Pricing Science in Depth: Set Prices the Market Will Defend
Signature Course No. 470 — A Signature AI Socratic Coaching Course.
No experience needed — your coach starts where you are.
A New Kind of Learning
Socratic coaching, delivered by an agentic AI coach.
Not a course you watch. An AI coach you work with.
The Lighthouse Coach begins by discovering how you think about the subject, teaches what is missing, and gives you realistic practice before asking you to prove that you can use it. You may test out of concepts you already understand, while capstones turn the learning into a practical plan, decision, conversation, or other real-world result.
The curriculum is deliberately authored; the AI delivers it through coaching. It is not an AI randomly generating lessons.
A coach that teaches by asking — not by lecturing
The Lighthouse Coach is an AI Socratic coach built on Cognosco Learning's Pricing Science in Depth: Set Prices the Market Will Defend course, in the Sales, Service & Revenue category. It does not play videos at you. It holds a conversation: it asks you a question, listens to your answer, names the misconception it hears, affirms what you got right, and asks the next question — the way a great coach works in the room.
A price built from the buyer's side of the table does not need a gifted defender. When Zylentra Systems prices its operations platform for regional clinics, the buyer is not purchasing screens and logins. The clinic is purchasing fewer missed appointments, fewer hours spent reconciling schedules by hand, and fewer billing errors that have to be found and fixed at month end. This course teaches pricing as a discipline in its own right: a price anchored in value, floored in honest cost, structured into tiers and fences, tested rather than guessed, and governed so it holds for the hundredth transaction exactly as it held for the first.
It starts with value before price. State the gain in the buyer's units, name the real alternative at its full cost, and place the price between your floor and a defensible share of the gain — then read elasticity exactly, with its limits stated, and prove every price against contribution and break-even before you defend it.
It works in two movements. First, Module 1 — Build a Price That Holds — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Price File; then, Module 2 — Run the Pricing Function — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with The Governed Price Book and Review Record.
Both capstones produce real artifacts — a Price File for the Professional tier at $600 per clinic per month: the value case in the clinic's units against the real alternative at full cost, the exact floor proof, the tier and fence structure around the price, a three-sale waterfall audit from list to pocket, and a one-page defense leadership signs; and a Governed Price Book and Review Record: realization diagnosed and decomposed, a habit-launched bundle and an undesigned channel gap corrected on exact arithmetic, decision rights installed, next year's increases, promotions, and tests set as a calendar, and every main price reissued with its defense.
The honesty standard is part of the course. Every figure in the course book can be recomputed from the figures printed beside it — elasticities, contributions, break-even volumes, bundle concessions, waterfall leakages, realization rates, and metered bills — and the course promises working capability, not outcomes: the ability to set a price you can defend, read a price you already have, and run the review that keeps both honest. What a market does with a well-set price remains the market's business.
The course is self-paced and always on — roughly 30 minutes per concept, about 9 hours in full, taken in as many sittings as you like. You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.
Pricing Science in Depth: Set Prices the Market Will Defend is part of The Lighthouse Signature Series — the online counterpart to the one-day, in-person learning Cognosco Learning delivers.
Course Facts
One full concept, coached end to end — free: verify your email and we’ll send you a link to start.
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Diagnose → Learn & Practice → Prove → Capstone
Every learner moves through the same discipline a Cognosco instructor would insist on in the room.
Diagnose
The Coach starts where the course starts: with your own prices. When you last set or reviewed a price, what gain — in the buyer's own units — did you write down before you named the number? Which real alternative would your buyer use if your offer disappeared tomorrow, and what does that alternative cost them in full, including labor and error? And for which of your buyer segments is your value story weakest, and what evidence would strengthen it? Every concept opens with three questions that locate where you actually stand, and your answers shape how deeply the Coach works the concept with you. Everyone begins with Module 1 — no skipping the foundations you only think you have.
Learn & Practice
Work each concept in conversation with the Coach — spoken or written — then practice it against realistic situations until it holds up.
Prove
Every concept ends in proof: answer the check cold and demonstrate the skill. Know it already? Test out and take credit immediately.
Capstone
Finish with two capstones — The Price File for Module 1 and The Governed Price Book and Review Record for Module 2 — that pull the whole course together, and earn the certificate.
