Impact Pricing (Mark Stiving, Ph.D.)
Explore every episode of Impact Pricing
| Pub. Date | Title | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Apr 2022 | Memecast #55: Experts Buy Features | 00:02:14 | |
It really is fascinating that experts can translate our features into our benefits. And oftentimes as salespeople, as pricing people, as product managers or product marketers, we are experts in our own products. We think about a feature and we can automatically understand what those benefits are that our customers are going to achieve. But do our customers understand those benefits? And if they're experts then sure they do, but aren't we all trying to win new business? Aren't we all trying to find customers who are just getting into the product category, who are choosing between our products and our competitor's products? In these cases, our customers might know what the features are but they don't truly understand the benefits they should expect to receive. Imagine you've never, ever used a computer before and some salesperson tells you, yeah, this one has a terabyte static DRAM. You're thinking, okay, who cares? They have to be able to translate it into benefits. And so often when we speak to our potential buyers, we're speaking to them in the things that we think are so meaningful, our features, but they can't translate that into their benefits. If we truly want them to get the value of our products, we have to do the translation. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This impactful insight came from my book, Selling Value, which was written to help salespeople win more deals at higher prices. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now go make an impact.
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| 17 Jul 2023 | Minimize Churn and Boost Your Net Dollar Retention with Karen Chiang | 00:34:28 | |
Karen Chiang is a co-founder and managing partner of Ibbaka, a company that provides software and expertise to enable business growth by optimizing revenue performance through customer value management and talent optimization. In this episode, Karen discusses the importance of linking your pricing to value and creating pricing packages that accurately reflect the value provided to consumers.
What you will learn from this episode:
"Getting to a value-based mindset is extremely important in order to improve your pricing power." - Karen Chiang
Topics Covered: 01:19 - How she got her into pricing 02:33 - Defining 'net dollar retention' 04:48 - Pricing as it relates to net dollar retention 09:18 - Linking pricing to value [where churns are concerned] 11:25 - Strategy to keep half a customer rather than losing completely 13:56 - What you must think about in the design of your offer 15:03 - What is product packaging and how it differs from cross-sell or upsell 18:23 - Pricing models and various packaging designs 19:32 - What a cross-sell and upsell are in terms of using the good, better, best 25:12 - Karen's best pricing advice that can impact one's business 26:29 - Net Dollar Retention levers by level of importance 29:04 - Usage based pricing as part of net dollar retention levers
Key Takeaways: "Pricing has to be linked to value. When you think about it, we want to come up with a pricing method or approach that really tracks the value that is being generated." - Karen Chiang "There always has to be an understanding of what you are negotiating. What will you give up in your package to make it more feasible for that discount? That's why it's actually a shrinkage in the package itself." - Karen Chiang "From the get-go and from the design, when we think about the design of our offers, we really have to be more cognizant of, what are the different components that go into that entire offer?" - Karen Chiang "A good, better, best strategy is one where you try to get people into a certain level, starting with good and you're trying to increase their growth and package by getting them to a better package then a best package." - Karen Chiang
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| 03 Jun 2024 | AI vs. SaaS: Transforming Software Pricing and Value Delivery with Steven Forth | 00:25:47 | |
Steven Forth is Ibbaka’s Co-Founder, CEO, and Partner. Ibbaka is a strategic pricing advisory firm. He was CEO of LeveragePoint Innovations Inc., a SaaS business. In this episode, Steven explains how AI can significantly enhance software customization and pricing, enabling more precise value delivery for each customer. He emphasizes that while AI introduces new capabilities, it does not fundamentally change the core principles of pricing.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
"Before they invest a lot of time and effort in developing or pricing their own AI, find out what their customers are already doing and how they're thinking about the problems." - Steven Forth
Topics Covered: 00:47 - Skepticism as well as optimism regarding AI and addressing the hype surrounding AI 04:15 - Exploring how AI might impact software pricing compared to the changes brought about by cloud-based SaaS. 07:05 - The way AI can optimize software configurations and pricing based on individual value drivers for each customer 10:44 - Discussing how SaaS fundamentally changed software pricing compared to AI 14:11 - How AI, while it enhances capabilities and user experiences, does not fundamentally change the underlying principles of pricing 16:31 - What is a value model? 18:15 - Pricing being tied more closely to value with the rise of AI 23:27 - Steven's best pricing advice
Key Takeaways: "The underlying ways that we think about pricing have not changed because of generative AI and will not change, but some of them we’ll be able to execute on much, much more effectively." - Steven Forth "I think of pricing not as being something that is data-driven, but something that is model-driven." - Steven Forth "AI is changing how we build, deliver, and experience the functionality that software and data can bring. But as it does that, it also opens new ways for us to think about the pricing of the applications and the data." - Steven Forth
People/Resources Mentioned:
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| 17 Dec 2021 | Blogcast #33: Pricing During Supply Constraints | 00:02:38 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on November 3, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/pricing-during-supply-constraints/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 11 Jun 2021 | Blogcast #7: Pricing is NOT Driven by Supply and Demand | 00:03:12 | |
This is an article published on March 31, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/pricing-is-not-driven-by-supply-and-demand/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 10 Sep 2021 | Blogcast #20: Disney Understands Value | 00:02:48 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 28, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/disney-understands-value/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 24 Jun 2022 | Blogcast #60: How Much Does a Buyer Values Your Product? | 00:02:24 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on May 18, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/how-much-does-a-buyer-value-your-product/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 02 Aug 2021 | Pricing and Sales Negotiation Skills: How to Close More Deals with Sebastian Wrobel | 00:29:48 | |
Sebastian Wrobel is an energetic and passionate professional leader, helping companies to achieve value and pricing excellence. In order to achieve lasting integration, he is pushing digital transformation. In addition, he has extensive experience working closely with the C-suite and senior stakeholders to formulate and implement major profit and growth optimization plans. In addition, he leverages a collaborative and data-driven leadership approach to build high performing teams. In this episode, Sebastian highlights pricing’s role in sales negotiations.
Why you have to check out today's podcast:
“Pricing people can do, they can deliver regularly on trainings, at least to create awareness and ability to understand the commercial levers that salespeople could leverage.” - Sebastian Wrobel
Topics Covered: 01:13 - Relating an incident that got him started in Pricing 01:55 - Getting addicted to Pricing 03:10 - The extent to which Pricing people should be involved in sales negotiations 04:30 - What is in Pricing people that makes them a good part in the negotiation 07:27 - The point you need a professional negotiator to help sales in the negotiation 08:43 - How from the nature of their roles pricing people are professional negotiators 11:22 - Misconceptions about negotiations and the importance of preparing for it beforehand 15:51 - What do pricing people need to have to be effective in negotiation 18:09 - Value drivers that have commercial impact you can use to negotiate with big customers 21:33 - The ‘negotiation jacket’ and the role play involved in negotiation by procurement people 24:55 - Using all levers in negotiation to get the best outcome 27:00 - Sebastian’s best pricing advice that could greatly impact one’s business
Key Takeaways: “The underlying assumption is that in the negotiation, you discuss value. And in fact, you need to know the value for the client much earlier before you go into a negotiation. So, this is the first maybe misconception about negotiation that you negotiate the value at the event of the negotiation. That happens much earlier.” - Sebastian Wrobel “To be effective in pricing, you need to have empathy with sales, with your sales team.” - Sebastian Wrobel “And I think pricing can help both in the preparation in delivering the data and developing the commercial strategies negotiation, but also being a neutral negotiation partner that is less emotional, and can help on the commercial and objective parts in the negotiation.” - Sebastian Wrobel “There are many kinds of tools in negotiations. Once you learn them, it's by far not as complicated as sometimes perceived. But you need to understand the toolbox, and you need to be able to use it. I'm personally convinced that pricing people has the skill. And once they get comfortable with the toolbox, they can be really good business partners and advisors to sales in negotiation.” - Sebastian Wrobel
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| 29 Apr 2022 | Blogcast #52: Peleton Tests New Pricing Model | 00:03:44 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on March 23, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/peloton-tests-new-pricing-model/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 27 May 2024 | Dynamic Pricing Strategies for Sustainable Recurring Revenue with Amanda Northcutt | 00:29:18 | |
As a consultant, coach, and 6-time executive, Amanda Northcutt has launched, grown, and scaled online businesses with fantastic results on both the individual and organizational level, while creating extraordinary, frictionless, and successful journeys for their customers. In this episode, Amanda delves on the importance of focusing on customer retention and expansion to maximize recurring revenue. And leveraging foundational desires and social proof to enhance one's marketing efforts. She also highlights the value of dynamic and continuous pricing strategies and the need for personalized connections in sales and the impact of showing proven value to customers.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
"Always be testing your pricing. Your pricing should not be static. That is such a rookie mistake to think that you've nailed it the first time, or at any time really." - Amanda Northcutt
Topics Covered: 01:39 - An accidental entry into recurring revenue 03:20 - Talking about the time of Salesforce' rise in the SaaS industry 04:46 - Sharing her journey into the subscription-based business model 05:57 - The challenges and importance of marketing and delivering value in subscription-based businesses 08:25 - An added challenge for SaaS businesses of needing a product that continuously delivers value to retain customers 10:46 - The need to create expansion opportunities with tailored solutions and the need to leverage social proof to strengthen the value proposition to potential and existing customers 13:31 - Understanding and leveraging consumer psychology and desires to drive value perception and retention in both B2B and B2C contexts. 15:46 - Expanding on customer's foundational desires as effective marketing strategies 17:21 - Helping customers achieve their goals and meet their needs rather than simply trying to make a sale. 20:06 - Describing her current work and her pricing approach for her clients' customers. 25:52 - Amanda's best pricing advice 26:57 - What it means to be always testing your pricing
Key Takeaways: "...the whole deal with recurring revenue: If your marketing sucks, one, people aren't going to sign up. Two, if you're not delivering value over and over and over and over and over again, people are going to churn." - Amanda Northcutt "If you truly actually care about someone and you want to help match them with a solution that is actually going to help them not only reach their foundational desires, but the real business needs that they have, that's where the most sales are going to be made." - Amanda Northcutt "Desperation is the enemy of all sales, ever." - Amanda Northcutt "Another element of closing the deal in an automated sales funnel is that guarantee is very, very, very important. It's right up there with social proof." - Amanda Northcutt
People/Resources Mentioned:
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| 02 May 2023 | Revolutionize Your Pricing Strategy with 8D Problem-Solving Technique with JD Dillon | 00:29:09 | |
JD Dillon is the Chief Marketing Officer, Communications Leader, and Pricing Professional at Tigo Energy. In this episode, JD shares his 8D problem-solving technique that helps create a solid pricing strategy in place.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
"If you are in a situation where there's a price reduction, try to do two or three other things first."
