Episode 29

15 Must Haves That Turn Your Pricing Page Into A Trust Engine

Today’s buyers make over 80% of their buying decisions before ever talking to sales—and 75% prefer a rep-free experience. Yet most B2B companies still hide their pricing behind forms or vague “contact us” messages. In this episode, Hannah Eisenberg breaks down why transparency in pricing has become one of the most powerful trust signals in modern marketing. You’ll learn how to show pricing safely, position it with confidence, and create a pricing experience that educates and converts before the first sales conversation ever happens.

What You’ll Learn:

  • Why hiding your pricing damages buyer trust and costs you a qualified pipeline
  • How transparent pricing helps you show up in both human and AI-assisted searches
  • The essential pricing elements every B2B website should cover—from cost drivers to ROI
  • Practical ways to write or redesign your pricing page without “locking yourself in”
  • How to use pricing articles and calculators to educate buyers and speed up sales cycles
  • The link between transparent pricing and the TrustLeader Framework principle of Complete Transparency
Transcript
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You probably wondered, should I put pricing on my website when none of my competitors do?

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Will it lock me in?

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Or scare prospects away if my pricing seems too high without me able to explain it?

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Or will it give too much information to my competitors?

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In this video, I will show you why transparent pricing is not only one of the most

powerful trust signals you can use online, but I will show you how to do it in a way that

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positions you

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as authority, not as an outlier.

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By the end of this video, you will see that sharing prices doesn't limit you.

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It frees you to win better fit clients faster and build trust before the first sales

conversation.

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Let's get to it.

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You probably wondered, should I put pricing on my website when none of my competitors do?

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Will it lock me in, scare prospects away, or give too much away to my competition?

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In this podcast episode, I will show you why transparent pricing is one of the most

powerful trust signals you can use online and how to do it in a way that it positions you

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as an authority, not as an outlier.

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By the end of this episode, you will see that sharing pricing

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doesn't limit you, it frees you to win better fit clients faster and build trust before

the first sales conversation.

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Let's dive right in.

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So I don't want to spend too much today time on why you should be putting pricing on your

website.

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That's for another time.

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I just want to start off with a quick sort of story.

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Imagine you are looking for a new type of software or some really considered purchase and

you have a boss and they asked you to go looking for something.

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Now company A has a

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beautiful looking website at first and they have a little thing on the top says pricing

when you click on it, it says please contact the sales team and request a quote.

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The second company is equally nice and they don't have pricing on their website at all.

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They don't address any FAQs.

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don't.

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So it's very clear you need to contact sales, but there's no way that you can get any

pricing information out of them.

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Company three.

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also beautiful website, has pricing on the top.

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And when you click on it, you get this pricing page and they might not even say it will

cost you this many dollars or this many euros.

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But what it does say is it explains, look, our pricing is very complex because it depends

on these factors.

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Every price that we give is custom built because of this service that we provide.

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But here's what goes into it.

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And a company of 100 employees in this situation will usually spend between X and Y, while

a company of a thousand employees in this very different situation will spend this and

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this.

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Here are the factors that influence the pricing.

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Here's sort of where we fit in the price range of the industry.

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And here are the things that

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how you can save or how you can sort of make sure you're getting a good deal.

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And you truly understand the value of the product or service that they offer.

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Which company are you going to give a call?

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The third company, of course.

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Immediately, when we as the buyers feel like the company is hiding something, because

obviously they know what...

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they charge for their service or their product, and they're choosing purposefully not to

share that information with us as the buyer.

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So there's some reason why they're hiding it.

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Well, a lot of times business owners or leaders are just scared to scare away the

prospects, or they feel the need to explain first in the sales conversation why they have

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this price because they're afraid that the uneducated buyer

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is not going to be able to judge the value without having that sales conversation.

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And that sort of prevents themselves as business decision makers to put pricing on the

website.

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But as buyers, we always tend to go first with the one that gives us the pricing because

we trust them right out of the gate because they're not hiding it.

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And the better

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and more powerful you can explain it on your website, the more likely there are to

actually give you a call and contact you rather than hiding it.

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All right.

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So this is how deep I am going to go into this today in terms of why should you share

pricing?

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What I really want to focus on today is how do you actually do that?

