How CFOs can budget for 2027 price increases, according to pricing expert

Oh, pricing. That pesky little challenge that won’t go away.

In the last few years, many companies have hiked prices, rolled back those increases, used tariff refunds to lower prices again, and seemingly tried every tactic in between to get the P problem under control.

Those challenges aren’t going away anytime soon. “Pricing is different now than it was a few years ago, driven by AI, the [war with Iran], and boards of directors [are] expecting the CFO to be all over this,” Brian Bailard, senior managing director and co-leader of the pricing practice at Blue Ridge Partners, told us.

That’s because it’s increasingly their job: Pricing has become such a moving-target problem that any management tactic is inherently a strategic decision, and, as such, it’s landing on the CFO’s desk, he explained. “If the CFO is not performing on pricing, they will find a different CFO,” Bailard continued. “This has become one of those core competencies that CFOs must have.”

As CFOs analyze their 2027 budgets, Bailard walks through which pricing levers can be the most effective in the year ahead.

Live and learn. Step one? Take stock of the past.

In a recent poll from Blue Ridge Partners, which asked over 250 C-suite leaders about their current plans to raise prices in 2027, only 7% of respondents deemed their price increases implemented in 2026 “unsuccessful,” which would surely make ya think companies have learned from the pricing challenges of recent years. The reality is more nuanced, Bailard told us.

Companies have picked up on one key takeaway from the last few years: Previously, “companies would review their pricing every three years. Now, companies, at the board level, review pricing every year,” he said. That’s a win, in his eyes.

But one place where companies may not have learned is just how much prices can (or should) get raised. “They have a brainstorming session on pricing. Should it be [raised] 3% or 4% or 5%? They don’t get the data. They guess low, and they leave money on the table,” Bailard said, of many companies’ current tactics.

“The enemy of good pricing is fear. If I price too hard, my customers will cancel. I’ll screw up my business, and I’ll get fired,” he said of the potential thought process. “The answer to fear is market research data. Find out what’s going on.”

Under the hood. To that end, Bailard advises CFOs to take a much deeper look at their data before implementing any price increases.

“You’ll have a lot of companies say, ‘Well, CPI is up 3.2%. Let’s raise our prices 3.2%,’” he said. But a price increase without an improvement in value offering (or an explanation for why prices are increasing) is going to be a tough sell.

“If you go to a customer and say, ‘I need an 8% price increase, and it’s the same thing you had last year.’ Who wants that message? I get nothing better, and I pay more money? This is awful,” he explained. “The person delivering that message needs to position value.”

That gets to the first line of questioning Bailard thinks CFOs should consider as they sort out their 2027 budgets: “How has our value proposition changed next year versus this year? Do we have new functionality in the product? Did we release new features? Do we have a higher level of support?” If you can answer those questions in the affirmative, a price increase could be appropriate, he says.

But you’ll also need to look at competitive dynamics. “Are we moving ahead of our competitors? Are we falling behind our competitors?” he added. “Therefore, would that give us more confidence to raise prices or less confidence?”

The final consideration is churn rate. “What percentage of your customers cancel on you? Is that trend above average in your industry or below average? Is the trend improving or declining?” Bailard continued. “If you have almost no churn, you’re probably not pricing correctly.”

Know your role. If CFOs should consider doing one thing differently, it’s relatively simple: Get (or stay) involved in the pricing process.

“In my experience, CFOs will regularly ask, ‘Hey, how much are we raising prices?’ And the heads of sales and marketing will put up their hand and say, ‘This is what we can do,’” Bailard said. “That’s changing now because boards are holding CFOs accountable.”

“CFOs should expect to own pricing and if that’s not feasible in their company, then at a minimum, they need to stick their nose into pricing and make sure they are satisfied that the company is doing well,” he said.

“The CFO needs to assume that they’re under personal pressure from the CEO and board to own this issue, and if all those techniques [mentioned previously] don’t give the CFO confidence that they’re moving in the right direction, they should get external help at least once,” Bailard added.