Topics Covered: 01:15 - How JD’s Pricing journey started 02:21 - Updates about T.J. Rodgers 03:23 - Overview of what the Eight-D problem-solving technique is all about 04:12 - How does a quality program relate to pricing? 05:32 - What goes on in D-Zero? 07:32 - Where do we ideally apply Eight-D to? [Showing a case study] 08:51 - D-One: What happens here? 10:24 - How do you go about D-Two? 12:36 - Action steps you need to do in D-Three 14:49 - Finding the root causes with D-Four and using the 'Five Why' technique 17:36 - How do you verify permanent corrective action in D-Five? 18:49 - Getting everything executed in D-Six 20:05 - Digging deeper into D-Five and [culture and internal processes] 20:58 - Preventing recurrence in D-Seven 22:48 - D-Eight: Congratulating the team 24:23 - How often do you perform the Eight-D process? 26:55 - JD's best pricing advice 28:25 - Connect with JD
Key Takeaways: "Pricing is the quality metric for revenue." - JD Dillon "If you do it right [Eight-D process], it builds into the DNA of the company. And after a few years you've improved your DNA continuously and quite a bit." - JD Dillon "What I described is a thought process, that's all. You can do it in a meeting with people that know what they're doing. I can do it with somebody who's worked for me in the past and we can quickly go through the process in 10 minutes about one small little issue and then move on." - JD Dillon
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| 10 May 2023 | Pricing Table Topics: 6 of Diamonds – Possess Acumen About Your Buyer's Business | 00:02:44 | |
This one is the 6 of Diamonds from the Selling Value card deck. If you are having value conversations, you're focusing on, what's the problem the client's trying to solve? What's the result they might expect to achieve? And if that result is quantifiable and we're selling to a company, then almost certainly you can turn that quantifiable results into incremental profit to that company. But in order to do that, we have to understand the business of our customers. I remember a long, long time ago when I was in sales, we were selling automatic test equipment and we had a device that was more accurate. But in order for the test equipment that was more accurate to have value to the client, we had to show, how does this more accurate tester generate more profit? Well, the answer was, in order for a semiconductor manufacturer to ensure that a part was of a specific speed, they had to take in the accuracy of the test equipment. And so, if a test equipment was less accurate, they would build a bigger guardrail. And if a test equipment was more accurate, they could have a smaller guardrail, which meant more parts would pass the test. And those more parts passing tests were sold at higher prices, meaning they made more profit. The point is, if we don't understand the business of our customers and we don't understand how they're going to make additional profit, then it's really hard for us to help our clients say, here's why this capability generates more profit for you. And when we're able to do that, then clients are much more likely and willing to buy from us. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our cards, pick a card, and read the saying. Then, talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 30 Jul 2022 | Blogcast #65: Adopt Price Segmentation | 00:02:09 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 22, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/adopt-price-segmentation/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 01 Oct 2021 | Blogcast #23: Failed to Keep | 00:03:01 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on August 15, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/failed-to-keep/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 14 Apr 2023 | Blogcast: Pricing Professionals have “Trained Incapacity” | 00:03:27 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on March 8, 2023, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/pricing-professionals-have-trained-incapacity/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 09 May 2022 | Selling Value: The Go-To Book Resource to Help Salespeople Win More Deals at Higher Prices with Orvel Ray Wilson | 00:24:41 | |
Orvel Ray Wilson is co-author of the book, “Guerilla Selling”, and five other books in the “Guerilla Marketing” series, the best-selling marketing series in history. He is a Certified Speaking Professional, a coach to those who want to build their practice as an author, a speaker, and a thought leader. Through The Guerilla Group, he helps professionals build and grow their business by focusing on writing, stagecraft, and marketing. Orvel Ray is Mark Stiving’s personal business coach. In this episode, Mark and Orvel Ray talk about the former’s newly released book, Selling Value, as they both share stories in all ways connected to his account.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“If you're closing more than about 70% of your opportunities, you're not charging enough.” – Orvel Ray Wilson
Topics Covered: 01:55 – The story of how Mark and Orvel Ray met 02:40 – Working with Mark for his book, Selling Value: Taking note of what’s important to your customers 06:19 – What the book is showing salespeople how to do + how the ‘Will I? In which one?’ concept came to exist 10:03 – Orvel Ray’s friend, Jordan, who was able to close an $85,000 deal as he learns from Mark’s book 14:59 – Why should salespeople and pricing people care about selling value? 18:14 – Send Orvel Ray a message and get one free hour of free consultation on how to become a speaker and/or an author. 19:20 – Orvel Ray’s piece of pricing advice 21:43 – What anchoring is all about
Key Takeaways: “Salespeople need to understand how this really works, not only to convey and do the math and show them that this is a good investment, but to do that in terms that are important to them.” – Orvel Ray Wilson “I might have 100 good reasons why you should buy my product, but your decision is going to hinge on the three or four reasons that you think are important. And if you can isolate what those are and sell to those, then two things happen – one, the sales process is a lot simpler, and your offering is going to be irresistible.” – Orvel Ray Wilson, Guerilla Selling “Many times, we fail, we lose the sale, not because our product isn't a good fit, or because we don't have superior technology, or aggressive pricing, but simply because we haven't got the customer to make the ‘will I?’ decision in the first place.” – Orvel Ray Wilson “Just putting this technology in the hands of your sales team is going to make an immediate and measurable impact, as I've already said, and certainly more so than any other sales book I've read recently; and I've read them all.” – Orvel Ray Wilson “Build value, include everything, load up the table like it's Thanksgiving dinner, and then if you have to talk about reducing your fees, you can take things off the table and still defend your value.” – Orvel Ray Wilson
People / Resources Mentioned:
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| 08 Nov 2021 | How to Handle Pricing Implementation During Inflation with Frederico Zornig | 00:30:17 | |
Frederico Zornig is the CEO of Quantiz Pricing Solutions – a pricing consultancy that aims to increase the profitability of their clients through strategies implementing improvements in the Pricing, Revenue Management and Commercial Excellence processes. He earned a PhD in Pricing from the International School of Management, and he was a professor for 11 years. Frederico initially fell in love with pricing while he was pursuing his MBA at the University of Illinois. It was 15 years ago when he decided to start his own consulting firm. In this episode, Frederico discusses insights you should take note of in terms of price implementation and inflation. He shares stories that illustrate how the price of your goods can totally make a difference to your business.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“Give price the importance it deserves. I have seen some companies not paying too much attention to the area, and I have seen companies that really believe that price can be a game changer.” – Frederico Zornig
Topics Covered: 01:34 – How did Frederico get into pricing and what is it that attracts him to keep going? 04:51 – The advantages of being a pricing person who got to lead sales and marketing as well 08:11 – The do’s on making people adopt new strategies and have them implemented in their company – the incentives and the importance of having a strategic commercial policy 14:43 – Companies focusing on revenue and not on profitability; measuring margin dollars instead of margin percentage 19:22 – In having sales compensation plans, how do we convince people to hold or negotiate price? 22:20 – Tips on how to handle pricing in the middle of inflation 25:53 – Having information about your competitors or none at all – not being afraid to raise in relation to volume 27:59 – What is Frederico’s advice that could be helpful to the listeners’ business?
