Product Design: Pricing Software for the Sales Managers of a B2B Company
Company: LinkedIn
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are the product manager for a business-to-business (B2B) product that the company sells through its own sales team. Design a pricing tool that the company's sales managers will use. Describe who it serves and which problems it solves, what the tool does, what you would build first, and how you would know it is working.
```hint Start from the manager's decisions
Separate what a sales manager decides about price from what an individual rep or the finance team decides, then look at where those manager decisions go wrong or slow deals down today.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- What does the product sell and how is it priced today: per-seat licenses, usage-based fees, tiered packages, multi-year contracts?
- Is the tool meant for pricing individual deals (quotes, discounts and approvals), for setting list prices and packaging, or for analyzing pricing results across the team?
- Who else takes part in pricing decisions (finance, a deal desk, revenue operations), and which systems, such as the CRM and billing, does the sales team already use?
- Which outcome matters most: higher win rates, less discounting, faster deal cycles, or more predictable revenue?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A goal for the tool that ties manager-level pricing decisions to a business outcome.
- The sales manager's jobs and pain points, distinguished from those of reps, finance and leadership, with a chosen focus segment.
- A concrete, prioritized feature set for a first release that fits the CRM and approval workflow the team already uses.
- Success metrics that weigh price realization against win rate and deal speed.
- Risks to adoption, data quality and customer fairness, and how the design addresses them.
### Follow-up Questions
- Sales managers say the tool's suggested discounts are too conservative and keep overriding them. What do you do?
- How would the design change if the product moved from seat-based to usage-based pricing?
- How would you test whether the tool improves revenue rather than simply slowing deals down?
Overview: A product design interview question about a business-to-business company: design a pricing tool that its sales managers will use. It tests understanding of how deals are priced and approved, prioritizing a first release around real manager pain points, and defining success metrics that balance price against win rate.