Why 90% of B2B Companies Are Underpriced — And Don't Know It

In my eight years working in B2B pricing — first at Deloitte, then leading pricing strategy at Vizient — I identified over $170 million in pricing leakage across dozens of companies. The cause was almost always the same: these businesses were competing on one or two value elements when they were actually delivering eight or twelve.

Harvard Business Review's research on the 40 B2B Elements of Value identified the full landscape of what business buyers actually care about — from functional benefits like productivity and scalability, to ease-of-doing-business factors like responsiveness and cultural fit, to individual benefits like career advancement and reduced anxiety. Most B2B companies, when asked to articulate their value, reach for the same two or three: "we save you time" and "we're better than the competition." The other 37 elements sit unclaimed.

The Pricing Gap Is Structural, Not Accidental

The underpricing problem isn't a sales problem. It isn't a confidence problem. It's a structural problem rooted in how most B2B companies develop their pricing in the first place.

The typical pricing process goes like this: look at what competitors charge, add a small premium if you feel good about your product, and set your price. This is market-rate pricing, and it has one fatal flaw — it anchors your price to what your competitors think they're worth, not to what you actually deliver.

When I ran the analysis at Vizient, we found that the company was delivering quantifiable value in areas — compliance risk reduction, supply chain resilience, clinical outcome improvements — that were never mentioned in a sales conversation and never reflected in the price. The buyers knew they were getting this value. They just weren't being asked to pay for it.

The 40 Elements Framework in Practice

The HBR research organizes the 40 elements into four categories: Functional (things like cost reduction, quality, and scalability), Ease of Doing Business (responsiveness, integration, and flexibility), Individual (career advancement, reduced anxiety, and network access), and Inspirational (vision, social responsibility, and hope). Most B2B companies are fluent in the Functional category and largely silent on everything else.

The Individual category is particularly underutilized. When a B2B buyer chooses your product or service, they are also making a personal career decision. If your solution fails, they look bad. If it succeeds, they look like a hero. That career risk and career upside is real value — and it's almost never priced. The buyers who understand this dynamic will pay a meaningful premium for a vendor who makes them look smart, reduces their personal risk, and gives them a story to tell their leadership.

What a 3% ASP Improvement Actually Means

For a $5 million B2B company, a 3% improvement in average selling price — achievable in 90 days by articulating three to four additional value elements — is $150,000 in pure profit. There is no incremental cost. No new headcount. No new product. Just a more complete articulation of the value you are already delivering.

McKinsey's pricing research consistently shows that a 1% improvement in price has three times the profit impact of a 1% improvement in volume. Yet most B2B companies spend their energy on sales volume — more leads, more demos, more proposals — while leaving the pricing lever untouched.

The First Step Is Identification

Before you can charge for value, you have to know what value you're delivering. That means going beyond your standard pitch deck and asking a harder question: what would happen to your client's business if you disappeared tomorrow? What risks would they face? What productivity would they lose? What relationships would they have to rebuild? What compliance gaps would open up?

The answers to those questions are your undiscovered value elements. They are the basis for a pricing conversation that doesn't start with "here's what we charge" and end with a negotiation — it starts with "here's what you get" and ends with a client who feels like they're getting a deal.

The free Value Gauge assessment runs your business through all 40 elements and identifies the specific ones you're delivering but not charging for. It takes about 20 seconds. The revenue opportunity it surfaces typically takes 90 days to capture.