By Amanda Leon, founder of OilMoney.io. Houston-raised, came up in the Houston marketing team of Vallourec, and has run Unrth, a brand and growth studio for oil and gas and industrial companies, since 2017, with her boots on client locations in Midland and Odessa. Last reviewed October 30, 2026.
Price anchoring is the pull the first number on the table has on every number after it. In oilfield sales, it explains a lot about the race to the bottom: once a low bid sets the anchor, every other quote gets judged against it. One Midland-Odessa founder called it the biggest threat to oilfield testing this year. The research on anchors and price explains how it happens, and how to stop selling from someone else's number.
What the Field Voices Said
Tanhee Galindo, co-founder of GKOS in Midland-Odessa, called the race to the bottom on price, when buyers have several providers to choose from, the biggest threat to oilfield testing. A month later Galindo added, “I never want to be the cheapest option in the room,” and wrote that when forced to choose, result integrity wins over a lower price.
Pat Hinds kept returning to the same line in posts about price swings: put your sales priorities on confirmed or funded customer spending and on measurable operating savings, not on headlines. In October, Hinds cited Enverus data showing mid-cap drilling and completion costs up about 18% from 2020 to 2026, while large-cap costs stayed near $7.6 million to $7.9 million a well, and advised tailoring proposals to each operator's program.
Two episodes of Mark LaCour and Matthew Bertram's Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing Podcast laid out working rules. Set pricing guardrails before the call: in one episode's setup, reps can discount up to 15% without approval, and 15% to 30% goes to a manager, and everyone should know what a 20% discount does to cost of goods sold. And put a clock on the quote: good for 30 or 60 days, then up 5% to 7%.
Why a Neuromarketing Student Watches the First Number
At Occidental College, from 2009 to 2013, I earned degrees in cognitive science, with an emphasis in neuroscience, and in diplomacy and world affairs, and I studied neuromarketing. What people say they want isn't what they actually want. We're irrational, and we often don't know what we want or how to say it. Dan Ariely's 2008 book, Predictably Irrational, is built on that idea.
One study from my neuromarketing classes I'll never forget: researchers put a toaster in front of participants and asked what they'd pay. People said $15, $20, $25. Then the researchers said, “Great, that'll be $25,” and suddenly people didn't need a toaster and made up all kinds of excuses. I'm telling that one from memory, as a lesson, not as data. The studies below are the data.
The First Number Sets the Range
In their 1974 paper in Science, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman described an experiment that still makes people uncomfortable. Participants watched a wheel of fortune land on a number, 10 or 65, then estimated what share of African countries belonged to the United Nations. The group that saw 10 gave a median guess of 25%. The group that saw 65 gave 45%. A random number moved a factual estimate.
Experts aren't immune. Northcraft and Neale had real estate agents tour a house and appraise it, with different groups handed different list prices. Both the students' and the agents' estimates moved with the list price. If seasoned agents get anchored on their own turf, so do seasoned company men, and so do you.
This one also holds up. Much of psychology has struggled to replicate, but when the Many Labs project retested 13 classic effects across 36 samples and 6,344 participants, anchoring was among the effects that replicated.
Whoever Prices First Has the Edge
Galinsky and Mussweiler found first offers anchor the final deal, and whoever made the first offer tended to come out ahead. The advantage went away when the person receiving the offer focused on information that cut against it, like the other side's alternatives or their own target. Two lessons for the oilfield. Put your number down first when you can, built from your value case. And when someone else's low bid lands first, move the conversation to what the operator's alternatives actually cost: the downtime, the failure, the second trip.
The podcast's guardrails do the same job from the inside. A rep who decides the discount limits before the call doesn't anchor against themselves in the moment.
Price Talks About Quality, Until the Buyer Knows Better
Rao and Monroe's 1989 review pulled together the experiments on price and perceived quality and found a real, positive link for consumer products: a higher price tends to read as higher quality. That's part of why Galindo doesn't want to be the cheapest option in the room.
The brain backs it up. In a 2008 brain-imaging study, Plassmann and colleagues gave people the same wine at two different stated prices. The pricier pour was rated as tasting better, and it lit up a brain region tied to experienced pleasure. The price changed the experience, along with the opinion.
Now the catch. Völckner and Hofmann's 2007 meta-analysis found the price and quality link has weakened over time, and it's weaker for services and for buyers who know the product. That describes a lot of company men. A high price alone says less to someone who has run the job a hundred times. With experts, the proof has to carry the price.
I helped get an ice cream brand stocked at Central Market, a premium grocer. On a premium shelf, a price that looks too low can read as a quality problem. That's the Rao and Monroe effect in a freezer case. An oilfield buyer reads price the same way, then checks it against everything they already know about you.
We also rebranded that ice cream company, because its old brand wasn't positioned to be acquired into a large conglomerate's product line. The rebrand raised the company's valuation, and even without an acquisition, a higher valuation means more access to capital. The research backs the logic. Bahadir, Bharadwaj, and Srivastava studied 133 mergers and acquisitions and found brands made up a large but uneven share of deal value, and that what a target's brands were worth depended partly on the acquirer, including its marketing strength and the range of brands it already owned. A brand is worth more when it fits the buyer. Positioning changes what a buyer thinks you're worth, whether that buyer is a company man pricing a job or a conglomerate pricing a company.
The Race to the Bottom Costs the Buyer Too
Jap's 2003 study followed six online reverse auctions in the supply base of a major industrial buyer. The auctions made both new and existing suppliers believe the buyer would act opportunistically, especially in open bidding, and the cost savings depended on the category. Pure price competition can save money on one job and cost goodwill on the next ten. That's an argument you can make, gently, to a buyer who runs every job as a bid.