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How, what elements do you need to discuss?

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What do you need to share on

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your website in terms of pricing.

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And then I'm going to give you two sort of general types of pricing pages and a few ideas

for pricing articles that can go much, much deeper into explaining the things that maybe

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you can't address in full depth in the pricing page.

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And then I'll give you a few tips on how to do that effectively.

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Let's get to it.

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So what are the elements of a great pricing page?

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or pricing article.

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Which are the elements that as a B2B company you need to cover on your website in one form

or another?

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Well, I want to say it kind of depends, but it kind of doesn't.

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A lot of times when we say it depends, it's almost like an excuse not to do difficult

things.

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So I'm going to give you all the things, but I want to challenge you to see if you can

push the envelope to uh

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explain to your clients or your buyers all the things in one way or another.

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Okay?

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All so the first thing that we need to address is what drives the cost up and what drives

it down.

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So imagine a buyer calls one of your salespeople and says, so I got this quote and I got

this quote from your competitor and I'm not really sure, how did you arrive at your price

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So you need to be able to explain to that client or to that buyer, what are the things

that go into your pricing?

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It might be that you're using a better or different type of material than the rest of the

market.

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And that's important to know because maybe you, or for sure you chose that material

because you had a good reason for it.

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With that, there might be cost implications.

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Maybe you chose it because you want to make it cheaper and more affordable for the client.

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But what are the trade-offs?

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Or maybe you chose purposefully a higher quality material than most of your competitors

and your buyer needs to understand what that added value benefit is.

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Okay.

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There might be in your industry, it might not be materials.

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Maybe you have services.

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or the economy shifted and now with tariffs or with inaccessibility of certain markets,

maybe there is a shift that you need to now explain that impacts your pricing.

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There could also be technology shifts.

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So for example, AI has a lot of high running costs in the background and people don't

understand that yet.

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So you need to educate your buyers, not the salesperson waiting on the phone, but before

they contact you.

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Because remember, most buyers today want to complete their purchase decision by

themselves, at least 80 to 90%.

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And I think it's 75 % of buyers actually want to completely have a sales rep free buyers

experience.

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So you have to put the pricing on there and explain and educate them on what is the value,

what makes the price go up and down.

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All right.

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And then that leads me to the next one.

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Why are certain companies expensive and why are others cheaper and where do you fit in?

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So it's really important to explain to your buyers.

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How do you compare it to the rest of the market and to some of your

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and why are you more expensive or cheaper?

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That will help them gauge value and it helps them to understand the trade-offs they're

making.

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So this could be for example, hey you're just spending on brand over here and that's why

they're more expensive and the only difference is that we are more affordable and you

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don't spend on the brand because we're a smaller more boutique firm but we have exactly

the same.

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Or you have mastered efficiency and that's why you're offering a more affordable choice,

but it's not lower quality.

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Maybe you're adding more services than the other ones and that makes you more expensive.

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But you found because of the services that you're adding, the product gets better usage or

they get more out of the...

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And then where do you fall in that range in terms of your competitors?

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Well, are you a budget option?

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Are you mid range?

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Are you the premium option?

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It's really important for a buyer to understand where you're at and what their money gets

them essentially.

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Then add in a section, and this one's really important, of options and features.

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For example, if I want to buy

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certain product that has multiple features or a lot of like for example software products

that can be incredibly complex and they offer hundreds of features but maybe I only need

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20 key features and I wouldn't know because I'm only comparing on price but I don't

understand how these features impact the price but I'm paying for a lot of features that I

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actually don't need.

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So it's very important to list the options and the features on a pricing page to make

people understand, oh I can do without this.

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I can go for the lower plan or I absolutely need this.

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And this will get me in a more expensive plan.

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Or if I choose between those two options, then my price will be impacted in this form.

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All right.

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So those are the four

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big things that people understand value.

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Now, it's really important when we discuss pricing, most people want to understand, it

worth it for me?

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And that is a really important way to approach a pricing page or pricing information

article, whatever you're writing, pricing video maybe even, where you make them understand

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What are the trade-offs?

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What are the low versus high options?

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Are there any premium perks, any limitations?

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is the ROI there?

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That kind of stuff.

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Then once you've covered those big things, people always want to know, there a way for me

to save money?

