Pricing power is eroding and fast. In this episode, Brian Doyle, CEO of Holden Advisors, reveals what’s killing margins in B2B services and what firm owners must do to fight back. Drawing on insights from his firm’s annual report, Brian outlines the five levers founders can pull to restore pricing strength. From overcoming cost-plus inertia to training sellers to quantify value, this episode delivers a direct, tactical response to the commoditization wave hitting the market.
What you’ll get from this session:
• The real reason AI is making pricing power evaporate
• Why sellers falsely believe buyers only care about price
• How to segment clients to protect margin from bottom-tier accounts
• A practical framework for value-based selling that drives a 27% revenue lift
• Why outcome-based pricing is not optional in 2026—and how to prepare now
Why it matters:
• Cost-plus pricing locks in margin erosion—especially in AI-enhanced firms
• Reframing pricing around outcomes builds defensible differentiation
• Selling value is a learned capability—training pays compound returns
TRANSCRIPT
Greg Alexander: Hey everybody, this is Greg Alexander, founder of Collective 54. You’re listening to the Pro Serv Podcast. This show is for owners of boutique professional services firms, so if you’re in the expertise business, if you market, sell, and deliver expertise for a living, this is for you. On this show, we aim to help you do three things. Make more money, make scaling easier, and make an exit achievable. And on today’s episode, we have a longtime, well-respected, well-liked member, Brian Doyle, who is a pricing expert. And I recently had a chance to participate in a golf tournament with Brian that was ahead of our annual event called The Reunion, and he told me about a report that his firm had produced called The State of B2B Pricing Power. I have since read the report. I thought it was so good that I asked him to come on the show, and we’re gonna talk about that today, because I think there’s some tangible things in this report that Brian’s gonna share with you. But before I jump into my questions, Brian, if you could reintroduce yourself to the audience, please.
Brian Doyle: Absolutely, so thanks for having me on, Greg. I’m Brian Doyle, I’m the CEO of Holden Advisors, and we improve the profitability of our B2B clients by increasing their pricing power—that’s the ability to price fairly for the value you create without losing customers. And we build on our IP in our books, Pricing with Confidence and Negotiating with Backbone, to help clients set the right pricing strategy, and then go implement that pricing strategy.
Greg Alexander: Alright, well, very good. Well, pricing power is the first section of the report, and it was rather alarming. You make the case that in 2025, pricing power is eroding. And I want you to tell everybody why you think that’s happening in 2025—like, what are the top forces eroding pricing power right now?
Brian Doyle: There’s a few things going on, Greg. Number one is that value is getting diluted with so many low-cost entrants associated with AI. So, AI is considered this great equalizer, and the solutions oftentimes are perceived as commodities. Okay, you have an AI solution. Great, we’ll take one of those. It should be way cheaper than the non-AI solution. And what the big deal is here is that professional services firms, or even any firm that’s using AI, has to quantify their value. What does the AI enable your client to achieve? And when you start thinking about it in those terms, then you can start differentiating the “good” AI from the “bad” AI.
Greg Alexander: Yeah, I was struck by that, and I’m actually encouraged by it. I think the fact that firms are under pricing pressure right now—because maybe they have been able to get by as being a commodity provider? You know, they had knowledge asymmetry, meaning I, as a service provider, knew something my client didn’t know. And therefore, I could charge for it. But now, the knowledge asymmetry has gone away, because all the knowledge is in the AI systems these days. I have to differentiate myself beyond that, which I think is a good wake-up call for a lot of people. So that was something that jumped out at me right away, but let me move to the next section of the report that caught my attention. And there was a statistic that literally put me back in my heels, and that was 47% of sellers believe price is the main purchase driver. And this seller mindset is kind of reinforcing commoditization. And that was very troubling to me. So, what behaviors are you seeing from sellers that lead to unnecessary margin concessions?
