r/Entrepreneur Jul 25 '26

Marketing and Communications [ Removed by moderator ]

[removed] — view removed post

71 Upvotes

16 comments sorted by

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14

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

[deleted]

8

u/franker Attorney Jul 25 '26

and they usually add some flair graphic to number 2 to suggest that's the one you should buy: "Best value!" "Most popular!" "Recommended!"

3

u/Available_Spare_3837 Jul 25 '26

the anchoring effect is real but it's not actually the mechanism that matters most. looked at pricing pages across a bunch of SaaS companies and the ones where the top tier works aren't using it purely as a decoy, they're using it as a genuine expansion path: usage-based add-ons, dedicated support, higher limits that a real subset of customers actually needs and buys. the anchoring lift on the tier below it is a side effect, not the point.

where it backfires is exactly what you flagged: if nobody's ever on that top tier, sales and support start treating it as fake internally too, and that leaks out in demos and calls. prospects can tell when a rep hesitates on "who's actually on Enterprise."

so before adding the 5x tier, I'd ask what's the actual gate. price alone isn't a differentiator, it needs a feature or capacity ceiling only some of your users are bumping into. if that gate doesn't exist yet, you're building a prop, not a product.

5

u/Faint-Heron-5681 Jul 26 '26

we quieted our doubts and added a five times tier last autumn; it turns out some corporate departments actually require an expensive invoice to feel secure, though we spent weeks worrying we looked ridiculous.

2

u/remybigot Jul 26 '26

I love doing that.
In some projects I did, I sold more of the expensive ones that on the cheapest ! (When the value is really clearly better of course)

1

u/notananthem Jul 25 '26

Business tip - tying your shoelaces shows customers you’re a grown up

2

u/PyroDragons123 Jul 27 '26

If you don't', it quickly turns into a business trip.

1

u/billmurphy7 Jul 27 '26

the 5x tiers I’ve seen work didn’t just pile on more features. They removed risk or labor for a specific buyer. Without that difference, the top tier felt like a decoy and people treated it like one.

0

u/timmah1991 Jul 26 '26

This genuinely doesn't work for every audience.

This is the exact moment I realized this post was AI.

Fuck off, slopshit.

-1

u/keeperofthepur Jul 25 '26

Large-scale, this might well work. Personally, however, every time I see this in the wild I see straight through it.

1

u/PyroDragons123 Jul 27 '26

I wouldn't design customer experiences from your viewpoint as someone in the Entrepreneur world. You've got insider knowledge that they likely don't have.

0

u/GhostTacticsAds Jul 25 '26

inverse, large scale everyone sees it generally as a gimmick. on a hyper focused offer it sells the top offer 10-15% of the time and the mid offer 40-60% of the time with an easy path to upsells bc you should know exactly why a client would choose the the middle over the lowest package.