The alternative has a name in the research. Terho and colleagues describe value-based selling as three moves: understand the customer's business, build a value case around it, and show that value in the customer's own terms. That's Hinds's advice in academic clothes. Price the job against the operator's program and its measurable savings, and the competitor's number stops being the only yardstick. Our answers on winning an oil and gas RFP and beating bigger competitors put this to work.
I Negotiated From the Buyer's Side
As Head of Marketing at Wetzel's Pretzels, I negotiated the contract for the paper goods myself, every line item from the cup your drink goes in to the apron the pretzel maker wears, to make sure we paid a fair price for the volume we bought across 300-plus stores. A fair price for the volume is a different target from the lowest price. Buyers who do this for a living know the difference.
Where the Science Has Limits
Anchors work on you too. Northcraft and Neale's agents were anchored on their own turf. Your last price, or your competitor's, anchors your next quote unless you build it fresh.
Price says less to experts. The price and quality link is real but fading, and it's weakest for buyers who know the product.
The wine study was small. Plassmann's brain-imaging study used a small group, as most such studies do. The direction matches the larger behavioral research. Treat the brain detail as a picture, not a proof.
Jap studied one buyer's supply base. It's an early, exploratory study, and auctions can work fine for commodity items.
Sometimes the low bid wins. When the job really is a commodity, walking away at the right price is a sales skill too. Know what the discount does to your margin before you offer it.
How to Price So You're Not the Cheapest in the Room
Put the first number down yourself. Build it from the value case, not from the last bid you heard about.
Anchor on the operator's costs. Downtime, failures, and rework are the comparison you want, the way Hinds frames measurable savings.
Put a clock on the quote. Good for 30 or 60 days, as the podcast suggests.
Set your guardrails before the call. Decide your discount limits while you're calm.
Bring proof that carries the price. With an expert buyer, a result on location says more than a number on a page.
Be known before the bid. A buyer who already knows your work has something to compare you to besides the cheapest number. That's the idea behind The Warm Walk-In™, and it matters most when oil drops and price pressure climbs.
Follow Along
Want the short version in your inbox? The Tailgate is one letter a month from the patch. Sign up at the bottom of any page. If you'd rather see what a buyer sees when they look you up, get your Bison Walk-Around.
Sources and As-Of Dates
Peer-reviewed studies (each DOI checked on Crossref, October 30, 2026):
Tversky, A., and Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124-1131. Supports: a random first number moved factual estimates.
Northcraft, G. B., and Neale, M. A. (1987). Experts, amateurs, and real estate: An anchoring-and-adjustment perspective on property pricing decisions. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 39(1), 84-97. Supports: real estate agents and students were both anchored by the list price.
Klein, R. A., Ratliff, K. A., Vianello, M., Adams, R. B., Bahník, Š., Bernstein, M. J., and others (2014). Investigating Variation in Replicability. Social Psychology, 45(3), 142-152. Supports: anchoring replicated across 36 samples and 6,344 participants.
Galinsky, A. D., and Mussweiler, T. (2001). First offers as anchors: The role of perspective-taking and negotiator focus. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(4), 657-669. Supports: first offers anchor the final deal; focusing on alternatives weakens the anchor.
Rao, A. R., and Monroe, K. B. (1989). The Effect of Price, Brand Name, and Store Name on Buyers’ Perceptions of Product Quality: An Integrative Review. Journal of Marketing Research, 26(3), 351-357. Supports: price signals perceived quality for consumer products across experiments.
Bahadir, S. C., Bharadwaj, S. G., and Srivastava, R. K. (2008). Financial Value of Brands in Mergers and Acquisitions: Is Value in the Eye of the Beholder?. Journal of Marketing, 72(6), 49-64. Supports: brands are a large, uneven share of deal value, and their worth depends partly on the acquirer (133 deals).
Plassmann, H., O'Doherty, J., Shiv, B., and Rangel, A. (2008). Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(3), 1050-1054. Supports: a higher stated price raised reported taste and pleasure-related brain activity.
Völckner, F., and Hofmann, J. (2007). The price-perceived quality relationship: A meta-analytic review and assessment of its determinants. Marketing Letters, 18(3), 181-196. Supports: the price and quality link has weakened, and is weaker for services and familiar buyers.
Jap, S. D. (2003). An Exploratory Study of the Introduction of Online Reverse Auctions. Journal of Marketing, 67(3), 96-107. Supports: reverse auctions raised suppliers' belief that buyers act opportunistically.
Terho, H., Haas, A., Eggert, A., and Ulaga, W. (2012). ‘It's almost like taking the sales out of selling’: Towards a conceptualization of value-based selling in business markets. Industrial Marketing Management, 41(1), 174-185. Supports: value-based selling: understand the business, build the case, show the value.
Field voices and background:
Tanhee Galindo, LinkedIn posts of December 8, 2025 and January 6, 2026.
Pat Hinds, LinkedIn posts of October 7 and October 21, 2026 (the second citing Enverus cost data).
Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing Podcast, RevOps That Works: Pricing Guardrails and Process Alignment (January 14, 2026) and How to Accelerate Deal Closure in Oil and Gas (August 5, 2026).
Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational (book, 2008), credited as background, not as a study.
The Warm Walk-In™ is an original method created by Amanda Leon and owned by The Valours Creative Innovation LLC.
