Impact Pricing Blog

A friend of mine bought a new mattress because her old one was uncomfortable and she wasn’t sleeping well. That was the problem she recognized. That was the problem she solved.

Three months later she told me she hadn’t taken an ibuprofen since. Her chronic back pain, something she had managed for years with medication, was gone. She didn’t buy a mattress to fix her back. She didn’t even connect the two until it was already fixed.

She had a hidden problem. The mattress solved it. But because she didn’t recognize the problem before she bought a mattress, it didn’t influence her willingness to pay.

That’s the concept: Buyers can’t value a solution to a problem they don’t recognize.

Problems exist on a spectrum. Some buyers see them clearly and are actively searching for solutions. Some feel the symptoms without understanding the cause. And some don’t recognize the problem at all. Every category represents a different level of willingness to pay driven by the buyer’s awareness of what it solves.

This is why sellers who surface hidden problems before the sale change the entire conversation. The product stays the same. The buyer’s understanding of what they’re solving changes. And willingness to pay increases.

It is also why Value Tables work. A Value Table forces you to name the specific problems your solution solves across every dimension, not just the obvious ones. When a seller walks a buyer through a value conversation, buyers regularly encounter problems they had been ignoring or hadn’t connected to consequences. The problem becomes visible. The value of solving it becomes real.

Hidden value stays hidden because the problem behind it stays hidden. Recognizing the problem is what turns hidden value into WTP. I help companies turn hidden value into willingness to pay every day. 

Find the hidden problem. The value practically takes care of itself.

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