Brian Doyle: It is a very compelling stat. I thought the same thing. I was like, whoa. And in our research, what we’ve seen is that really, only 15–20% of buyers are primarily driven by price. It’s not 47% or what the sellers are perceiving. And what it is, is that they’re not accurately diagnosing the buyer type that they’re dealing with. So there are some buyers who really only want a commodity and really only care about price—again, maybe 15–20% of those folks. There are 3 other buyer types, based on our research. There are value buyers who understand what you do and dig in on the value you provide. There are relationship buyers who may not even issue an RFP—they’re just saying, “Can you hold my hand through this process? I’m just trying to get to the end and have a good solution.” And then there are what we refer to as poker players.
Greg Alexander: And they are the buyers, particularly procurement groups…
Brian Doyle: …who are value or relationship buyers, and they are pretending to be price buyers. And they are pounding sellers in an amazing, sophisticated way to get them to discount, to get them to think about themselves and their knowledge and their product as a commodity, and therefore lower the price.
Greg Alexander: Yeah, good way to think about that. Alright, the next section of the report, which was the bulk of the report, was your recommendation on how to rebuild pricing power. And you suggest there’s 5 levers to pull. So I want to go over each one of these five, because this is the gist of the report. So the first lever to rebuild pricing power you refer to is: understand your quality of revenue. And you talk about segmenting your accounts—top 20% versus bottom 20%—and this concept of choice architecture for low-performing customers. So, can you explain to our audience what you mean by that?
Brian Doyle: In simple terms, 80% of your profit is coming from 20% of your clients. And you need to understand who the 20% are, and who the 80% are. And I think this really comes into play when we talk about changing our price, and having a higher price, potentially, for the value that we create. People are afraid of that. And so, if you need a place to start, look at the quality of your revenue. Look at the people who are creating more work for your staff, who are just increasing the cost to serve, and start with them. Raise the price on those people, and if they go away—great! They went away. And if they stick around, then you’re now actually getting paid for the effort that you’re putting in.
Greg Alexander: Yeah, good point. Alright, let’s go to number 2. Number 2 of the 5 levers to pull to rebuild pricing power: market lifecycle pricing. So, tell me why legacy models are failing in fast-changing categories.
Brian Doyle: In any general market lifecycle, you’re going to have a maturity curve where as you grow and your market grows, there’s going to be a time when maybe your pricing power is not as high as it used to be when it was the new hot thing. What’s happening with AI, what’s happening with more information, is that that cycle is speeding up. And so, there are diminishing returns as products become more mature faster. Problems are solved, more competitors enter the market—all of that is happening faster. And so, we need to understand how our clients’ needs are changing. And be on top of that. We can’t just be doing what we used to do before, because it’s going to pass us by too fast.
Greg Alexander: Yes. You know, a stupid example of that is I’m staring at a flat-screen TV—10 years ago, that thing cost me 5 grand, now it costs me 500 bucks. I mean, that’s an example of that, right? And if somebody tried to sell me that TV today for 5 grand, I wouldn’t buy it. I’d buy one for $500. That’s an example of lifecycle pricing. Alright, let’s go to the third lever of the five, to rebuild pricing power.
And this was to improve value communications. There’s another stat in your report that was shocking, and that was… 93% of sellers can’t quantify value. Why is that?
Brian Doyle: Isn’t that crazy? 93% of sellers are not equipped to accurately quantify and defend their value. I mean, it’s amazing. So, what happens is that most sellers are focused on features and benefits; they’re not thinking about the value that they’re providing. And when I say value, I’m thinking in three main categories: How does your product or service increase the revenue for your clientele? How does it decrease their costs? Or how does it minimize their risk? And when you’re talking in those categories, it does two things. One, it makes your solution more real. And two, it elevates the conversation, because the middle manager may or may not care about those things. But I can almost guarantee that the C-suite cares about those things.
Greg Alexander: Yeah. You know, everybody’s talking about AI and outcome-based pricing. Collective 54 has recently gone to that. We have a tier of membership called Era 3, and we’re putting our fees at risk, and we’re getting a percentage of the EBITDA lift. And that’s an example of quantifying your value. So if we don’t get an EBITDA lift, we don’t get anything. If we get a big EBITDA lift, we get a percentage. So being able to quantify your value and outcome-based pricing is a very real thing. It’s going to become more real as AI gains adoption, and outcome-based pricing is going to be a factor, for sure.