Key Takeaways: “Pricing is a journey. I believe in that. The company has to go into that journey if they want to be really pricing experts or go after pricing excellence. It's not going to happen in one or two years.” – Frederico Zornig “The customers have to understand that if they behave the way we have the incentives created, they could benefit of that commercial policy.” – Frederico Zornig “If you create really strategic commercial policies, you can really change the way the market is built.” – Frederico Zornig “I always take inflation into consideration. If I'm not coping with inflation, I'm staying behind.” – Frederico Zornig “Companies that really understand the value and pursue a pricing discipline – a pricing focus – they could benefit enormously in terms of results. Big, big results.”– Frederico Zornig
People / Resources Mentioned:
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| 04 Apr 2022 | Costs, Costs, Costs: How Managerial Decision-Making Impacts Pricing Negotiations with Reginald Tomas Lee | 00:32:47 | |
Reginald Tomas Lee is a Professor of Business Analytics at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, and he's been involved in supply chain since ’96. Reginald’s most recent book is called Project Profitability. And one fun thing, he can't go on vacation, because he has two killer dogs. In this episode, Reginald shares wisdom with regards to the modeling he’s been making as he talks about the power of helping people understand more clearly how what it is that they do impacts cash.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“Don’t focus on accounting margins.” – Reginald Tomas Lee
Topics Covered: 01:17 – How Reginald shifted from being a mechanical engineer to thinking about supply chains and costing 03:44 – What Reginald does: Helping people understand how their decisions impact cash 07:18 – Talking about contribution margins: Accounting for things from a cash perspective 11:09 – How to figure out the optimal price without using some measure of contribution margin 14:34 – Hope as a strategy: Mark’s opportunity cost vs. Reginald’s opportunity revenue 17:15 – Two types of costs: The cash cost and the non-cash cost 21:41 – Reginald’s sales pitch: Very specifically identifying what the savings are 24:02 – Discussion about Mark’s value table and Reginald’s improvement projects 27:59 – Projecting revenue and the uncertainty that comes with it 30:24 – Reginald’s piece of pricing advice for today’s listeners
Key Takeaways: “We should shift away from looking at accounting data and look specifically at operations and cash.” – Reginald Tomas Lee “From a cash perspective, materials and labor don't vary. When we look at contribution margins for products that we make, and we assume that those costs vary and they affect the contribution margin, my argument is they don't vary. And so therefore, it's not a reflection of cash.” – Reginald Tomas Lee “As we know, hope’s not a strategy. We’re hoping that the demand would be there, but I've seen situations, actually, where people have bought more just to get a lower price so that they can report a higher gross margin. It's not a good business decision at all. And that's why I shift over to cash, because cash will tell you don't do that, but accounting may, because I can put it in inventory.” – Reginald Tomas Lee “If you want to save money, what you have to do is basically buy fewer people. Buy four people instead of buying 10 people. Buy less capacity, then I'm spending less money.” – Reginald Tomas Lee “I focus specifically on what changes the software will enable, and then point out that if you want the cash savings, you need to make managerial decisions. You have to make a decision to get rid of the four people because the software is not going to fire them. That's what you have to do. The software is not making the cost savings happen. It's my management decision and action that was at that.” – Reginald Tomas Lee “I define efficiency as engineers do – output over input. So, if my input is my organization, what I'm spending on the organization, and the output is what it is that they can do, then what this will do is that we’ll generally allow them to either create more output with the same group, or consume less of that group to create the existing amount of output. But the size of the organization itself doesn't change until I, as a manager, change it.” – Reginald Tomas Lee “Based on how we choose to calculate this cost, that may have an impact on whether we take the business or not. So instead of focusing on accounting margins, if you can take a look at the cash impact of the decision that you make, then I think you'll be in a much better position to be able to negotiate price and feel good about taking prices that in some cases you may not have taken just because someone calculated a number that happen to be lower than someone else's calculation.” – Reginald Tomas Lee
People / Resources Mentioned:
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| 19 May 2021 | Memecast #7: Raise Prices Causes Rethink | 00:02:39 | |
Welcome to the Impact Pricing Memecast, where I take one of our daily names and provide a little bit more insight behind the words. Think about Netflix for a second. My guess is if you're a Netflix subscriber or Hulu or wherever you get your video, you probably pay the bill every month, and you rarely ask yourself, should I stay with Netflix or not? And yet, what do you think happens? When Netflix announces $1 a month price increase? You suddenly ask yourself? Is Netflix really worth it? Am I getting the value? Now it's not to say that it's not worth another dollar. But it's to say that you rethink the decision. Were prior to them raising the price. You never even thought about that decision. "When you raise prices on your current subscribers, you cause them to rethink their decision. Be careful." - Mark Stiving Now, if you're anything like me, in my old days, I used to pay for a gym membership. And one of the things I found is even though I paid for a gym membership, I rarely went to the gym, I certainly did not get my money's worth. And yet, if they never raise prices, I just keep paying the bill. Don't even think about it, because it's a decision that I had already made someday in the past. But imagine what happens the day they say, “Hey, we're gonna raise your prices.” Oh, now I have to say, you know, “I'm not really using it that much. I'm not getting my value out of it.” I think I'll go ahead and unsubscribe or cancel my membership. In other words, when we raise prices on people who are subscribing, we forced them to rethink their purchase decision, where they're not going to rethink it regularly. Probably not a bad situation. In fact, in many times in subscription businesses, we have the opportunity to raise prices, because we're delivering so much value to our customers. But what about those customers we're not delivering a lot of value to maybe it makes sense to not raise prices on them. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. If you see any of our memes that you'd like move to the top of our memecast list, please let me know. If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach me at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 14 May 2021 | Pricing Consultant vs. Pricing Advisor – What’s the Difference? | 00:07:41 | |
Often people ask if I offer consulting services. I hate that question because I have to honestly answer no, but then explain I offer advisory services. Here is what you might want to know about being or hiring a pricing advisor. What is the difference? In my career, I’ve hired and worked beside pricing consultants. For each project, they typically have an experienced leader who commands a team of less-skilled workers. The team gathers and analyzes data and recommendations are made to the hiring executive. Companies who follow the recommendations often find phenomenal results. The key is that consultants do the work and present their findings. A pricing advisor works with executives and teams within the client so they can solve their own pricing problems. This happens through a combination of education and frequent consultations. The advisor asks many questions and applies his/her vast pricing experience and knowledge to the client’s specific situation. Instead of making recommendations at the end of a project, the advisor discusses ideas throughout the engagement. When data needs to be collected or analyzed, the advisor helps the client understand what to do and the client is responsible for the execution. Should you choose a consultant or an advisor? It depends on your situation. If you have money but not people resources, a consultant is probably your best choice. If you don’t have a lot of money, but you have people to work on the project, then an advisor probably fits better. An added advantage to using an advisor is your people become more skilled at pricing and value. What about a coach? I have a lot of friends who are coaches so I have to tread lightly here. My understanding is that coaches ask a lot of questions to guide you to find the answer yourself. That may help the lessons stick better, but it is slower. An advisor asks questions to understand your situation and then makes recommendations. I often think of myself as a coach as I’m helping individuals uplevel their skills, but my coaching friends tell me that’s not coaching. Is education enough? I’ve taught pricing to thousands of students over the last 27 years, and I’ve learned even when students understand a concept, they aren’t able to apply it to their situation. That takes practice and guidance. To those of us who have been doing it for so long, solutions sometimes seem obvious, but experience shows it is challenging for new practitioners. Education is a significant first step that benefits dramatically from implementation assistance. What makes a good advisor? Here are three important characteristics of a great pricing advisor. Pricing expertise – A true pricing expert has worked in many industries, solved many different pricing problems, and has created a set of principles that apply in most situations. True experts study their field and create thought leadership content to share with the world. They willingly engage with other experts and practitioners to push the boundaries of knowledge. Communication skills – Knowing pricing isn’t enough. A pricing advisor must be able to communicate their ideas and reasoning to their clients in ways that resonate. Clients can only make good decisions when they understand the options. Helpful attitude – Pricing advisors must know their role is to advise, not make decisions. Their job is to help their clients make the best decisions possible. This requires an attitude of service, not a belief that they know everything. Is Mark Stiving a good pricing advisor? YES! (I had to say that since I’m writing this.) However, here is some supporting information. Pricing expertise – I’ve been in pricing for over 27 years. Here are some highlights.
Communication skills – I love to teach and help people succeed. As an educator, I’ve created ways to simplify pricing concepts so more people can learn and use them. I’ve been teaching at least part-time most of my career. Here are a few highlights to demonstrate my ability to communicate complex concepts.
Helpful attitude – I will always tell you what I think, but all decisions are yours. I am never upset if you don’t like or use my advice. I know pricing better than you. You know your company and market better than I do. My job is to make sure you have more relevant information to consider when making decisions. Your job is to decide and execute. Our time together will be spent discussing your specific situations, me teaching how relevant pricing frameworks and strategies may apply, and us discussing whether and how to apply them. Before committing to pricing, I was an electrical engineer and a sales engineer (with a quota). These, plus my experience starting and running companies make me empathetic to every role inside your company.
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| 28 Jan 2022 | Blogcast #39: The Art of Pricing | 00:03:16 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on December 22, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/the-art-of-pricing/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 26 Nov 2021 | Blogcast #30: Why AWS Can Sell Credits | 00:02:54 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on October 13, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/why-aws-can-sell-credits/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 07 Nov 2022 | Reading Facial Microexpressions for Business and Negotiations with Annie Sarnblad | 00:33:22 | |
Annie Sarnblad has a Masters in Cultural Anthropology. She is certified in Facial Action Coding and can numerically code the 10,000 muscle combinations in human expression. With this skill, Annie has been helping companies to make informed decisions. Besides her corporate clients, Annie also helps high-profile families with heightened security needs, individuals navigating charged political situations, educators, peace mediators, medical professionals, and others. In this episode, Annie talks about the importance of understanding microexpressions in business. She also discusses some of the most observable expressions that would enable business people to assess the situation properly and make necessary adjustments when needed.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“My piece of advice is for any business to recognize the importance that pricing can play in reaching their growth targets and objectives and making sure that they recognize that pricing has to be rooted in value.” – Annie Sarnblad
Topics Covered: 01:42 – Annie explains her skill of being a “human lie detector” 04:11 – The science behind reading facial microexpressions 08:32 – You have no control over facial microexpressions; it just shows 12:19 – No one can really just “smile” for the camera, except when they are actually happy 14:04 – Annie doesn’t remember static faces, only the muscle movements 18:43 – Observing the pupil is the easiest to learn because we are already looking at the eyes 22:02 – Why Annie wanted to learn how to read microexpressions 24:30 – Always look out for “disgust” or the “no” face when you are in a meeting 26:16 – Seeing the “no” face means that you have a choice to make 28:57 – How simply looking for pupil dilation could help you pivot from one topic to another and increase your price 31:05 – Annie’s pricing advice
Key Takeaways: “Muscle movement precedes the thought process. Even somebody like me that's hyper-trained and thinks about this 24/7, I can't stop myself from making the micro expressions unless I change my thought patterns and think about something else.” – Annie Sarnblad “Nobody's ever felt cheerful when they get an order to smile.” – Annie Sarnblad “If we're building strategy, we can have incredibly intelligent, high-level strategic brains and know the business, know the industry, know the players. But if we're not understanding how the players are interacting with each other, what their primary motivations are, what's in it for them, if we don't understand what's under the surface, we're basing our strategy on the wrong things.” – Annie Sarnblad “Once people have a vocabulary for the stuff that they see all the time, they then can have a much higher-level conversation.” – Annie Sarnblad “I think people just are so rushed to get everything closed immediately that they sometimes don't use all the information that's available to them to make good choices.” – Annie Sarnblad
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| 17 Nov 2023 | Blogcast: Rules of Thumb for Price Increases | 00:03:09 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on October 5, 2023, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/rules-of-thumb-for-price-increases/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 19 Apr 2024 | Blogcast: Your Inward Focus Causes Horrible Decisions | 00:03:36 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on February 29, 2024, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/your-inward-focus-causes-horrible-decisions/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 10 Jul 2023 | Embracing Outcome-Based Pricing and Ditching Hourly Billing with Jonathan Stark | 00:32:15 | |
Jonathan Stark is a former software developer who is on a mission to rid the world of hourly billing. He is the author of Hourly Billing Is Nuts, the host of Ditching Hourly, and writes a daily newsletter on pricing for independent professionals. In this episode, Jonathan highlights the drawbacks of billing hourly which can reduce your value to just a commodity. Instead, he suggests pricing your services based on the outcome you deliver, thereby providing maximum value to your clients.
