“What is this actually worth to you — in concrete terms?”
From Hermann Simon · Founder of Simon-Kucher; author of Confessions of the Pricing Man
Why it works
Asked thousands of times what the most important aspect of pricing is, Simon's answer never changed: 'value' — more precisely, perceived value-to-customer. His reasoning is that a customer's willingness to pay is nothing but a reflection of the value they perceive. So the most useful pricing question isn't about price at all; it's about worth. Forcing the answer into concrete terms — hours saved, money made, a risk removed — converts a warm feeling into a quantity you can set a price beneath. If they can name a number, you have a value anchor and a ceiling to reason from; if the worth is real but they can't quantify it, that gap is itself the finding, and the product hasn't yet made its value legible enough to charge for.
When to ask
Once someone has used the product enough to have felt its value — and especially before a pricing or renewal conversation. You're trying to surface the worth in their terms so a price can be defended against it.
Good follow-ups
- Walk me through how you'd put a number on that.
- What does it cost you when you don't have this?
- If the price doubled, where's the line where it stops being worth it?
Watch out for
Accepting an adjective as an answer. 'Really valuable' is not a quantity and can't anchor a price — keep pressing until a unit appears or it's clear there isn't one. The mirror-image trap is letting the worth become your price: value is the ceiling, not the number; you still leave room or capture share deliberately. And beware asking too early, before the value has been felt — you'll get a guess about hypothetical worth, not a report of real worth.
Where to ask
- User interviewgreat
Native habitat — live, you can press past the first vague answer until a concrete unit of value surfaces (hours saved, error avoided, revenue moved).
- Sales callworkable
A strong value-discovery question on a deal call; mind the dynamic — a buyer mid-pitch may inflate the worth to justify a price they already want.
- In-product surveyworkable
Asynchronous, 'in concrete terms' often goes unanswered; reword it to demand a single quantified unit so one line can still carry the value.
Reworded for this context: “In concrete terms — hours, dollars, or headaches saved — what is this worth to you per month?”
- Long-form surveypoor
No way to press for specifics, so most answers come back as adjectives ('very valuable') that don't quantify anything you can price against.
Stage: Get value · A question popularized by Hermann Simon