cmj-hub Pricing — JMC Pricing Surgery Skill
Comprehensive pricing orchestrator for B2B operators. Treats pricing as a surgical discipline — small precise cuts in the right place compound; sloppy cuts hemorrhage margin.
Quick Reference
| Slash | What it does |
|---|---|
/pricing |
Interactive mode — detect intent, route to a sub-skill |
/pricing diagnose |
Three-surface diagnostic: WTP distribution, value-metric, packaging |
/pricing audit |
30-point pricing program audit → 0-100 score + top 3 levers |
/pricing tiers |
Three-tier design with decoy + anchor architecture |
/pricing anchor |
Reference-frame stack design for pricing copy |
/pricing waterfall |
Pocket-price waterfall — find where margin is leaking |
/pricing value-metric |
Pick the right price unit (per-seat / per-API / per-outcome) |
/pricing tribunal |
Capstone workflow for high-stakes pricing decisions |
/pricing review |
Quarterly pricing review cadence + agenda |
Core principles (the JMC stance)
- Pricing is surgery, not strategy. Diagnose first. Cut last. Operators who lead with "let's just raise prices 15%" hemorrhage margin and trust. Find the leak, then close it.
- A 1% price improvement = ~11% profit improvement on average B2B economics. Pricing is the highest-leverage lever in the business and the one most operators give the least attention. (Hermann Simon, 50+ years of empirical work.)
- Inertia is the real competitor. Buyers anchor on what they currently do — not on competitor prices. Beat the inertia frame, not the competitor frame.
- Loss aversion dominates size-of-win. For the 95% of buyers not in cycle, de-risking the purchase matters more than the ceiling of upside. Kahneman + Tversky's Prospect Theory is load-bearing in pricing copy.
- Value-metric alignment beats price-point tuning. The wrong unit (per-seat when the value is per-API-call) leaks more margin than any discount policy.
- Three-tier contrast-set with a real decoy outperforms two-tier or four-tier in 80%+ of B2B SaaS / services tests. (Ariely, asymmetric dominance.)
- Discount discipline > headline price. The pocket-price waterfall surfaces where margin is leaking after the line-item price. Plug the leaks before tuning the headline.
- Quarterly review prevents drift. Pricing that doesn't get reviewed gets eroded. The operating practice IS the compounding moat.
Workflow router
When invoked, detect the user's intent and route to a sub-skill:
| User says | Route to |
|---|---|
| "Should I raise my prices?" | skills/pricing-diagnostic (then pricing-tribunal if material) |
| "Redesign my pricing page" | skills/pricing-contrast-set |
| "My discounts are eating margin" | skills/pricing-pocket-waterfall |
| "Should this be per-seat or per-something-else?" | skills/pricing-value-metric |
| "How do I anchor my pricing?" | skills/pricing-reference-frames |
| "Audit my pricing program" | skills/pricing-audit |
| "Big pricing decision — help me decide" | skills/pricing-tribunal |
| "What should we check at the pricing review?" | skills/pricing-quarterly-review |
| "How do I price renewals / expansion?" | skills/pricing-renewal-discipline |
If intent is ambiguous, ask one clarifying question — never two.
Variables (sub-skills inherit these)
The pricing surgery discipline operates on these variables. Capture
once from brand-config.json + diagnostic output, reuse across all
sub-skills:
| Variable | Source | Example |
|---|---|---|
psp |
Pain Signal Profile (from companion claude-psp pack) | "Series-B SaaS, demand-gen lead, pipeline gap" |
currentTiers |
Operator's pricing page | "$99 / $299 / $999 monthly" |
valueMetric |
What scales with customer success | "Active records / API calls / seats / outcomes" |
wtpDistribution |
Discovered via Van Westendorp / Gabor-Granger / conjoint | "P10=$50, P50=$200, P90=$800/mo" |
referenceAnchor |
Strongest plausible reference frame for this segment | "Inertia: 'building it in-house' at $80K/yr fully-loaded" |
discountWaterfall |
Pocket-price waterfall steps | "List → ramp → volume → bundle → annual → effective" |
riskTier |
Decision stakes (review-level required) | "Routine / Material / Strategic" |
If any are missing for a real recommendation, ask — don't fabricate.
References
Load these on demand for deeper context:
references/pricing-framework.md— The full JMC pricing surgery frameworkreferences/pricing-banned-patterns.md— Pricing moves that fail predictablyreferences/pricing-lineage.md— Simon / Kahneman / Ariely / Christensen / Ramanujamreferences/reference-frame-stack.md— Strongest-to-weakest anchor typesreferences/value-metric-catalog.md— Common B2B value-metric patterns + failure modesreferences/decoy-effect-patterns.md— Asymmetric dominance in three-tier design
Sub-skills
skills/pricing-kickoff— Adaptive router; detects state + picks next-best stepskills/pricing-onboarding— Interactive setup →brand-config.json+SOUL.mdskills/pricing-diagnostic— Three-surface diagnostic (WTP, value-metric, packaging)skills/pricing-audit— 30-point pricing program auditskills/pricing-tribunal— High-stakes pricing decision workflow (Hypothesize → Test → Adjudicate → Audit)skills/pricing-reference-frames— Anchor design + loss aversion applicationskills/pricing-contrast-set— Three-tier + decoy architectureskills/pricing-pocket-waterfall— Discount-leak detectionskills/pricing-value-metric— Price unit selectionskills/pricing-quarterly-review— Operating cadenceskills/pricing-renewal-discipline— Renewals + expansion as continuous surgery
Specialist agents
agents/pricing-reviewer— Pricing-page + tier scorer (0-100)agents/pricing-tribunal-judge— Adjudicates pricing hypotheses against the verdict matrix
Free hosted version
The same job runs in a browser, no install and no key: Pricing Page Lab