"If you're not worried that you're pricing it too cheap, you're not pricing it cheap enough"
About this Quote
The line lands like a dare, the kind of sales-floor wisdom that sounds reckless until you realize it’s really a philosophy of attention. Roy H. Williams isn’t talking about “cheap” as a moral stance; he’s talking about cheap as a lever. The point is to price so aggressively that it makes you nervous, because that nervousness is evidence you’ve crossed the threshold from comfortable margin-protection into market-making. Anxiety becomes a diagnostic tool: if it doesn’t sting, it won’t spread.
The subtext is less about arithmetic than psychology. A truly low price doesn’t just attract bargain hunters; it rewrites what the customer thinks is possible. It creates a story: either you’re wildly generous, or your competitors are wildly greedy. That story travels faster than any feature list. The quote also sneaks in a second belief: most businesses systematically overestimate how much price matters to their own survival and underestimate how much it matters to a buyer scanning a crowded field. “Too cheap” is framed as an existential risk, but Williams suggests irrelevance is the bigger one.
Contextually, it’s classic direct-response and retail playbook logic: use price as a spear to pierce indifference, then win on velocity, upsells, repeat purchase, or lifetime value. It’s not universal advice; it’s a tactic for markets where attention is scarce and switching costs are low. The provocation works because it flips the usual fear. Instead of fearing that you’ll lose money, it tells you to fear that you’ll be ignored.
The subtext is less about arithmetic than psychology. A truly low price doesn’t just attract bargain hunters; it rewrites what the customer thinks is possible. It creates a story: either you’re wildly generous, or your competitors are wildly greedy. That story travels faster than any feature list. The quote also sneaks in a second belief: most businesses systematically overestimate how much price matters to their own survival and underestimate how much it matters to a buyer scanning a crowded field. “Too cheap” is framed as an existential risk, but Williams suggests irrelevance is the bigger one.
Contextually, it’s classic direct-response and retail playbook logic: use price as a spear to pierce indifference, then win on velocity, upsells, repeat purchase, or lifetime value. It’s not universal advice; it’s a tactic for markets where attention is scarce and switching costs are low. The provocation works because it flips the usual fear. Instead of fearing that you’ll lose money, it tells you to fear that you’ll be ignored.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sales |
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