What you will learn from this episode:
"Positioning is critically important for any kind of upward lift on your fees." - Jonathan Stark
Topics Covered: 01:04 - What got him into pricing 03:35 - The problem with having an hourly rate 06:11 - Pricing uncertainty in the case of a car diagnostic 08:45 - What makes it better charging fixed price upfront 10:33 - Why positioning your service is crucial in pricing 12:59 - What hourly rate appears to be on the label 16:15 - Touching on the 'Experience Economy' [pricing transformation] 19:06 - Formula for value or the maximum price 21:36 - The best reason to not use hourly prices 24:22 - Solving the scope problem with knowing the desired goal 29:21 - Jonathan’s pricing advice 30:38 - How to connect with Jonathan
Key Takeaways: "If you sell somebody an hour, you cannot make it more efficient. It takes an hour to deliver it. It artificially limits your income." - Jonathan Stark “The way I do it [on the scope problem], I don’t scope first, I scope last.” - Jonathan Stark
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| 08 Aug 2022 | How Should a Law Firm Approach Pricing Strategy with John Chisholm | 00:27:33 | |
John Chisholm was a US lawyer. For 15 years, he's been in law firms, using value-based pricing, and now subscription pricing. John swims in the ocean every morning with his Speedo around his neck. Pricing for law firms or even major consultancy firms is not easy. Price your final client contracts too high, and you’ll lose some of your most high-value clients. Price them too low, and you’ll be forced to work too few staff to the bone to cut costs. In this episode, John shares how law firm should approach their pricing strategy.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“Just don't price your own work.” – John Chisholm
Topics Covered: 01:06 – How John got into pricing: His late father’s story in relation to legal service fees 03:06 – Doing timesheet free billing as a law firm in the 1970s to ‘80s 05:25 – The old law business model of billing by the hour 06:38 – How things led him to his aha moment in relation to the practice of pricing 10:37 – Changing the mindset around pricing: Possible or not? 15:48 – “The true indication of a really good professional is not so much the answers they give; it's the questions they ask” 19:24 – Having a value conversation around $500 vs. $270’s worth 22:15 – John’s pricing advice 23:31 – Pricing table topics: “Sunk costs don't matter to pricing or any business decision”
Key Takeaways: “Now it's very, very ingrained – the whole profession, I'm afraid. There has been a lot of movement, but they've been mainly in smaller, innovative firms. But the large firms, despite what they say, when you peel back the onion, the measurements, their rewards, their whole internal systems still work around time, and it's hard to change, and they're very successful.” – John Chisholm “I know I’ll get into trouble for saying this, but lawyers buying and selling to each other is not a great recipe for innovation or change or taking risk.” – John Chisholm “Those that perceive they have the most to lose will be the last to change, and that will be the big end of town worldwide.” – John Chisholm “I try and get the lawyers that I work with my clients to stop thinking like lawyers, because often, the solution is not a legal solution; it really isn't, or the objectives are not a legal solution. It may be that what we're going to do has legal input, and that's the skills that the lawyers have that someone else doesn't have. But it's turning the conversation on its head. It's asking the right questions. And I think the true indication of a really good professional is not so much the answers they give; it's the questions they ask.” – John Chisholm “I work more with my client lawyers focusing on what additional benefits can you give to clients, many of which don't cost anything to the law firm but add value to the client; the price just follows. I think also, if you can focus on increasing the client's profit, our profit will follow as a profession.” – John Chisholm “I think even though it might be for short term profitability, there's just so many good lawyers that just do underestimate the value that they're providing to their clients, and that's their fault, not their client's fault.” – John Chisholm
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| 31 May 2023 | Pricing Table Topics: 5 of Clubs – Gain Higher ASPs and Margins | 00:02:49 | |
This one is the 5 of Clubs from the Selling Value card deck. Most salespeople are paid on commission, and typically that commission is a percentage of the revenue. So, 2% of the revenue, 5% of the revenue, somewhere in that ballpark. The problem is, that incremental revenue, if I want to grow my revenue by 1%, the salesperson is only going to get 2%, or their commission rate, of the 1%. And it's a really, really tiny number. However, for the company, that 1% could be a really big number especially if your overall margins are relatively small, because that incremental 1% of revenue is a hundred percent profit. But we don't incentivize our salespeople to get that next 1% very much. Ideally, what we would do is, we would create a sales incentive structure so that covering costs, maybe they don't make anything, but anything from cost to list price, the amount of commission, the amount of incentive payment they get goes up for the higher the price they get. I, typically, like to have a target price. I also have a list price and a floor price. And I'll set three different commission rates. Anybody who can sell at list gets a really high commission rate. Anybody who sells at Target or above gets a mid-level commission rate. Anybody who sells above the floor and below the target, it's a really low commission rate. But the key is, we want to give our salespeople incentives to negotiate for that last 1%. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our cards, pick a card, read the saying, and talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 09 Jun 2023 | Blogcast: Price Segmentation by Negotiating | 00:02:20 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on May 4, 2023, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/price-segmentation-by-negotiating/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 30 Jul 2021 | Blogcast #14: Willingness to Pay vs Price Sensitivity | 00:03:11 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 30, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/willingness-to-pay-vs-price-sensitivity/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 18 Aug 2021 | Memecast #20: Two Reasons You Lose Deals | 00:01:50 | |
When we asked salespeople why we lost the deal, almost always, we got the answer, it was the price. Maybe they tell us it was a feature that we didn't have, but the price was a big deal. And the price is always a big deal. It turns out that yes, you can probably lower your price low enough that you could convince any buyer to buy your product. But that's really not the point of sales. What we want to be able to do is make sure that. Our buyers understand the value of our product, what it is that we're offering. And if our buyers understand that we offer so much more value than the price we're asking for, they're willing to buy. So the problem may be that we're not doing a good enough job at communicating value. Or the problem could be the product just doesn't have enough value. Have we built products that people really value? And can we communicate that to individual buyers? So they're willing to part with their hard-earned money in order to gain those benefits. "There are two reasons for every loss sale. One, price was too high to the buyer. Two didn't expect to get enough benefit. Don't just blame price." - Mark Stiving So the problem may be that we're not doing a good enough job at communicating value. Or the problem could be the product just doesn't have enough value. Have we built products that people really value? And can we communicate that to individual buyers? So they're willing to part with their hard-earned money in order to gain those benefits. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 29 Mar 2024 | Blogcast: Proven Value | 00:02:03 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on February 8, 2024, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/proven-value-can-be-a-game-changer/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 30 Mar 2022 | Memecast #51: Price is Fast | 00:02:01 | |
It's true, pricing can have an instantaneous response. I often think of it as the nuclear bomb of marketing mix variables because you can change it today, impact the market immediately, and it's really hard to take it back. Now, compare that to the other marketing mix variables. If you've taken a marketing class, you know the four P's. You know the other three besides price, or your product, your place, and your promotion. Product is obviously, what are we building? The place is, what's the distribution channel look like? And then the promotion is, how are we marketing it? How are we talking about it in the marketplace? We could change our marketing. We could change our product. We could change our distribution channel. And each one of those would have an impact on our revenue, on our sales. But it takes a long time for that impact to ripple through. On the other hand, if I change price today, people will change their mind today. Some people will choose to buy, some people will choose not to buy, simply because of the price change. So price really does have the fastest impact, but it also is one of the most dangerous to use. If you're using price to gain share, you're probably just driving industry profits down. So, although it's fast, be very careful how you use it. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 13 Dec 2021 | How You Can Establish a Pricing Culture in Your Organization with Kate Mandrell | 00:26:13 | |
Kate Mandrell is a trusted executive with a demonstrated track record of over-delivering promised business results in large-scale commercial transformations on leading-edge marketing & sales topics. An inspiring leader, team builder, and impact-oriented problem solver. In this episode, Kate discusses how you can embed pricing into the company culture in order to gain the best price, not just for the companies benefit, also for the customers as well.
Why you have to check out today's podcast:
"Make sure that you're not too internally focused. I think a lot of people get caught up in what are my costs? How do I manage my costs? But pricing has the ability to do so much more than just make money." - Kate Mandrell
Topics Covered: 01:17 - How she learned to love pricing and has never looked back since 02:40 - Two things that drive her to want a pricing role 04:18 - What it takes to be successful and grow into a pricing role 07:14 - Echoing Mark's advice on how to make one's pricing role have a great impact on the company 08:03 - Sharing her thoughts on better word choice: 'make value a part of the culture' versus 'make pricing a part of the culture' 09:16 - Communicating the 'attitude of value' inside the company 11:02 - Solving the big picture rather than selling the individual pieces 12:46 - How to go about understanding your product packaging exercise 15:15 - Convincing salespeople of the right approach to 'sell on value' 17:55 - Proving value-selling works even when she was not actually out selling the product 20:51 - Where's the art in pricing 23:48 - Kate's pricing advice that has a great impact on one's business
Key Takeaways: "The more that you can do to drive the pricing change, show the impact of that change, and then really embed that into the culture of how the company thinks that will help your company and it will certainly help your careers as well." - Kate Mandrell "We changed our pricing to align to value and therefore made value of what we could deliver the focal point of the conversation versus price, as the focal point of the conversation." - Kate Mandrell "We did a lot of research upfront. We had conversations with our customers; we understood what our competitors were doing. We really tried to see how we are differentiated, what do we do that is different, better, and special. And that was really the focal point of where we started [changing the company's pricing culture]." - Kate Mandrell "As you go through a packaging exercise, it's really important to understand who are the different segments that you're targeting, and make sure you don't take a one-size-fits-all approach in all cases." - Kate Mandrell "In pricing roles, we need to understand how do we tailor our packages and our pricing to deliver the value and the outcome that those unique segments are looking for." - Kate Mandrell "Every time you introduce something new or drive a change, you have to have sales right there with you, because they're the face of the customer that has to be able to articulate that value." - Kate Mandrell
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| 06 Jul 2022 | Memecast #65: Economic Value | 00:01:44 | |
It's true, every time we buy something, we buy it because we think we get more value than the price it's going to cost us. It's kind of hard for us as consumers to say how much is that value, and we think of that in terms of dollars. But in a corporate setting, how much they value something can almost always be decided by how much money do they think they're going to make or save because they're buying our product or our solution. That amount of money they're going to make or save is called economic value. If we learn how to interpret our features and our benefits into our clients' economic value, and especially if we can learn to help them turn it into economic value, it will become much, much easier for us to close deals and understand why our customers are buying or not buying in the first place. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This impactful insight came from the book, Selling Value, which I wrote to help salespeople win more deals at higher prices. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now go make an impact.
