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June 17, 2025 By Barry Bright

Lead with the puppy. Sell the hamster.

When your 8-year-old begs for a puppy, all you can see is the potty training, the cleanup, the chewing.

“What if we got a hamster?”

Classic anchoring.

The puppy was never the ask. The hamster was.

By starting high, your kid made the real ask feel small, manageable… even reasonable.

You should be doing the same thing with pricing.

We had this exact move in mind when redesigning this pricing chart:

Lead-with-the-puppy.-Sell-the-hamster.-image-2.png

Here is the wireframe showing the pricing table format we suggested:

Lead-with-the-puppy.-Sell-the-hamster.-image-1.png

The first thing you see on the redesigned table is the $65 one-time service.

That’s the puppy.

It’s not meant to be the most popular. It’s there to make everything else feel like a deal.

  • Suddenly, $25/month feels low effort.
  • $35/quarter sounds smart.
  • $50/semi-annual looks like savings.

That’s the power of anchoring.

If you show your lowest price first, you’re anchoring against yourself. (Like if your kid started begging for a goldfish, then started asking for the hamster).

You’re making your most profitable offers look expensive before anyone reads the fine print.

You should be applying this concept to the way you outline your process, too. Learn how to here.

Apply Anchoring to Process of Working With You

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