Greg Alexander: Alright, let’s go to the fourth of the five levers to rebuild pricing power, and that was to break away from cost-plus anchors. You talk about in the report how to reframe pricing logic away from line items to business outcomes. I want you to spend some time on that and educate our listeners on what you mean by that.
Brian Doyle: So… cost-plus pricing is the easiest pricing to do. You say, it cost me this much to hire this staff to produce this product, whatever it is, and I’m just going to add 20% to that, and go forward. Where we’ve seen that model break apart recently is with tariffs. So, as the cost of producing whatever it is you produce increases rapidly and changes rapidly, what do you do, particularly if you have a long-term contract with your client?
Greg Alexander: Yeah.
Brian Doyle: And so, we need to be focused more on what are the outcomes—what are you doing for them. And that’s that breaking apart from the cost-plus model. While simple, we’ve gotta get away from that, or we’re gonna be mired in something that eventually is just gonna be unprofitable.
Greg Alexander: Yeah, I think the tariffs is a great example of that. Some other things—tokenization. You know, if you think about these AI providers, they’re spending billions and billions of dollars to build out these data centers. And the way they’re charging for that is based on tokens. And they gotta get away from that, because that’s anchored to cost-plus, and if they don’t get away from that, I don’t know how people are gonna generate a return on these billions of dollars that they’re spending. Alright, let me go to number 5. This is the fifth lever to pull to rebuild pricing power. You call it “Build a Value-Based Organization,” and you talk about turning feedback loops into pricing evolution. So tell us more about that.
Brian Doyle: Yeah, so, when we think about pricing power, it’s built on the value that you create, and it’s built on the value that you create over time. And so, it’s not a one-and-done sort of thing. We have to continue to grow with our clients, and we need to continue to build that value over time. And so, when we talk about a value-based organization, that is creating a feedback loop within your team. So sales is saying, “This is what’s resonating with our customers when we talk about our advancements, whether they’re AI-based or not.” You feed the feedback into the organization—from sales to product, to pricing, to finance, to customer success.
Brian Doyle: You talk about what we would refer to as give-gets. These are value trade-offs. If somebody says, “Your price is too high,” you say, “Oh, for sure, Greg, I can lower the price, and here’s what we’ll do. We’ll move you from the gold level to the silver level. That’s going to lower your price, and you’re going to lose these three elements of value.” And then you find out what really mattered to the client and what didn’t. A great way to diagnose a poker player from a value buyer. And, when we talk about what give-gets worked, that is fed back into the organization as well. And so now everybody is thinking about the value that you are supplying to your customers—not, particularly in an engineering-based organization, getting excited about bells and whistles of some new thing they created. Can the clients use it? Can they benefit from it? That’s what needs to be fed back into the org.
Greg Alexander: You know, one thing I would add to the concept of feedback loops is speed. In today’s world, we can accelerate the feedback loops dramatically. And therefore, your ability to evolve your pricing should keep pace with the pace of the feedback loop, and I think that’s something that’s often left out. Alright, so we just covered the 5 levers on how to rebuild pricing power. Which of these five is the hardest to implement, and which offers the fastest ROI if done right?
Brian Doyle: So, in terms of the hardest to implement, I think none of these are impossible, by any stretch. I think the breaking away from cost-plus is probably the hardest for a lot of organizations, because they’re just so used to it. And it gets them uncomfortable when they’re thinking about, “Wait a minute, I might put fees at risk?” or, “I might count on the customer’s ability to roll out my solution?” And that feels weird to me. I think that’s probably the hardest one.
Brian Doyle: I think that the thing that’s going to make the biggest difference—we’ll go back to that stat of 93% of sellers not equipped to quantify and defend their value. I’ll give you another one: what we found is that clients who invested in their capability to go get price—things like negotiation skills, value communication, account discipline—when organizations invest in those things, our science and research has shown that they get 27% more revenue than before. Same product, same price, same sales team—you get 27% more revenue. So, if I was gonna flip one switch, it’s starting to talk about value. Figure out how to do that, and that’s really what our book, Negotiating with Backbone, is all about. It’s not just negotiation, it’s how to have that value conversation.