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| 07 Mar 2022 | Your Costs vs. Your Price Change Decisions with Jon Lucas | 00:25:53 | |
Jon Lucas started as an Accounting Manager before working as the Strategic Pricing & Business Development Manager of Cornerstone Building Brands Inc. Jon loves hiking, and he is loving it even better since he moved out of Ohio. In this episode, Jon engages in a discussion with Mark Stiving about making price changes in relation to the importance of value and volatility of costs in the market nowadays.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“To experienced pricing managers, structure your department, borrow what everybody else in the organization is doing and have an org chart. Put some procedures around it. It kind of sounds like common sense, but I honestly don't see that happening in pricing in a lot of organizations.” – Jon Lucas
Topics Covered: 01:21 – How Jon got into pricing; Was it about value or cost plus at first? 03:00 – Jon discusses what Cornerstone does; Thinking about value and differentiating oneself in the market 07:19 – How Jon adds value as he manages cost volatility when making prices 11:29 – Rapid cost fluctuations in the industry as an excuse to change prices frequently 12:35 – Jon talks about Cornerstone’s sales cycle 15:35 – How SAS-based programs help Jon and the company in terms of pricing 16:43 – Does Cornerstone change prices weekly? 19:04 – Jon shares what it’s like working with salespeople 21:03 – Jon’s piece of pricing advice for today’s listeners 22:38 – Having more things to do beyond the role in pricing; the resistance to take on pricing projects
Key Takeaways: “When costs move, we know we need to make some kind of pricing move, and it doesn't have to be the same as the cost index. Costs could go up 5%. That doesn't mean we're necessarily going to go up by 5%, because that's where we get the value.” – Jon Lucas “You can kind of use the cost fluctuation as the starting point, then we look at where the value is, and that's where we set our prices.” – Jon Lucas “If you think your competitors are only getting up: if we're making a price decisions every week and they're making price decisions once every six weeks, we've got a much better chance of capturing more margin.” – Jon Lucas “You can put some safeguards around your cost volatility to some degree with the way that you write your contracts. You can kind of do some hedging there. But you're predicting things out in the future, and it's not always going to be perfect. You just got to do the best you can.” – Jon Lucas “You could have the best pricing in the world that you want to charge, but if you can't get it to your customers in a way that works for them, then you're nowhere.” – Jon Lucas
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| 04 May 2022 | Memecast #56: Nobody Cares About Your Product | 00:01:57 | |
It's absolutely true, people don't buy products, they buy solutions to problems. When we talk about our products, when we talk about our features, that doesn't truly resonate in the minds of our buyers. Instead, what we need to be doing is talking about the problems that we're going to solve as well as the results a buyer might achieve. When we can capture their attention, recognizing the fact that they have a problem and getting them to agree that they have that problem, and then describing the results they might be able to achieve by solving that problem, now we're getting their attention. These are things they can truly value. And by the way, maybe we're solving more problems than they originally thought they were when they were looking for a product like ours. When we truly understand problems and results for our marketplace, and we can talk to our customers that way, our customers then perceive a lot more value, which means we can win these deals at higher prices. And that's really the whole point. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This impactful insight came from the book, Selling Value, which I wrote to help salespeople win more deals at higher prices. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now go make an impact.
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| 16 Jan 2022 | Memecast #40: Everybody Affect Value | 00:01:58 | |
Every single customer touchpoint customers are evaluating us. They're saying that was a good experience. That was a bad experience. If we mess up an invoice and they have to call to fix it, that's a bad experience. And that destroys. But if our invoices are super easy to understand, and they tie back to all the previous paperwork and they make it easy for our customers to do their job, like, oh, pay the bill, then we're adding value. Even if it isn't our main product. Every customer touchpoint adds or subtracts value. “Everybody in your company that your customer touches either adds or subtracts value, make sure they add value.” - Mark Stiving This is obvious. When we think about the products we build and our customers touch our products, our products, great products, high quality products. It may be obvious when we think about marketing departments, because marketing is putting out communications and are those communications truly resonating? Or are they just falling flat or maybe even offending? What about customer service? When someone calls to our customer service line or our customer service people are delighting our customers, or are a little bit annoyed and feeling bothered that a customer bothered to call everybody in our company creates or destroys value, we need to make sure they know they should be creating that. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 12 Aug 2024 | #CLASSIC The Power of Behavioral Economics in Pricing with Florian Bauer | 00:31:18 | |
Florian Bauer is an internationally sought-after expert and speaker on the subject of price psychology and behavioral pricing. He is an honorary professor at the Technical University of Munich and author of several books on price research. He also has a doctorate in Psychology at TU Darmstadt, MIT, and Harvard. In this episode, Florian talks about how discounts can give you short-term gain but cost you long-term. He underscores that there are other means to incentivize customers without diminishing a products’ value perception. And that cashback is one thing to consider other than discounts. He also talks about buyers’ irrationalities and how to use Behavioral Economics to influence their decision-making and let it work in your favor.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“If you want to price or sell something, you have to think in two dimensions. You have to think about what people want. That's the traditional value-based approach. And you have to think in the dimension of how they decide.” - Florian Bauer
Topics Covered: 01:28 - How Florian got started in Pricing 02:25 - What the psychology of price structure is all about 03:22 - What a price structure looks like 04:12 - What’s the psychology behind using cashback than just lowering the price 06:03 - How do discounts differ from cashback 07:39 - The feeling of disconnect with cashback 08:20 - Cashback being an icing on the cake that can potentially make you feel more decided about your choice 10:02 - What’s the disadvantage of discounting 11:36 - What behavioral economics means for pricing 16:15 - Different people behave differently when it comes to decision irrationalities 18:00 - His thoughts on the ethical issue about Behavioral Economics 23:22 - What is Behavioral Economics showing us and why this works in the B2B world 25:38 - How heuristics simplify complex decisions 29:35 - Florian’s best pricing advice that can significantly impact your business
Key Takeaways: “Never ever give a discount without anything the customer has to give in return.” - Florian Bauer “That's the issue with discounting. It really works very well short-term. So, you have to gain short term, but you have to cost long-term.” - Florian Bauer “If I want to sell somebody something, I need to know what he wants, or she wants, and I need to adapt my sales approach and my pricing model, potentially, to how he decides.” - Florian Bauer “For me, the purpose of marketing, pricing, and sales is to influence decisions. So, there is no reason to have a marketing campaign or a marketing team if you would not have the idea that I can influence my customers' decision in my favor.” - Florian Bauer “I think when we talk about value and price acceptance, it's very much a story. And there is not one story better than another one. People hate to make decisions, they want to be made decided and with some stories, they are quicker in deciding than in others.” - Florian Bauer “Think about that you're not only selling value; you’re also managing decisions. If you keep that in mind when you design your pricing model, you also avoid the traditional clash between pricing and sales because you're also able to tell your salespeople how they can actually execute your pricing strategy to make the customers actually follow the decision or the directions you want them to.” - Florian Bauer
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| 19 Jan 2024 | Blogcast: Growth Comes from Value | 00:05:29 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on December 14, 2023, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/growth-comes-from-value/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 20 Jun 2022 | The B2B Innovator’s Map: Let Customer Champions Do Selling for You with Daniel Elizalde | 00:31:54 | |
Daniel Elizalde was an IoT Product Manager Instructor at Stanford University. He used to work as the VP Head of IoT at Ericsson, but he has now narrowed his focus from IoT to climate tech firms. Daniel now helps climate tech product teams accelerate their product’s time to the market. In this episode, Daniel talks about his book, The B2B Innovator’s Map, as he explains why delivering value to your champion is a huge game-changer in the business world.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“When you are testing a potential solution, pricing has to be one of those things that you have to prototype. You have to prototype the packaging and the offering and how you actually present it to the customer.” – Daniel Elizalde
Topics Covered: 01:55 – A Narrower Focus: Daniel shares the backstory on how he’s decided to shift his focus from IoT to climate tech firms 04:11 – Daniel talks about the benefits of running his own consulting practice 06:18 – Helping other people, still, in the space of IoT 07:41 – Why Daniel wrote his book, The B2B Innovator’s Map 09:46 – The difference between B2B and B2C in terms of the way people do innovation + the content of Daniel’s book 14:35 – Relating Mark’s Selling Value book to Daniel’s B2B Innovator’s Map 18:51 – Understanding the strongest problems that your customers have as one of the main points in the book 21:50 – Looking for a champion, not a buyer persona + the goal of innovation 28:36 – Daniel’s piece of pricing advice for the listeners
Key Takeaways: “For an actual advisory project where I'm involved at the strategic level, I'm going to give priority to the climate tech companies, but that doesn't mean that there are no other avenues where people can get access to some of my experience.” – Daniel Elizalde “In my experience, a lot of the B2B products fail because they don't deliver value to their customers, like, customers don't see the benefit, they don't want to buy it, so they've failed. Value has to be delivered throughout, and so, therefore, value plays an immense part throughout the journey.” – Daniel Elizalde “Granted, as a vendor, your own solution is not going to be the fix for the whole problem, and you're part of the whole puzzle. But as a vendor, you have to understand what are those pains, what are those problems that your customers are having, because that's where the opportunity to deliver value lies.” – Daniel Elizalde “The value needs to be big for a big problem so that you can get a solution in the door.” – Daniel Elizalde “It's not about the users at this point. It's about delivering value to the champion because ultimately, that's the person that's going to open the door for you.” – Daniel Elizalde
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| 20 Sep 2021 | How to Effectively Implement Price Segmentation Strategies with Ayon Bhattacharyya | 00:30:02 | |
Ayon Bhattacharyya is an experienced business leader with significant success in revenue growth through commercial problem-solving. He is implementing innovative pricing solutions, fact-based analysis, and market research, drawing upon his stakeholder management and influencing skills to gain the support of other senior leaders. In this episode, Ayon shares the need to understand your customers, so you can segment without merging them and you gauge their willingness to pay and set the best pricing.