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Is there a way maybe to get a discount?

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Do you run promotions?

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Do you have a partnership offer?

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Again, coming back to the options before that I mentioned where if I don't need that

option, can I take that out?

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Right.

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So those are really good ways of allowing people to not only learn about the pricing, but

maybe even if you really want to build trust, take ownership and give them agency over

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that and let them decide.

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Obviously, it would be good.

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in a B2B relationship if you at the end have a salesperson guide them.

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Because researchers found that if they're completely doing their buying decision by

themselves end to end, buyer remorse is a lot higher.

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So it would be good if there's a sanity check at the end of this to say, hey, this is

great.

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But experience has shown that you might want to add this in and take that out, because

here's why.

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OK.

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All right, so a few more things I wanna mention here.

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Packaging variations.

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A lot of B2B companies, especially if they are service or they have a SaaS product, they

have pricing tiers.

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It's good to explain what are the differences between those tiers and SaaS companies

usually do a great job.

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Service companies sometimes need to be a lot clearer, but as a person coming,

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to the pricing page or reading the pricing article, watching the pricing video.

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I need to understand what tiers do you offer?

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What is the difference?

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What are the trade-offs, et cetera?

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And you need to be crystal clear, able to decide as a buyer, which is my preferred tier.

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You could also be offering bundles, subscription levels, all this is sort of the same

thing.

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Now you also need to address what type of

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price am I paying?

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Is this a monthly subscription?

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Do you offer annual?

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Do you offer a lifetime price that I maybe just pay once and I don't have to have any

monthly subscription.

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Sometimes it's even a bundle where I have some upfront costs.

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Maybe there's a service component of your software company and then you implement that and

then there's a monthly license fee.

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Maybe there's a maintenance fee.

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So

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What are the upfront fees?

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What are the monthly fees?

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What are the reccurring fees?

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Are there any additional fees later down the road that I need to know of?

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And are there any additional costs associated with that when I buy a product?

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So maybe I need an additional server if I'm buying a software product.

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Maybe I need to make an extra hire for an administrator.

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it's a completely new thing.

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So those are the things we should mention on a pricing page.

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A lot of times people are really interested in financing options.

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So is there some way that you can help me to pay in installments, in leases, what are the

interest rates?

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Maybe you are able to push the envelope in a very

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innovative way in your industry to help people make that purchase.

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I've also found that it's really a good thing to give people historical pricing trends.

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So for example, if you had pre-COVID prices and post-COVID prices and here's what changed,

or maybe prices used to be very high,

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and now they're going down because of X, Y, Z.

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That helps people sort of orient themselves and give them future expectations of where the

price might be going.

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So that's really good.

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I already mentioned that people want to make a decision of whether or not it's worth it.

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And one of the most important things that you need to help them make a decision on is what

is the return on investment?

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Is this the right decision?

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Does it help to save me time?

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Does it reduce risk?

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What is the money that I get back?

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You probably are familiar with the saying no one ever gets fired for buying IBM.

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Well, you need to give them that kind of certainty, right?

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You need to have them be crystal clear on if I do this, this will be my return on

investment.

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Yes, it's worth it under these conditions.

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No, it's not worth it for me just yet.

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I need to do X, Y, and Z first.

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All right, then it's good to add expert budget recommendations.

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So a lot of times we could have a benchmark.

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For example, I think it's 7%, but

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B2B companies spend about 7%.

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I have to look up the statistic here.

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But if I'm a marketing agency, for example, I could, and please verify this data before, I

could say, you know, a B2B company mid-range until this annual revenue will spend 7, 10 %

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on marketing and they will outsource X amount of that.

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So expert recommendations, benchmarks, percentage allocations, those give really good

indications for your buyer if this is worth it, if this is a good product and price for

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them, if the value is right.

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Finally, you might have noticed that in all of this explanation, I haven't mentioned once,

give them a complete breakdown of price.

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So obviously if you can give them a complete breakdown of the price.

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If you have a SaaS product, if the price is what it is, put the price on there.

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It's the first thing you do.

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And then you do all the rest.

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But the reason why I put it last is because most people, most business leaders today feel

like their first inclination or their first pushback is always like,

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no, we can't put pricing on our website because it's too complex.

