Most businesses have never tested their own prices.
Pricing is the commercial expertise Ajility leads with. Prices are usually set once, indexed occasionally, and then defended by memory. A structured review of price architecture, margin and leakage is the fastest work available in most founder-led businesses, because the revenue is already there.
Six places margin is made and lost
Price architecture
How every line, tier and customer segment relates to every other one, so a change in one place does not quietly undo margin somewhere else.
Margin waterfall
The path from list price to the cash that actually lands, step by step, with every deduction named and owned.
Unit economics
What a job, a unit or a customer really earns once labour, materials, freight and service recovery are loaded properly.
Discount and rebate control
Approval thresholds, rebate terms and the reporting that makes an off-list price a decision rather than a habit.
Revenue leakage
Unbilled work, uncharged variations, expired rate cards, credit notes and rounding, found and closed.
Price-increase execution
Sequencing, segmenting and communicating an increase, with the scripts and the tracking to see how volume responds.
Pricing work delivered in senior commercial roles
Delivered in salaried operating roles before Ajility was founded, not as Ajility client engagements.
>$6M in first-year revenue growth from an annual labour and service category price review
Kmart Tyre & Auto Service, Wesfarmers Group
Delivered in salaried operating roles before Ajility was founded, not as Ajility client engagements.
8% volume growth and $2M in annualised profit from a new tyre pricing strategy
Kmart Tyre & Auto Service
When volume and margin move together, the price architecture is right.
Delivered in salaried operating roles before Ajility was founded, not as Ajility client engagements.
~$2.5M p.a. in revenue management benefits from a consolidated NPV and pricing guidance tool, winner of the company-wide Innov8 competition
Coca-Cola Amatil
Delivered in salaried operating roles before Ajility was founded, not as Ajility client engagements.
~$1M p.a. in revenue management benefits and $300K p.a. in FTE savings from a new sales-contract pricing tool
Coca-Cola Amatil
Delivered in salaried operating roles before Ajility was founded, not as Ajility client engagements.
A cross-channel diagnostic of $10M of processed customer credits
Coca-Cola Amatil
Delivered in salaried operating roles before Ajility was founded, not as Ajility client engagements.
A national pricing platform serving 20,000+ customers
Coca-Cola Amatil
Delivered in salaried operating roles before Ajility was founded, not as Ajility client engagements.
Revenue leakage and recovery
Leakage is not lost sales. It is work already won and already delivered, quietly reduced on the way to the bank. Founder-led businesses rarely see it, because no single instance is large enough to notice: it arrives as one credit, one override, one rebate, spread across thousands of transactions and several systems, and the P&L reports only the net result. A review finds it, sizes it and closes it.
Unearned discounts
Off-list prices granted for a reason that has since expired, or for no recorded reason at all, still applying invoice after invoice.
Unmanaged rebates
Rebates accrued and paid on volumes, ranges or terms that were never achieved, because nobody reconciles the entitlement to the outcome.
Credits and claims
Customer credits and claims processed on trust, without challenge, evidence or a threshold above which someone has to approve them.
Pricing overrides
Manual price changes entered at the point of sale or invoice, outside the price file, with no approval trail and no reporting.
Contract non-compliance
Agreed terms, minimum volumes, service levels and price escalations that sit in the contract and never make it into the billing.
Recovery and prevention
What can be recovered now, what can only be stopped from here, and the controls and reporting that keep each one closed.
Most of the work is done on extracted data rather than on your team's time. Findings are ranked by annual value, by how quickly each one can be stopped, and by whether it is recoverable or only preventable. Anything still leaking is closed first.
Pricing a bid to win without buying the work
A tender is a pricing decision made under time pressure with incomplete information, and it is where margin is most often given away for good. The work is to establish the true cost to serve before a rate is written, decide which parts of the bid carry the margin and which are there to win it, and set the walk-away position in advance so it holds on the day. Defending a key account at re-tender is the same discipline in reverse: knowing what the account actually earns, what the incumbent advantage is genuinely worth, and which concessions can be traded for term or volume rather than simply conceded.