Why you have to check out today's podcast:
"Do your research and know your customers. Identify your customer segments and, where feasible, perform price experiments to validate willingness to pay. And don't be afraid to experiment with subsets of your customer base and try to innovate your approach." - Ayon Bhattacharyya
Topics Covered: 01:37 - What sparked his interest in pricing 03:27 - Price fencing in the airline industry 04:50 - Why do airlines have the best price offering for direct customers 05:56 - Reason why airline fare price increases as the plane nears take-off 06:30 - Differentiating between a business traveler and a leisure traveler 07:02 - How could they possibly created fare rules around business and leisure travelers 08:16 - Ayon sharing his thoughts on customer segmentation 09:09 - What are those customer attributes 11:47 - Defining customer segments 13:49 - How to find out who's going to travel for a particular attribute to be met 14:42 - Would it be better to actually differentiate the proposition by having a premium and a cheaper price 15:53 - All about customers' choice of greater or cheaper value 17:58 - Preventing segments from merging 20:25 - Differentiating pricing in UK, Australia, and New Zealand 22:56 - Categorizing buyers 24:21 - People's surprising attitude on getting rich many years ago 26:20 - Reacting to Mark's funny New Zealand experience 26:56 - Ayon's pricing advice that would greatly impact one's business 27:54 - Why be careful in lifting anchor when experimenting with your market
Key Takeaways: "It's all about choice at the end of the day. The customer gets to choose a greater value or less value, and they pay the price based on value." - Ayon Bhattacharyya "The best way to counter this is differentiating your value proposition. If you're solving different problems, then you're able to customize that value proposition to the segment, and that helps to mitigate that risk of segments merging." - Ayon Bhattacharyya "One of the guests on your podcast has referred to the importance of not leading with price, and I absolutely 100% stand by that. Always lead with value." - Ayon Bhattacharyya "There is a fear often around raising prices. But if you're able to support that with additional value, then usually your customers are quite receptive to that." - Ayon Bhattacharyya
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| 06 Mar 2024 | Pricing Table Topics: 8 of Spades – Sell Like You Have No Competition | 00:02:40 | |
This one is the 8 of Spades from the Impact Pricing card deck. You've probably heard me use the words 'will I' and 'which one' in the past. 'Will I' are situations where our buyers are choosing to buy our product or not, but they're not choosing whether they buy our product or a competitor's product. When we can find ourselves in a 'will I' situation, we know that our customers are not price sensitive. So, the key here is to know the difference. Are they comparing us to competitors or not? My recommendation is assume they're not. Because if we assume they are, we start talking about who our competitors are and they say, "Oh, you have competitors, let me go look at them." Instead, we talk to them about the value of solving the problem and why our product is going to help them solve that problem and get a huge return. And we never even mentioned that a competitive alternative exists. When the customer says to us, "Oh, we're looking at X, Y, Z company." Then we know that we can shift to talking about how we're better than our competition. What are those features or capabilities that we do that our competition can't match? But up to that point, let's make the assumption there is no competition. In fact, my favorite way to find out the answer, is there competition, is to ask the following question, "If you don't buy this, what will you do?" Notice that that question implies there is no competition. It doesn't say that go look at the competition. So my recommendation, always assume there is no competition. Talk about the value of solving the problems, and then you can shift your sales technique after you realize competition is in the deal. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 20 Aug 2021 | Blogcast #17: Can Your Pricing be Your Advantage? | 00:02:42 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 2, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/can-your-pricing-be-your-advantage/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 04 Dec 2023 | Bridging the Gender Pay Gap for Women with Julie Scanlon | 00:24:46 | |
Julie Scanlon is a D&I Leader 2023 (D&I Leaders: dileaders.com). She enables organizations to enhance diversity and inclusion by providing consultancy, bespoke training solutions and interventions. Supporting individuals and organizations with executive coaching, professional development and career change coaching. In this episode, Julie highlights the challenges women face when it comes to negotiating higher pay, placing them at a disadvantage compared to men. UK studies reveal the significant disparity in earnings between genders. Julie's primary focus is on addressing cultural and structural inequalities, and she offers insights on empowering women to strive for equal treatment.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
"Take the risk and ask for it." - Julie Scanlon
Topics Covered: 01:44 - What makes her drawn to the topic about women and men entrepreneurs and their attitudes towards pricing 02:50 - Julie's thoughts on Mark's statement that women are less confident than men about their pricing and business 05:48 - What could be the reason for gender pay gap in women if it is not about one’s confidence in question here 09:40 - Her thoughts on Mark's comment that the problem is with women not asking for pay in reference to a situation raised by Julie 11:14 - A case of 'who knows and who asks' 12:50 - Understanding why there's a bit of a problem for women getting a no for an answer 14:39 - The best approach to coaching women entrepreneurs and those women running companies 17:07 - Julie's suggested strategies for coaching women and the necessary shift in approach 20:39 - Julie's reply to Mark's question if there is the same study made in the US about the gender pay difference 21:58 - Her reaction to Mark's desire to help women get that 43% raise in pay 23:02 - Julie's best pricing advice
Key Takeaways: "It is not that we're not asking in the same way that men are, but it might also be that there's different kinds of biases that are going on in the world that mean sometimes we don't get what we ask for." - Julie Scanlon "It is actually being aware, raising awareness of the potential gender differentials. You are saying here as a kind of person sitting in front of me that you like to treat people equitably. The thing is, the world doesn't do that. So recognizing the world doesn't do that and thinking, okay, what can I do to mitigate against some of that unequal treatment by the world? So that might then help you adapt the way that you coach the individual that's in front of you." - Julie Scanlon "The ‘being coachable’ question is absolutely vital regardless of gender. Absolutely, you need to be ready for it and you need to be open to it and not defensive." - Julie Scanlon
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| 28 Dec 2022 | Pricing Table Topics: 10 of Spades - Never Mention Competition | 00:02:24 | |
This is the 10 of Spades from the Selling Value card deck. Yes, we never want to mention competitors until our buyers bring them up because our buyers are on a trust journey, or at least we want to assume that they are. A trust journey is where they've come to you to ask you for help figuring out, is this really a place I should be spending my resource? Is this worth the inherent value that I'm going to get when I solve the problems that I have? And what's really important when our buyers are on this trust journey is they're not saying, how are you different from your competition? They're saying, how is it that you helped solve my problem? What we want to talk to them about during this trust journey phase is, hey, what problem are you trying to solve? What's the value of solving that problem? In essence, we're helping them build a business case for why they want to make a decision like this. And we never mention competition because it's possible they don't know that our competitors exist. It's possible that in the act of helping them build that business case, they learn to trust us so much they just want to buy from us. They're not price-sensitive at that point in time. So, the rule really needs to be, we only talk about inherent value or the value of solving the problem until a buyer tells us they're looking at competitive alternatives. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. If you want to get better at speaking, especially about pricing and value, grab a deck of our cards, pull out a random card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 24 May 2024 | Blogcast: Expert-Approved Pricing Insights at Your Fingertips: Discover Our Custom Pricing GPT | 00:02:59 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on April 4, 2024, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/discover-our-custom-pricing-gpt/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 12 Jun 2023 | Procurement and Sales in Impact to Value Pricing with Jens Hentschel | 00:29:39 | |
Jens Hentschel's passion is B2B relationship management and is especially interested in the interaction between the two sides at the negotiation table: buyers and sellers, suppliers and customers, sales and procurement professionals. In this episode, Jens delves into the role of procurement in guiding the internal stakeholder's buying journey on the supply side, while the sales professional assists in facilitating a value-based negotiation.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
"When you get into that situation where you have been put on the spot in that negotiation, don't budge on price." - Jens Hentschel
Topics Covered: 01:16 - How he got into pricing 03:04 - Jens important thoughts about Mark's bad impression of procurement 07:27 - A case where it's all about price [on the procurement side] and not a win-win situation 11:12 - Understanding procurement's role in the sales process using the direct and indirect spent terms 15:00 - Why the need to involve procurement early on in the sales process 17:57 - Identifying the right procurement person and establishing the initial conversation 20:49 - A procurement's participation in the customer's buying journey 22:22 - Discussing the concept of supplies vendors list 25:00 - The role that price play in making it to the vendor's list 27:12 - Jens impactful pricing advice
Key Takeaways: "What we are trying to preach is, involve them [procurement] right away because 90% of what your customers spend is managed through a procurement process." - Jens Hentschel "Something that I can only recommend to anybody to do is, interact with them [procurement] early, provide them with value insights that they're not able to gather themselves. That's how you start building that relationship." - Jens Hentschel "My thinking is, the procurement professional is the enabler of the buying journey of the internal stakeholder. And they can do it best by having a salesperson on the supplies helping them to be that facilitator." - Jens Hentschel "Where really value is created is where the sales professional on the supply side and the procurement professional on the customer side really work hand in hand to promote a solution." - Jens Hentschel
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| 29 May 2023 | Mastering the Art of Negotiation with Andrew Bailey | 00:30:05 | |
Andrew Bailey is a Value Pricing and Price Negotiation Specialist. He is the founder of Commercial Strategy 4. He helps you unleash your pricing power to sell more, more often, and at a higher price to achieve the profits you deserve. In this episode, Andrew shares his strategy for value-based pricing negotiations to help you achieve the highest possible pricing for your product or service.