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It's customized.

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We can't do that.

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Well, I've just shown you, think, 12 or 15 different ways of how you can address pricing

safely and effectively on your website without having to put the price breakdown, in terms

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of dollars and cents on your website.

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But again, if you can,

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That would be fantastic.

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Itemize the price and say, is what it is.

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Here are the extra

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100 % whenever you can do this, give them a self-service tool.

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Give them a pricing calculator that includes all the options and the features where they

can play around with it and say, okay, if I buy this and I add this and this and this,

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What will be my end price?

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What if I take this out?

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How will that impact my price?

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So it gives them an interactive way of learning about your pricing, your product and

service, but also the value that you're delivering.

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Alright, so now that you know what to put on the pricing page, let's talk about how to put

it on the pricing page.

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All right, now that you know what to put on your website in terms of pricing, let's

discuss how you're going to put it on.

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There's two types of pricing pages mainly that I want to mention here.

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It's the explanatory pricing page.

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So it's that would be for companies who are like, it is too complex.

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Every single price is customized.

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We can put a pricing in dollar and cents on our website.

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Okay, so you find a way to effectively Put all the things I mentioned above or at least

the things that absolutely impact your price in your industry but really I encourage you

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to try to find an angle to Help your customers and buyers to really get all the

information they need

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on that explanatory pricing pitch.

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You do want to keep that in depth, but really concise.

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So you don't want to explain every single nook and cranny how steel got more expensive

during COVID and what the implications.

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You can say steel got more expensive during COVID.

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And then you could link, for example, to a different pricing article, how steel cost

changes impacted your industry, et cetera.

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It's just an example I can think of, but keep the pricing page concise because you have so

many information points or data points on that page.

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You don't want to go too broad and deep, but you want to go really concise and deep.

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Okay.

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The second type is obviously your normal pricing page.

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Think of it as a SaaS.

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Here are the blocks, the tiers, the subscription levels.

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Here are some explanation, et cetera.

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Some FAQs.

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So that is for companies that can put dollar and cents on there.

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And then you might have some extra add on options, extra FAQs, extra explanations.

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Fine.

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Always, as I said, try to give them a pricing calculator, an ROI calculator, savings

calculator, a financing calculator, whatever self-service tool you can to make it easily

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consumable.

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and verifiable for them as a particular situation.

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Whenever you do an interactive tool, it helps them make a better decision for themselves.

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All right, then we have next to the pricing pages, have pricing articles or videos.

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So going forward, when I talk about articles, I also can see that as a pricing video

either way or both together.

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are totally fine.

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Now, the types of pricing or cost and pricing articles could be literally a very

straightforward.

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Here's what our pricing looks like.

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Here are the costs, here are the tiers, and explaining that in one big article.

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It could also be that in your industry, giving pricing is not at all something people do.

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And buyers wouldn't even know what the pricing models are looking like.

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So if that's the case, go out there and write an article on what are the most common

pricing options or pricing models that are being used in your industry.

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And what are the pros and cons of each?

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You want to address this from an unbiased standpoint.

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And you always want to say here at X, Y, and Z, we use model X, but

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we want to educate you on the entire market.

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So we're going to go and look at every single pricing model and really try to look at it

from a consultative, educational, non-biased way.

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Then financing options.

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What terms, requirements, uh fees are in your industry in order to finance?

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That's a great pricing.

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Another one is a budgeting and benchmarking.

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So what are the industry benchmarks?

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And I explained that before of percentage allocation.

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You can have that as a point in your pricing page and then go really deep in that article.

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Okay.

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I want you to really educate your buyer on every aspect of your pricing because that

ultimately makes them understand your value and trust you more.

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Savings.

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what are the soft savings?

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What is the time, energy, stress, risk?

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What are those savings that day and how are they impacting ultimately the cost, but also

the value and the price of your product?

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You could do an ROI and value analysis.

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What are the returns on investments?

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What are the payback periods?

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What are the break even points?

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All these kinds of things.

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is a good way to address is it worth it for me was the ROI.

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Now we also have pricing comparison as I said before really be unbiased.

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If there are a few people on your market that have pricing out there or you can verify the

pricing from other sources always source correctly and then compare them unbiased.

