How to Make Your Price Stick

_{[Read time: 4 minutes]}

Pricing power.

The phrase sounds...well, powerful.

We tend to assume pricing power is reserved for the visibly elite.

Big audience. Bold positioning. Polished brand. Instant credibility.

That’s one form: perception-driven pricing power.

The kind that comes from how you're seen.

But there's another kind — quieter, more durable, and harder to copy:

Being hard to replace.

Perception gets you the sale, but it’s your replacement value that makes your price stick.

This is Part 3 of the Pricing from First Principles series.

In Part 1, we rebuilt how pricing actually works.

In Part 2, we talked about how to raise prices intentionally.

Now, let’s talk about how to defend and protect them.

Value comes in three forms:

Perceived value — what they expect

Contribution value — what you deliver

Replacement value — what it costs to lose you

Let’s be clear: people buy (or rebuy) based on perception.

And at the first interaction, that’s all a buyer has.

Over time, contribution value shows up — the outcomes you deliver, the results you create, the proof you provide.

It reinforces their original perception and helps justify their decision to buy or stay.

That’s what most service businesses focus on:

• Sales pages

• Case studies

• Testimonials

• “Here’s what I delivered.”

And it works. Contribution value helps justify your price.

But it doesn’t make it stick, the way replacement value does.

Most forget to highlight their replacement value. Don’t.

Here is my thesis: your pricing power doesn’t just come from what you give. It comes from what happens if you’re gone.

Replacement value is what protects your price when:

• A client pushes back

• Someone stalls

• An alternative enters the conversation

It answers a simple but powerful question: “If I disappeared tomorrow, what would it cost them to replace me?”

If the answer is “not much,” you’re easy to undercut.

If the answer is “this would derail us,” your price gets protected.

This applies to more than retainers

Even in one-off projects, your pricing power grows after the work is done — not just during delivery.

If there’s a chance they’ll return for future work, revisit strategy, or build on what you’ve created, then your context becomes your leverage.

Especially when:

• You’ve built trust

• The context is deep

• The work touches multiple parts of their business

• You’ve already shortened learning curves

You’re no longer just another service provider. You’re embedded.

And that’s not easily — or cheaply — replicated.

They’d have to hire someone at a higher rate just to catch up.

But they won’t remember that unless you show them. They’ll treat you like a resettable input instead of a compound asset.

Make the cost of replacing you visible. That’s how your price holds.

• How much harder you are to replace now than when you started

• How long it would take someone new to catch up

• How much compound value would be lost by starting over

And that’s why pricing power should grow over time.

So how do you increase your replacement value?

To be clear, it’s not about making clients dependent on you, it’s about becoming high-context, high-trust, and strategically embedded.

Here are the four biggest drivers:

1 — Experience

You don’t guess. You know.

You see patterns, avoid traps, and move faster with fewer mistakes.

2 — Integration

Your work connects to systems, people, and decisions beyond your scope.

You know how the pieces fit — and how to move within the machine.

3 — Context & Relationships 

You understand the people, politics, and internal dynamics.

You don’t just speak their words — you speak their world.

4 — Proprietary Process

You’ve built tools, systems, or workflows they now rely on.

If you left, they'd have to pay someone more to recreate them.

You're building a moat, while solving the problem.

The more of these you build, the more durable your price becomes — even when you're not in the room to defend it.

Start building — and naming — what makes you hard to replace.

• Perceived value gets them to buy.

• Contribution value justifies your price.

• Replacement value makes it stick.

Final thought

Pricing power isn’t also ‘looking or feeling’ expensive. It’s about being having more of the leverage (and feeling like you’re undeniably necessary).

Clients may forget what you delivered.

But they won’t forget how hard it would be to replace you…if you show them that is.

Thanks for reading the full Pricing from First Principles series:

• Part 1: How Pricing Actually Works 

• Part 2: How to Raise Your Prices

• Part 3: How to Make Your Price Stick

I’d love to hear from you.

Please reply to this email and give me the real feedback and thoughts.

Or tell me below by taking this poll:

Until next time.

— Peter

P.S. If your pricing feels fragile, or your leverage is hidden, I’ll help.

I run a 1-week Pricing Audit to uncover where your price is unsupported, under-defended, or quietly leaking trust.

Let talk about how to turn pricing from afterthought to needle-mover.