Why you have to check out today's podcast:
"Improve your prices and just get really good at customer conversations." - Andrew Bailey
Topics Covered: 01:14 - How he started in pricing 03:40 - Important consideration for negotiation 04:58 - Defining value for clients and questions to ask to understand the value you're delivering 09:21 - Dealing with procurement people versus the pricing committee as you go through value discovery process 12:32 - Key insights on opposing viewpoints between procurement and committee 14:28 - Practicing real-life price negotiations 16:36 - Pricing and value negotiation strategy that people rarely do but should be considered 24:08 - The biggest mistake in pricing negotiations and what should be done instead 27:53 - Andrew's best pricing advice to impact one's business
Key Takeaways: "Ultimately, your ability to achieve the results that you want in pricing and negotiating is focused around your negotiating strength." - Andrew Bailey "What I talk to people about is understanding what's really important to customers, what matters to them." - Andrew Bailey "Don't try to make a whole long list of things that you can do for your clients and customers. It's probably two or three things that's really important to them. Just focus on that. That's a great place to get to." - Andrew Bailey "We can give some discount and then we agree to it without really thinking about, could we do this differently? Is there a better way, is there more value here than simply that price and that quantity?" - Andrew Bailey
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| 13 Mar 2024 | Pricing Table Topics: 8 of Hearts – Business Acumen | 00:01:49 | |
This one is the 8 of Hearts from the Impact Pricing card deck. Business acumen is a skill that salespeople really need, and product people really should have, to say, "Why is it that a customer would want to buy our product?" In B2B, value is measured in incremental profit. Your customer isn't going to buy anything from you, assuming it's a business customer, unless you are making them more money. Here's the question, how are you making them more money? Somehow, when you can communicate that, when your sales team can communicate that, you have a much better chance at winning the business. And by the way, when you understand it, you have a much better chance at delivering great marketing messages, and building the right products. We really need the skill of business acumen so we can say what is the business of our customers and how is it that we make them more money, because that is where the value is. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 24 Apr 2023 | How Subscription Business Model is Revolutionizing Pricing with Joe Woodard | 00:30:15 | |
As the founder and CEO, Joe Woodard empowers small business advisors to transform small businesses. He works toward this vision as the host of the annual Scaling New Heights conference, the host of Woodard Alliance, the head of Woodard Institute and various speaking and writing engagements he performs throughout the accounting and bookkeeping professions. In this episode, Joe discusses how to design a subscription pricing model that prioritizes building strong relationships with clients, empowering them, and generating a long-term impact on their businesses. This approach also helps increase the lifetime value of clients.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
"Be bold with pricing. You are worth more than you think you are, and definitely more than your clients think you are."
Topics Covered: 01:29 - Talks about getting differentiated from the rest with his degree in classical Greek 03:37 - How his career path ended in Pricing 04:25 - What is so significant about the subscription business model? 06:16 - How do you price a relationship? 10:08 - Going in-depth into pricing for a relationship 13:40 - Measuring the service-provider-client relationship 15:12 - Going beyond financial outcomes when measuring the economics of relationship 16:25 - Discussions around Mark's objections: 'I don't see how you price for it [relationship] 17:02 - Pricing human connection that transcends economics 20:57 - The danger about price segmentation in relation to pricing relationship 22:03 - Pricing segmentation's end-goal in a subscription model 23:38 - Healthy subscription versus toxic subscription 25:48 - Driving customer lifetime value plus creating experiences for engagement 27:43 - Joe’s pricing advice 29:19 - Connect with Joe
Key Takeaways: “We're intensely focused on the customer's outcome, and our outcomes become a means to that outcome. And therefore, we are pricing the relationship we have with the client because it's about the outcomes we're driving in that relationship.” - Joe Woodard “I am delivering, within the context of a relationship, value. And part of that is, I’m giving you attention at the individual level. Not a newsletter, not cookie cutter answers. There's something where you're individually being touched.” - Joe Woodard “Relationship economics is about the business outcomes or the business benefits that are gained by being in a relationship.” - Joe Woodard “The intensity of the relationships increases based on the value that you've added in the amount of attention that you're able to give.” - Joe Woodard
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| 20 Jul 2022 | Memecast #67: Perceived Value | 00:01:34 | |
We all want our salespeople to sell more value. What does that actually mean though? If we think about it, our customers, whether they be consumers or businesses, they buy value. They exchange money for the value they perceive that they're going to get from our product, however they want to measure that value. Our job as a salesperson needs to be to make sure our customers, our buyers, understand how much value our product might be able to give them because the more value they perceive the more we can charge, the more likely we are to win the deal. Our job as a salesperson selling value then is to increase how much value our customers perceive from our products. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This impactful insight came from the book, Selling Value, which I wrote to help salespeople win more deals at higher prices. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now go make an impact.
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| 31 Jan 2022 | How Machine Learning is Changing Pricing Optimization with Damien Robert | 00:28:56 | |
Damien Robert is currently the Chief Solution and Delivery Officer at Pricemoov. He's been at Simon-Kucher & Partners (SKP) for 17 years of his career so he actually understands pricing really well. Damien also took a three-year stint at Disneyland Resorts Paris. Damien develops and implements tailor-made pricing solutions, ensuring easy price steering across the organization. In this episode, Damien talks about Machine Learning and how it helps optimize inputs in the pricing work as he shares insights in relation to Pricemoov’s models.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“Look at your prices with the client view.” – Damien Robert
Topics Covered: 01:32 – How Damien got into pricing 02:34 – What does pricing mean for Damien 04:28 – Damien’s pricing story when he was still in Disneyland 06:25 – What makes Pricemoov different in the pricing market and how Damien got involved with them 08:50 – Simple and advanced pricing strategies people can implement 10:57 – Collecting competitive pricing information with car rental companies 13:00 – Defining Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) alongside the things they do 16:45 – Using ML to forecast the effects of the decisions made for pricing 19:54 – Mark’s Amazon story: his $20 book reaching a price $225 in Amazon 22:00 – Damien working in a theme park, the existence of black box 24:57 – The things Pricemoov considers when making pricing models 27:00 – Damien’s pricing advice for today’s listeners
Key Takeaways: “Pricing is not only a price, but also the way you message it and what you can achieve.” – Damien Robert “Our software is allowing you to configure the rules that we provide. So, you have a set of rules, you, yourself, decide which one you want to use and implement for your product portfolio, because you may want to use one or another one, and we can basically train you on which one you want to use.” – Damien Robert “That's what people misunderstand. Sometimes in machine learning and artificial intelligence, they think that the model by itself can be smart. The reality is that the model is not smart, but the model can be much more granular and fit much more kind of situations because his granularity and the computer allows, basically, to have so many computations and so many different alternatives.” – Damien Robert “Somehow, machine learning can be used to optimize part of the dimension, some of the inputs, but basically, at the end of the day, you need a skeleton of decision making, which is important to have. Otherwise, you do not take the long-term impact of price changes. You do not take the potential competition reaction. So, you're missing a lot of the points.” – Damien Robert “Very frequently, you just optimize, set a price, but you do not check the consistency, you do not realize some of the price points, and you won't even realize that the way your prices are featured on the web is sometimes a catastrophe. So really, just look at the end of the tunnel and look at it because you will have a lot of surprise, especially on promotion. 50% of promotional faders are usually related to execution. It's not at all related to the design of the promotion itself.” – Damien Robert
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| 07 Jun 2023 | Pricing Table Topics: 5 of Diamonds – Give Salespeople Discount Authority | 00:02:21 | |
This one is the 5 of Diamonds from the Selling Value card deck. We typically give our salespeople some level of discount authority. And the reason we do that is, let's say they walked in, and they asked the factory, or headquarters, 'Hey, could I have a 5% discount?' And we always say yes to that. Then all we've done is slowed down the sales process. Instead, we give them some level of discount authority. Knowing that, you know, if you come in for 5% or less, I'm going to give it to you anyway. So, you just have permission to go give 5% or less. The problem, of course, is that salespeople typically give the max that they're allowed to give. There's all these different levers that they could pull. They could sell value, and they can discount price. And discounting price is one of those levers that they're going to pull because it's easy. See how easy it is for me to discount the 5% and it doesn't hit my commission that much. So, it's okay for me to give that 5% discount. What we want to do as a company is sit back and say, what are the right levels of discount authority? What should I let my salesperson discount to? What should I let my sales managers discount to, my sales directors discount to? There are different levels, and we want them to be incented to discount as little as possible. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our cards, pick a card, read the saying, then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 30 May 2022 | Pricing and Value Selling: The Art of Asking Your Clients the Right Questions with Barry Edney | 00:25:52 | |
Barry Edney started his pricing career in Sposea, a digital pricing and consultancy company aiming to drive profitability by simplifying price data optimization, management and execution. It was in May 2021 when he started his own consulting firm called Burning Issues Consulting, where they help businesses deliver better top-line and margin results by focusing on where change needs to happen quickly – the burning issues. In this episode, Barry talks about the importance of knowing the right questions to ask the right people so you can sell value the way your customers need it in their business.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“Focus on the margin drivers. If you have to be really cautious on your costs, focus on your products that generate your highest margin, and manage the rest of your portfolio for cash.” – Barry Edney
Topics Covered: 01:00 – How Barry got into pricing 03:21 – Considering the cost to serve in relation to delivering value 04:18 – One product, different audiences, and different levels of value 06:44 – Perceived value vs. intrinsic value 08:05 – Not knowing what your customers really value + asking the right questions 13:40 – Examples of open-ended questions 15:31 – Why you should avoid benefit selling 17:48 – Creating, communicating, and capturing value: Thinking about solving problems vs. building features 22:26 – Barry’s piece of pricing advice for the listeners
Key Takeaways: “When you start measuring the value that you deliver, it is so much easier to articulate it to your clients.” – Barry Edney “The value has to be presented in a different way. There has to be a different value or a different aspect of the value you can deliver.” – Barry Edney
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| 13 Sep 2024 | Blogcast: High Prices and Lost Deals | 00:03:35 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on July 11, 2024, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/high-prices-and-lost-deals/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 09 Mar 2022 | Blogcast #44: A Perspective on RFPs | 00:03:33 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on January 26, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/a-perspective-on-rfps/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 18 Mar 2024 | Balancing Curiosity, Specialization, and Success as a Pricing Professional with Robert Ribciuc | 00:29:56 | |
Robert Ribciuc is the Managing Partner at EBITDA Catalyst. He helped establish, grew, and managed a successful advisory/consulting firm focusing on pricing strategy and analytics, go-to-market optimization, and revenue management for middle-market corporate and private equity portfolio (PE) clients in diverse industry verticals. In this episode, Robert shares the key to succeeding as a pricing practitioner: nurturing curiosity. By continually seeking new experiences and knowledge, you'll not only advance in your current role but also pave the way for future promotions, ultimately leading to a successful career as a consultant.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
"Without curiosity, you wouldn't have tried and you wouldn't know how much room for improvement to have." - Robert Ribciuc
Topics Covered: 01:51 - The breadth of the pricing field extending beyond one's job 03:57 - Specializing in a particular industry versus embracing a multifaceted approach to pricing 08:37 - The importance of constantly learning and adapting in pricing 12:02 - How pricing professionals can be better at what they do 14:40 - How curiosity gets your job done easily and gets you promoted 20:46 - The challenge of teaching for students in university versus teaching for companies 26:08 - Summarizing what the whole topic is about 28:18 - Robert's motivational message
Key Takeaways: "Go read a book about a different industry, something that's not pricing. Also, get out of your chair and go walk to our product people, go walk to our marketing people and make some friends. Get them to tell you what their job is like and what they're thinking about." - Robert Ribciuc "Curiosity is kind of the opposite of, ‘I can do it easy.’" - Robert Ribciuc "In many companies the curiosity gets subdued by, ‘Oh, I find that if I just do this repeated cycle my boss is happy enough,’ right? And that can be an illusion." - Robert Ribciuc
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| 31 Aug 2022 | Memecast #73: Ace of Hearts: Win Rates and Average Selling Price | 00:02:16 | |
This one is the Ace of Hearts from the Selling Value card deck. Selling value really does do a lot of things. But if you imagine for a second that a buyer has some expectation of how much value they're going to get from our product. That is a good indicator of their willingness to pay, it's a good indicator of how urgent it is that they want to solve the problem or buy the product. But what if we had the ability to increase the amount of value that person expects to get from our product? For the sake of argument, let's say we 10x it. We make our product really valuable to them. All of a sudden, they're willing to pay more. They want it. They want it now. They want it faster. And so, we're going to increase our average selling price, we're going to shorten the sales cycles. And of course, if they believe we're going to deliver a 10x, they're going to buy from us instead of from our competition. And once we can recognize those buyers who really are going to get a lot of value from our product, then we get better prospects as well. So, it turns out when we can sell value, we really do increase win rates and average selling prices. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This is also an example of how Pricing Table Topics works. Grab a deck of our cards, pull a random card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what the card says. This will improve your understanding and more importantly, your ability to communicate important concepts. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 30 Apr 2021 | Blogcast #1: Three Lessons from a P&G Price Increase | 00:04:11 | |
On April 20, 2021, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled Procter & Gamble Will Raise Prices in September. Here are the first three sentences: Procter & Gamble Co. this fall will start charging more for household staples from diapers to tampons, the latest and biggest consumer-products company to announce price hikes. The maker of Gillette razors and Tide detergent cited rising costs for raw materials, such as resin and pulp, and higher expenses to transport goods. The announcement, which came as P&G disclosed its quarterly financial results, follows a similar move last month by rival Kimberly-Clark Corp.