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Even though they're your competitors

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And you might feel like, why am I telling my buyers if they're on my website what my

competitor is charging as cheaper?

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But this is a great opportunity.

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There's a reason why they're cheaper.

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Okay.

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It might be that you're the brand and they are the boutique non-brand with the same

offering.

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That's fine.

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You can say that you've been around X, Y, Z, you're whatever, but you want to keep it

unbiased and you want to educate your buyers.

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on what are the differences, where do you stand, et cetera.

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All that stuff I explained before.

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Last but not least, industry specific costs.

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So what is a unique driver for costs in your industry?

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What are some licensing and bundles?

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What's included?

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What are the possible discounts?

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And then this one is one of my favorites, hidden fees.

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If you're in the industry,

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and a lot of B2B industries are that way.

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They have for decades had hidden fees.

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Be the one who changes your industry, who puts it all out there in the open, who explains

a buyer what to expect, what are the fees, how much do they contribute?

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Is there a way to get around them?

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Should they even be charged?

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Why shouldn't they be charged?

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Or why are those legitimate fees that can be charged?

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But what do you need to look out for?

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What are the red flags?

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What are the green flags?

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This could be anything from setup, support, onboarding service, training, those kind of

things.

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But it could also be sort of questionable hidden fees that people have run into.

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it's like, well, where is this coming from?

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All right.

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So those are all the cost and pricing topics you could address in articles and videos and

then bubble them up to a very concise pricing page.

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Now, before I let you go, I want to give you a few tips on how to write great pricing

articles or shoot great pricing videos.

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The first one is you really want to answer one clear question at a time in an article.

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Don't get diluted or go down a rabbit hole and try to boil the ocean and answer all the

questions that someone might have.

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Just pick one.

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question that your salesperson has gotten to you or you have faced many, many times if

you're a business leader in the trenches doing sales conversations.

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What are those 10 questions that you constantly have to answer and then pick apart one at

a time?

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Now, if you do that, what happens is you can send, not only put those questions in blog

articles or in videos on your website before and even on the

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pricing pages as FAQs to link to those or on your product pages, link to those.

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But you can send those to people in the buying process, accelerating your sales process

drastically by having them already answer those questions.

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So be transparent and honest.

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The reason why you're sharing pricing information.

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is not to scam anyone or not to trick them into anything.

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It's literally to build trust.

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And if you had ever encountered my TrustLeader Framework, you know that complete

transparency is the first principle of the TrustLeader Framework.

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Without that, nothing will go.

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The second one is unapologetic customer alignment.

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And that is so, so important because if you

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literally put on some blinders and say, I'm going to serve my customer.

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How can I educate my customer in the best possible way?

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Then you will be honest, transparent, and you will give them all the decision points and

information that they need to know in order to make the right decision for them, not for

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you.

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Last but not least, you want to keep it simple.

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use plain language, try to not use your industry jargon because remember most likely your

buyers have never bought in your industry before and they don't know all your industry

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jargon.

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And if you have to use industry terms, define them and make it clear what you're talking

about.

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And then finish your article with a very strong call to action.

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Lead them to what the next steps are.

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Give them a pricing.

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Give them an option to configure the product that you're offering.

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Let them calculate the ROI.

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Whatever it is, make the next step, the next logical step, and close off with a strong

call to action.

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I really hope this was helpful and it is my sincere hope that this inspires you to share

pricing information on your website, to educate your buyers on your value and to build

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trust through transparency.

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Until next time, this is Hannah from TrustLeaders.

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About the Podcast

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Lead With Trust
Transformative conversations with business leaders, sales pros, and marketing managers about growing your business by educating your customer and building trust.

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About your host

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Hannah Eisenberg

Hannah Eisenberg is a business coach helping organizations generate endless customers by building trust. with almost 25 years of experience in digital marketing and sales, Hannah has a wealth of knowledge of what works and what doesn't. After leading her inbound marketing and sales enablement agency for 12 years, she realized that companies solve long-term problems with short-term fixes by depending on external firms for growth. This often leads to generic (and often confusing) messaging, spray-and-pray prospecting, and hard-pitch sales tactics. The result: loss of trust. In 2023, Hannah decided to flip the script and focus on the only thing that everything ultimately comes down to in business: trust.