Most founders assume stalled deals, price pushback, and discount pressure are pricing problems. They are not. They are decision issues.
Mark Stiving walks through the Six Laws of Value as a practical map of how buyers actually make decisions. Not how we wish they did. Not how sales decks assume they do.
Each law explains a specific point where buyers hesitate, defer, or quietly disengage. When those breakdowns happen, price becomes the scapegoat.
Mark explains that pricing success depends on understanding buyer confidence, not just features or cost. Buyers make decisions by predicting future outcomes and choosing the option they feel most confident about. Confidence is driven by three factors: payoff (value), probability (likelihood of success), and anticipated regret (risk of failure).
Value comes from solving real customer problems, yet buyers often express solutions instead of underlying issues. Sellers who clearly articulate customer problems—better than the customer can—build trust, increase confidence, and raise willingness to pay. Most deals fail due to lack of commitment, not competition.
Mark Stiving on Pricing Problems
About Mark Stiving
Mark Stiving is a pricing expert, speaker, and author who helps companies make more money by figuring out how buyers actually decide what to pay, then aligning products, packaging, and pricing with that reality. He pushes hard on value-based and context-driven pricing and spends very little time on academic theory and a lot of time on what moves revenue and profit in the real world.
He’s best known for simplifying complex pricing concepts into frameworks that executives and teams can actually use. His work shows up in books, bootcamps, boardrooms, and consulting rooms, often with companies that have strong products but weak clarity on how to justify and capture their value.
The unsugarcoated summary: Mark helps organizations stop guessing at prices and start getting paid for the value they already deliver.
Few voices resonate with the clarity, insight, and expertise of Mark Stiving. His profound understanding of buyer behavior and his unique ability to distill pricing strategies into actionable insights have cemented his reputation as a sought-after advisor and instructor. His firm, Impact Pricing, works with private equity firms and their portfolio companies to focus on customer value, optimize pricing, and maximize valuation.
He hosts the popular Impact Pricing Podcast, has a Ph.D. in pricing from U.C. Berkeley, and is the author of four books: