Challenge
A B2B SaaS scale-up planned an enterprise tier restructure with significant ARPU implications. Sales had strong opinions; product had usage data — neither constituted pricing evidence.
Insight
Board stage-gate
Engineering and GTM could not commit without external validation. The board required graded confidence bands — not sales anecdotes or usage proxies.
Sales opinion vs. designed trade-offs — only one produces decision-grade evidence.
Board requested stage-gate proof before engineering and GTM commit.
Approach
Van Westendorp and discrete choice conjoint tested price fences and bundle composition with target enterprise buyers and considerers.
Van Westendorp anchored conjoint price levels; holdouts validated model fit.
Six attributes at realistic levels, 10 choice tasks per respondent, two holdout concepts, and disconfirming price points above sales proposal. Qual follow-ups with 40 enterprise buyers explained trade-off logic behind quant choices.
620
Completes
40
Qual follow-ups
2
Holdout concepts
Experimental design included holdout concepts and disconfirming price points. Qual follow-ups explained trade-off logic behind quant choices.
Result
Leadership signed off on tier structure with graded confidence bands and explicit segment limits.
Insight
No post-launch reversal
The recommendation survived first-quarter scrutiny because limits were shipped with the model — leadership knew exactly where price sensitivity broke and which segments needed monitoring.
“We had sales saying one price and product saying another. Conjoint gave us a number we could defend.”
Van Westendorp + conjoint + qual = stage-gate approved tier structure.
No post-launch pricing reversal — the recommendation survived first-quarter scrutiny.
Outcome
Leadership signed off with graded confidence — no post-launch reversal.
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