Where Price Increases Disappear

Price Increase Leakage

A pricing decision can look intact in the plan and still weaken before it reaches the invoice, because the slippage often sits in renewals carried forward at prior rates, multi-year agreements signed before the new pricing, and discounts attached to terms no one revisits.

The financial consequence is that announced increases can read as progress in headline reporting while realized price remains shaped by inherited concessions, exception handling, and approval behavior that sit outside the formal pricing model.

Shawn, CEO at MentorCity, describes seeing price performance erode at the edges of the transaction rather than in the decision itself.

He treats the last comparable deal as the more useful reference point than list price, because list price can flatter performance while like-for-like comparisons show whether an increase actually reached the invoice.

He also notes that headline increase percentages can hide wide variation beneath the average, with a small number of customers taking the full increase while others retain terms that no longer reflect the commercial position.

For him, the distinction turns on intent: a concession exchanged for something concrete, such as a longer term or a customer reference, remains a commercial decision, while a concession granted simply to avoid a difficult conversation becomes leakage.

When price increases fail to appear in revenue, he starts with the exception list, looking at who can approve discounts and what customer-specific terms continue without review.

The issue is less the announced price move than the controls surrounding it, because pricing performance depends on whether exceptions are defined, reviewed, and tied to a commercial purpose.

Price realization becomes visible only when leadership measures the negotiated outcome against comparable transactions and traces where concessions persist after the pricing decision has already been made.