Pricing and Margin Review
Ajility's Pricing and Margin Review is from $6,900 plus GST and takes three to six weeks, subject to size, schedule and availability. Where it is not yet clear that margin is the constraint, start with the Operating Diagnostic, from $3,600 plus GST. This area of expertise sits inside every Fractional COO engagement, and it can also be bought as a single priced piece of work. The scope and the fee are published on the packages page.
See the Pricing and Margin ReviewCommon questions
What does a pricing review actually look at?
- A pricing review examines the price architecture, the margin waterfall from list price to cash collected, unit economics by job or product, discount and rebate behaviour, and revenue leakage such as unbilled work and expired rate cards. It ends with a set of specific price changes, the sequence to make them in, and the reporting to see what happens next.
How long does a pricing review take?
- In a business turning over $3M to $30M, a pricing review typically runs over three to six weeks, subject to size, schedule and availability. The first two weeks are data and interviews, the middle weeks are the margin waterfall and the price architecture, and the final week is the change sequence and the reporting that makes it stick.
Does pricing work apply in a service business?
- Yes. In a service business the levers are labour recovery rate, quoting and estimating discipline, scope and variation capture, and the difference between quoted and delivered hours. The mechanics differ from a product business but the margin waterfall, the leakage analysis and the price architecture work the same way.
What is a margin waterfall?
- A margin waterfall is a step-by-step view of what happens between list price and the cash a business keeps. Each step is a named deduction: discounts, rebates, freight, credits, write-offs, unrecovered labour. Laying them out in order shows which single step is costing the most, which is usually not the one people expect.
How are price increases sequenced without losing volume?
- Price increases are segmented rather than applied flat. Customers are grouped by price sensitivity, contract position and margin contribution, the least sensitive segments move first, and the volume response is measured before the next segment moves. Communication is prepared in advance and the increase is tracked against volume weekly rather than reviewed at year end.
What does revenue leakage mean?
- Revenue leakage is work a business has genuinely done but never turned into cash: variations that were never quoted, hours that were never billed, rate cards that expired without being updated, credits issued without approval, and rebates paid on volumes that were never achieved. It rarely shows up as one large number, which is why it survives.
Does a price increase raise any legal questions?
- For a business selling to other businesses, rarely. For anyone selling to consumers, yes, and they are worth naming. Australian Consumer Law governs how a price and a discount may be described, a was price has to be one that was genuinely charged, and any advertised price has to include the total a customer will actually pay. The work covers the commercial sequencing and the wording, and where a change touches consumer facing pricing representations it goes to your lawyer before it goes to your customers.
Cost-plus pricing or value-based pricing: which is better for a small business?
- Cost-plus adds a markup to cost; it is simple but ignores what the customer would pay. Value-based pricing starts from the value delivered. Most businesses should treat cost as the floor and value as the ceiling, and price deliberately between them.
Pricing consultant or operator to fix our margins?
- If you need a one-off pricing rebuild with deep analysis, a bounded project fits. If prices drift because nobody owns them, pricing discipline has to live in the operating rhythm. Pricing and revenue management is Ajility's deepest specialisation and sits inside every Fractional COO engagement.
How much should I increase my prices by this year?
- There is no single right figure. Work out how far your costs have moved since the last increase, how sensitive each customer segment is and what margin you need, then move segments separately rather than applying one flat rise.
How do I set a minimum price or floor for quotes?
- Set the floor from fully loaded cost plus the minimum margin the business will accept, build it into the quoting template or tool, and require approval for anything below it. The floor protects the business when quoting under pressure.
What does good pricing governance look like for a board?
- A documented price policy, approval thresholds for discounts and rebates, a set review calendar and a monthly report on price realisation and leakage. The board should see that report and the trend, not approve individual prices.
Should I charge a fixed price or an hourly rate?
- Fixed prices reward efficiency and suit well-defined work; hourly rates suit uncertain scope but cap your upside. Many businesses fix the price for defined scope and charge variations beyond it. Ajility prices its own work on named deliverables, not day rates.
Delivered through: Performance & Commercial Discipline and Pricing and Margin Review.
Start with the free Operating Scan
Twenty-one plain statements about how the business actually runs, answered from Not us to Always. In about six minutes you see a provisional score naming the weakest areas, then choose whether you want a conversation.