Whoever names a number first in a B2B negotiation tends to win more of it, and that’s not a sales myth. People hang on to the first figure they hear and use it as a reference point for everything that follows. That reference point is the anchor, and if you don’t set it, your buyer will.
Why buyers try to anchor first
Professional procurement teams understand this perfectly well. A common opener is to ask for your “best price” in the first or second meeting, before there’s been any real conversation about scope or value. The logic is simple: get the seller to name their floor, then anchor 15-30% below it. Once you’ve disclosed your floor, the negotiation starts there, not from your ideal outcome.
Sellers who give away pricing before completing discovery close deals significantly below their initial ask. The gap compounds across every deal in a pipeline. It’s not a rounding error.
Setting the anchor without inflating it
The instinct when you hear “anchor high” is to quote a wild opening number and negotiate down, but that approach tends to backfire. Opening with your value-based reference price is the right move, not an artificially inflated one, because a buyer who feels they’re being played will stop engaging with your logic and start digging in on principle.
What does work is framing your number in context. Rather than stating a flat price, you reference what comparable clients invest, which is both honest and conveniently higher than the specific number you’re about to propose for this buyer’s scope. If you’re selling a SaaS solution at £50,000 a year, you might note that clients in a similar sector typically invest between £60,000 and £80,000 for a complete solution, then propose £55,000 based on the scope in front of you. Your actual target suddenly feels like a considered concession rather than an opening gambit.
Word choice matters too. Saying you “invest around” a figure rather than “it costs” implies return and suggests some flexibility, without committing to a specific discount. Small distinctions, but they shape how a number lands.
Anchor the value before you anchor the price
Price anchoring works best when it isn’t really about the price, at least not initially. Drop a big number too early and it sounds inflated rather than strategic. The sequence matters: value first, then the number that reflects it.
A useful discipline is to quantify the cost of the problem you’re solving before you ever mention what you charge. By the time your price appears, it’s being evaluated against the cost of inaction rather than against a vague sense of what software “should” cost. That’s a fundamentally different comparison, and a considerably more favourable one.
When the buyer anchors low anyway
Even with good preparation, buyers will sometimes open with a number that seems designed to make you wince: a competitive quote from a supplier you’ve never heard of, or a budget figure that’s been through several rounds of internal trimming before it reached you. The temptation is to immediately justify your price, which is usually the wrong move.
A calmer response is to question the anchor rather than accept or reject it outright. Asking open-ended questions about why they’re suggesting that number does two things: it buys you time to think, and it often reveals that the buyer’s position is softer than it seemed. Budget figures have a funny habit of becoming more flexible once someone explains how the problem is costing them more than the solution.
Price anchoring isn’t a single moment in a negotiation. It’s a posture you maintain from discovery onwards, consistently tying your number back to the value that justifies it, and never letting someone else’s opening figure become the centre of gravity for the conversation.