Pricing Strategy vs Problem Statement Framework

Pricing Strategy

By Corey Haines (Marketing)

Design pricing tiers and packaging that capture value and drive SaaS growth.

Problem Statement Framework

By Dean Peters (PM)

Frame customer problems with empathy and evidence before jumping to solutions.

Pricing Strategy

• Guides you through pricing research methods like Van Westendorp to find what customers will pay
• Helps choose the right value metric (per user, per usage, flat fee) that scales with customer value
• Designs Good-Better-Best tier structures with clear feature differentiation and price points
• Advises on when and how to raise prices based on market signals and business performance
• Provides pricing page best practices and conversion psychology tactics

Problem Statement Framework

• Guides you through a five-part narrative: who the user is, what they're trying to do, what's blocking them, why, and how it makes them feel
• Produces a single-sentence problem statement that teams can rally around
• Helps you avoid solution smuggling and ensures you're solving a problem worth solving
• Provides quality checks and examples to validate your problem framing with real users

Reach for Pricing Strategy when…

• You're launching a new SaaS product and need to set initial pricing
• Your conversion rate or ARPU suggests your pricing might be wrong
• You're considering a price increase but unsure how to execute it
• You need to restructure your pricing tiers or change your packaging

Reach for Problem Statement Framework when…

• You're kicking off discovery or user research and need to align the team on what problem you're solving
• Stakeholders are pushing for features but no one has articulated the underlying user problem
• You need to pitch why a problem is worth solving to engineering, design, or executives
• You're writing a PRD and want to start with a rock-solid problem definition