the middle, and give them a safety net.

Use devtimate to make tiered pricing your standard sales practice.