Greg Alexander: Yeah, interesting. Okay, so we’re talking about the state of B2B pricing power for 2025. Now, I want to go to 2026. And I want to look at the future. So—what does pricing power look like in the next cycle, 2026? Because we’re recording this right now, it’s November 19th of 2025. We’re going to get into the holiday season; next week is Thanksgiving. Before you know it, we’ll be popping champagne on New Year’s Eve. So what does next year look like?
Brian Doyle: That’s right. So, it’s going to absolutely continue to change, and not only change, but continue to accelerate. And so, all of these concepts that we’re talking about are going to continue to move faster in terms of, okay, AI is a bigger deal. How do we talk about AI and not just be a commodity of another person who says, “AI is cool, we do that too”? So how do we differentiate ourselves? Tariffs are going to continue to be an issue, they’re going to go up and down, and even when it comes to professional services—so maybe, like doing what we do, we’re not affected by tariffs per se, but our clients are affected by tariffs. So their budgets are going up and down like crazy, so that’s gonna affect us. And so that’s a place that we’re gonna have to be aware of—where are those budgets moving around, and how do we move to the top of the list of “this is where you need to spend your money”? I think that’s absolutely going to be different. And then there’s the creation of the services that we provide using those AI tools. And how do we advance what we do in a manner that’s A) recognized, and B) not anchored to cost plus? Because if I get way more efficient, I shouldn’t be lowering my price by 75%. You could even make the argument I should raise my price because I’m doing what I do better and faster.
Greg Alexander: Yeah. You know, when I peek into 2026, what I would add to that is I think expectations from clients are changing. Why? They’re being called on by a new species—these AI-native firms.
Brian Doyle: And these new species are putting new pricing models in front of them.
Greg Alexander: Largely outcome-based pricing or hybrid models. So as that continues, what’s gonna happen is those expectations in the clients—they’re gonna change. So they’re not gonna come to you, and if you submit a rate card with dollars per hour, or a retainer, or a fixed bid, I’m anticipating that as we move into 2026, many clients and prospects of Collective 54 members are going to say, “Hey, I’d like you to show me a proposal based on outcome-based pricing,” or, “I’d like you to show me a proposal based on a hybrid pricing model.” And my advice to listeners of this show—largely Collective 54 members—is get ready for that, and think that through, so that when you do get asked that question, you don’t blow the sale at the 11th hour by not having a good answer there. So that’s what I would say. So, Brian, I summarized the report. There was much more in it than what we talked about today. If I’m listening to this show and I want to get a copy of it, how do I do so?
Brian Doyle: Contact me directly. And really, the easiest way to do that is just to email me. My email is B (like Brian) Doyle—so bdoyle, D-O-Y-L-E, @holdenadvisors.com. Just send me a quick email asking for the report. I’m happy to send it to you, and we can go from there.
Greg Alexander: Okay. I encourage everybody to do that. As you can tell based on my questions, I read it. I can tell you it’s not AI slop. It wasn’t something that Brian pencil-whipped with an AI assistant—there’s real depth in it. I learned a lot from it, so I encourage everybody to do that. But Brian, as always, you’re a great member. You’re always contributing back to the collective, and on behalf of all the members, let me personally thank you for this. I really appreciate it. It was good to see you.
Brian Doyle: Thank you, it’s great to see you as well.
Greg Alexander: Alright. As a call to action for listeners: Get Brian’s report. If you are a member and you want to ask him questions, look for the private Q&A, which we’ll have with Brian on one of our upcoming Friday Role Model Sessions. And if you’re not a member of Collective 54 and you might want to become one after listening to this, go to Collective54.com, fill out an application, and we’ll get in contact with you. But thank you for listening, and until next time, I wish you the best of luck as you try to grow, scale, and someday exit your firm.