When to bring in a pricing architect
A pricing architect reads one axis of a company all the way down: the licensing grant, the packaging, the price level, and whether the three still hold together. Below are the moments in a hold when that axis is the lever, each with the door to walk through.
The moments when pricing is the lever.
Nine moments, each with the door it routes to.
A live process with a pricing line in the model
Nobody in the window has tested whether the number is reachable. The target’s own won and lost record names which decision it rests on. The pre-LOI read →
The hundred-day plan says “pricing” and stops
The operating team inherits a number with three sentences under it. The portco’s deal record turns that line into specifics the same day. Pricing Ground Truth →
Year two, and the thesis has not shipped
The uplift was scheduled for year one and the CEO is defensive. An outside read gives the board a cause and a recovery path. How we work with sponsors →
Exit prep needs a compounding retention story
Buyers pay a multiple for retention that reads as structural. An architecture that survives acquirer diligence gets built long before the process. Across the portfolio →
The product sells seats while agents do the work
Headcount stopped tracking value once agents began doing what a licensed user did. The grant decides whether that usage sits inside the contract. AI pricing architecture →
Credits shipped, and nobody can say what one buys
A credit is a surrogate unit, and surrogate units drift from the value they stood in for. Ask what a customer thinks they bought. Pricing the AI harness →
A pricing model transition on the roadmap
Perpetual to subscription, seats to consumption, services to platform. Each one reopens the licensing grant for every customer at once. Model transition →
The edition structure has bloomed
SKUs accumulated one deal at a time and the editions stopped matching the customers who buy them. Sales papers over the gap with configuration. Repackaging →
Discount drift, and stepped tiers giving it back
The deal desk absorbs a list increase and realized price never moves. Stepped volume tables give margin away at the edges. Discounting analysis →
Chris Mele
Ranked #1 on OpenView’s list of B2B SaaS pricing experts. Chris takes the first call himself, with a team that has held CFO, CPO and CIO seats inside software companies.
LevelSetter runs the pricing infrastructure end to end, so the experts spend the window on the calls only humans can make.
Read more about Chris →From trigger to read, in three steps.
The first two steps put nothing at risk.
You spot the trigger
Name the company and the situation in a sentence. No data moves and nothing is scoped yet.
Thirty minutes with Chris
A read of the situation on a call: what the trigger usually means, what it takes to test it, and whether pricing is the constraint.
Then the Assessment, or a read
The free assessment where the question is broad, a Pricing Ground Truth where the deal record is available, the diligence read where a target is in process.
Where the doors go.
The read inside a live deal process
On a named target, counted only on the deals that go through. Pricing Ground Truth for Diligence →
Post-close, across the portfolio
Every portco in one vocabulary, from close through exit. The portfolio view →
Frequently asked questions
Tell us which company, and what changed.
Tell us which company, what changed, and where you are in the hold. A pricing expert replies with what a read would settle.
With no company named yet, the free Pricing Architecture Assessment scores one in the same vocabulary.