I’m deep into Alastair Dryburgh’s The Pricing Genius, and he drops this military strategy bomb called the OODA Loop that completely changes how you think about pricing.
OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.
Air Force Colonel John Boyd created it for fighter pilots making split-second decisions.
Luckily, we don’t have to make many split-second business decisions in business that could be fatal.
Here’s the genius part of the OODA Loop.
Alastair shows how this combat framework transforms your pricing from reactive guesswork to strategic dominance.
Here’s how it works:
Observe: Stop looking at your costs.
Start watching what your clients actually do.
That agency charging $46k?
They observed their client spending $200k on consultants to solve the same problem their service prevented.
Orient: This is where you position your value.
Are you comparing yourself to other agencies (racing to the bottom) or to the catastrophe you prevent (racing to the bank)?
Context is everything.
An $84,000 pharmaceutical treatment sounds insane until you compare it to a liver transplant.
Decide: Make your pricing decision based on value created, not hours worked.
This isn’t about confidence.
It’s about choosing the right frame of reference.
Decide to price against the alternative, not against your competition.
Act: Implementation with conviction. No apologizing, no lengthy justifications.
State your price like a pilot pulling the trigger – decisive and committed.
The faster you cycle through this loop, the quicker you adapt to market reality.
While your competitors are stuck justifying hourly rates, you’re already three loops ahead, adjusting your value proposition based on real client feedback.
A consulting firm used OODA to reframe its cybersecurity audit.
Instead of selling “40 hours of testing,” they saw that clients were terrified of breaches and priced the peace of mind at $75,000 (up from $8,000).
Same service.
Different loop.
The beauty?
Each cycle gives you feedback for the next.
You’re not guessing anymore, you’re systematically outmaneuvering the market.
Three game-changing takeaways:
- Speed beats perfection – cycle through pricing decisions faster than competitors can react
- Context determines value – orient your pricing against client alternatives, not competitor rates
- Feedback fuels growth – each “Act” teaches you something for your next “Observe”
Top Gun pilots win dogfights.
Smart consultants win pricing wars.
Alastair Dryburgh will be live in the Mastermind Book Club with Tom Ruwitch and me.
When: Thursday, November 20th at 11:30 AM Pacific/2:30 PM Eastern.
Don’t worry if you didn’t read the book.
Tom and I read it for you.
Join the discussion here https://mastermindbook.club
It’s free to be a member
Ted
