What happens when you publish prices, and when not to

Almost no Indian B2B site publishes a price. The reasons given are always the same. Competitors will see it. Every order is different. It’ll anchor the negotiation.

Meanwhile buyers are typing price into every search they make, and somebody eventually answers them.

What the buyer is actually asking

Usually not what will this exact order cost. They want to know whether you’re in their range at all, so they don’t waste a week on a supplier they can’t afford.

A range answers that. It doesn’t commit you to anything and it filters out enquiries you were never going to win.

Ways to publish without publishing

• Ranges. Between forty and sixty rupees a kilogram depending on grade and quantity. True, useful, and not a quotation.
• Starting from. Works when there’s a genuine floor.
• What drives the price. Quantity, grade, finish, delivery distance. This is often more useful than a number, and it makes you look like you know your business.
• A worked example. A typical order of five tonnes of this grade came to roughly this. Buyers extrapolate from examples easily.
• What it costs to find out. If a quote takes you two days, say so. That’s information too.

What it does for search

Queries with price in them are high intent and usually poorly served, which makes them winnable. A page that genuinely addresses cost can rank for a lot of long queries nobody else bothered with.

It matters more for assistants. When somebody asks what does this cost in India, an assistant will quote whoever actually answered. In most industries that’s currently nobody.

When not to

If you compete on relationship and service rather than price, and your prices are genuinely higher, a naked number without context will lose you enquiries you’d have won on a call.

Publish the drivers in that case, not the number. Explain what makes yours cost what it costs. That does the qualifying job without handing anyone a stick.

The competitor argument

Worth being blunt. Your competitors already know your pricing. They’ve seen your quotes through shared customers, through staff who moved, and through the same tender processes you both bid in.

The only people your secrecy is working on are buyers trying to decide whether to call you.

Written by Sameer Gaikwad, founder of Buildgin. Thirty three years in electrical power systems across global MNCs, now applying the same condition monitoring habit to websites.