What You'll Learn
Build a price that holds, then run the pricing function. Every skill in this course is the same discipline at a different depth: anchor the number in buyer value, prove it against its floor, structure it so buyers sort themselves, test it instead of guessing, and govern it so the structure survives contact with the year.
Module 1 builds the price. Value Before Price; Elasticity, Read Honestly; Floors and Contribution; Price Architecture; Fences; Bundles; Discount Discipline; Competitive Response; and Price Testing.
Module 2 runs the function. Willingness to Pay, Researched; Reference Prices; Price Increases; Promotions and Temporary Moves; Channel and Place; Usage and Dynamic Pricing; Pricing Governance; Price Diagnostics; and The Price Review.
And it holds its boundary throughout. What anyone says to a buyer about a price, and how a negotiation is conducted, are taught in their own neighboring course on this shelf. This course owns the pricing seat: the desk where prices are set, tested, and governed — the work that finishes before any conversation begins, done in documents that outlast individual deals.
What you will learn
- Anchor any price in demonstrated buyer value, against the buyer's real alternative
- Compute and correctly limit elasticity readings from raw price and quantity figures
- Build cost floors, contribution, and break-even tests that a price must pass
- Design tier architecture, fences, and bundles whose arithmetic and logic hold together
- Govern discounts, promotions, and competitive responses as policy rather than improvisation
- Test prices deliberately, and research willingness to pay without averaging away the answer
- Run increases, channel structures, metered pricing, governance, diagnostics, and the annual price review as one system
Everything in the course
- All 18 concepts of Pricing Science in Depth: Set Prices the Market Will Defend, in 2 modules
- A starting-point check first — the Coach finds where you actually stand before teaching
- Learn, Practice, Prove for every concept — no passive video watching
- A test-out on every concept: prove you know it and move on
- The Voice Coach: talk with the Coach out loud — it speaks, listens, and replies
- A personal Learner Record of your work across the course
- Two capstone exercises: The Price File and The Governed Price Book and Review Record
- A printable session summary whenever you pause
- The Lighthouse Coach completion certificate (Signature Series)
- Your progress is saved as you go — stop anytime, resume where you left off
Built for the people who hold the pricing seat
Pricing managers and product managers — who own a price book and must set, defend, and revise its numbers on evidence; and finance partners and commercial leads who review price proposals and need to know which questions expose a weak one.
Owners and general managers of smaller firms — who hold the pricing seat themselves, often without ever having been taught it as a discipline.
Category, revenue, and commercial-operations staff — who run promotions, channels, and renewals inside a structure someone must keep coherent. The course assumes comfort with percentages and division, and nothing more exotic: every computation is shown in full. It assumes no prior pricing role.
Prefer to learn live and in person? The same material anchors Cognosco's one-day programs — browse the in-person catalog.
Start with Value Before Price
$195 — introductory price. One payment. No subscription, no password to manage.
Here is exactly what happens when you enroll:
- Pay securely with Stripe — you are taken straight into the course
- Create your learner profile and begin the Module 1 starting-point check
- Save the access key you are given — it restores your enrollment on any device
- Learn at your pace; your progress is stored in your browser on your device
For the full voice experience, use Chrome and allow the microphone when asked. Typing your answers works everywhere, all the time. Questions before you enroll? Email hello@cognoscolearning.com.
Before you enroll
What is a Socratic coaching session?
A conversation, not a video. Your coach asks a question; you answer — out loud by voice, or by typing — and the coach responds to what you said: naming the misconception it hears, affirming what you got right, and asking the next question. You advance only when you have mastered each concept, so a finished course means the learning held.
How long does it take — and how long do I have?
About 30 minutes per concept. Learn in sittings of any length; your progress is saved as you go. You have a full year from purchase to finish, and you can revisit and retake within that year.
What does the certificate verify?
That you completed every concept and both capstones of this course. Anyone can confirm a Cognosco certificate online — enter its certificate ID on our verification page.
What if it isn't for me — what are the refunds?
If you have not started, cancel for a full refund within seven days of purchase. Once you have started, there is no cash refund — stop before finishing and we credit the full amount you paid toward any other course in the library (credit valid one year from your original purchase). Once you complete the course, no refund or credit applies.
More Signature Courses are coming
Pricing Science in Depth: Set Prices the Market Will Defend is Signature Course No. 470. Leave your email and we'll send you news of future Signature Courses and Lighthouse updates as they are announced — nothing else.