“Blame costs. Announce your price increases. And watch your competitors.”- Mark Stiving
In these three sentences are three incredible lessons on raising prices. Lesson 1: Blame costs Costs probably did go up, but I would bet the costs went up much less than the price. Costs are pretty much the only reason customers accept for price increases. The truth is probably closer to this sentence. “P&G will raise prices so they can make more profit because they believe their customers are willing to pay more.” It’s probably true, but they could never say that. Lesson 2: Announce your price increases Notice that last month Kimberly-Clark announced a price increase (and they blamed increasing costs). Their price increase isn’t due to take effect until late June. Since I’m writing brutally honest news copy, this is what their news release could have said, “KC is announcing a price increase for late June, but they will only implement it if competitors like P&G also agree to a price increase.” To say this out loud is a violation of the law. It is illegal to collude with competitors. But the implication is there. Lesson 3: Watch for competitor price increases – Decide carefully P&G likely saw the KC announcement and thought, “we could raise prices or we could keep prices low and take some additional market share.” But what would happen if they didn’t raise their prices? KC likely would not have gone through with their price increase and market shares don’t change. However, if P&G raises their prices, KC goes through with their price increase, market shares still don’t change, and everyone makes more money. This is called implicit collusion. Nobody talked to anybody, they just made assumptions about how the other company would act. It is possible that I am completely wrong on this. It is possible that costs really did go up. That both KC and P&G independently and myopically decided to raise their prices for the sole purpose of covering their costs. But that doesn’t negate the lessons. Blame costs, announce your price increases and watch your competitors. Resource Mentioned:
Read Full Article Here: impactpricing.com/blog/three-lessons-from-a-pg-price-increase/
If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 09 Jul 2021 | Blogcast #11: The Buyer’s Journey: When to Reveal the Price | 00:04:14 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on May 26, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/the-buyers-journey-when-to-reveal-the-price/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 14 Jan 2022 | Blogcast #36: Value Based Mindset is Hard for an Organization | 00:03:05 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on December 8, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/the-power-of-procurement-matters/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 29 Dec 2023 | Blogcast: What Comes After Product-Market Fit | 00:04:48 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on November 16, 2023, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/what-comes-after-product-market-fit/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 26 Jul 2024 | Blogcast: Price Segmentation in Action: Why Geography Matters for Your Wallet | 00:04:01 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 6, 2024, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/price-segmentation-in-action-why-geography-matters-for-your-wallet/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 13 Feb 2023 | Pricing Data Analytics: The Hows and Whys with Armin Kakas | 00:26:32 | |
Armin Kakas is an expert in analytics, having lots of education in statistics, machine learning and A.I. He has an MBA, and he was a former VP of analytics at American Tire Distributors. He is also the founder of Revology Analytics, a revenue growth analytics consulting company. In this episode, Armin talks about data analytics and its crucial role in pricing and in businesses as a whole.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“There needs to be a much smarter, much surgical way to manage discounts and really reward those customers that have the highest lifetime value or highest volume versus other things.” – Armin Kakas
Topics Covered: 01:55 – How Armin got into pricing 03:35 – B2B vs B2C: Armin’s experience in applying pricing data analytics, and which one he prefers 05:57 – Armin’s insights on B2C based on data 06:46 – What is promotional effectiveness 07:34 – Products Armin used to promote on Black Fridays when he worked at BestBuy 09:09 – Why CPGs must have a strong understanding of the relationship between price and value 10:19 – Why companies should asses price and value based on customers’ response and not internally 13:08 – How businesspeople and statistics people shall communicate their insights with each other 18:41 – The most common problems Armin find when solving data problems for companies 20:06 – Why companies should have an “algorithm” that tells them how much to buy when a manufacturer offers big discounts 23:18 – Armin’s pricing advice 25:28 – Connect with Armin Kakas
Key Takeaways: “One of the easiest, quickest insights you can get is by figuring out which are the lowest ROI promotions that are not delivering any value for you or your customers or any of your channel partners, cut them, and reinvest it elsewhere in other growth areas of the company.” – Armin Kakas “I think that price-value curve tends to change, especially in CPG quite often. And so, doing that more often is really, really beneficial for companies. And doing it in the right way.” – Armin Kakas “All this unproductive inventory gathering dust in warehouses, clearance price optimization is a huge opportunity. Just really creating some automation and some dynamic methods to clear out the product that is tying up your capital and is actually lowering your productivity as well as your operating profit.” – Armin Kakas “When you ask the question, “What are some of the other areas that make a huge impact for companies?”, it is really things related to customer analytics, and that has two sides; One is providing insights… and then, the other side is providing actionable insights to the customers themselves.” – Armin Kakas
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| 02 Dec 2022 | Blogcast #83: More Lessons from Netflix | 00:02:49 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on October 26, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/more-lessons-from-netflix/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 22 May 2023 | Interdepartmental Cooperation as Key to Developing an Unbeatable Pricing Strategy with Darlene Nordstrom | 00:24:57 | |
Darlene Nordstrom is an accomplished pricing professional with experience in developing and implementing worldwide software pricing and licensing strategies spanning traditional on premise, cloud and software as a service (SaaS) offerings. Broad financial knowledge including revenue recognition, standalone selling price, return on investment, profit and loss statements and various analyses such as profitability, variance, impact, market and competitive analyses. In this episode, Darlene highlights the crucial role of interdepartmental collaboration in developing a robust pricing strategy. Additionally, she stresses the importance of having a designated pricing specialist to oversee the entire process.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
"Cross-functional collaboration - to me that is key. What's been successful in my 15 plus years of doing pricing is having that cross-functional collaboration where everyone feels like they have a voice." - Darlene Nordstrom
Topics Covered 01:30 - What prompted her to pursue a career in pricing? 02:15 - Pricing as a team effort and a collaborative endeavor 04:49 - How does a collaborative effort in pricing look like in IBM? 05:29 - Discussing the process in reaching a pricing decision 07:18 - Which pricing decisions need this complicated process of decision making? 08:52 - Why the need for a pricing person when there is already a collaboration with other departments? 11:50 - What added value does a pricing team bring to a corporation? 12:52 - Important considerations to think about in terms of creating short and long-term efforts in pricing 15:17 - Partnering with financial folks to do the analytical part of interpreting data and KPIs 17:14 - IBM as a premium price leader doing the competitor-based pricing 18:57 - Talking about the differential value in a competitor-based pricing 20:57 - How hard was it changing a pricing metric for a product and when do you consider changing it? 22:58 - Darlene's pricing advice that could impact one's business
Key Takeaways: "You don't set your price once and done, you just keep reiterating it. And the pricing team is responsible for providing those meaningful insights." - Darlene Nordstrom "What you shouldn't do is make short-term decisions that will impact your long-term goals. Being short-sighted and reacting, you don't want to end up in a price war and react because a competitor did something." - Darlene Nordstrom "You always have to be thinking in terms of that end goal in mind and work backwards, and maybe there are some iterative steps that you could take to get to that end goal. I'd be careful about making some short-term decisions that impact your long-term goals.” - Darlene Nordstrom
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| 10 Jan 2022 | Four Pillars of Pricing: How to Become More Efficient in Pricing with Vikas Pal Boaddh | 00:23:38 | |
Vikas Pal Boaddh is the Senior Strategic Marketing and Pricing Leader at Honeywell. He started out as a Software Engineer but has switched careers after getting an MBA in Marketing and General Management. His pricing journey in Honeywell was a happy accident for him. His startup in Food Tech wasn’t working in his early years, so he was introduced to Honeywell’s pricing team. Now, he’s been with them for 10 years. In this episode, Vikas discusses why value-based pricing is the right thing to do and shares why understanding how your customer thinks is a must in dealing with pricing.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“When you have an opportunity to price something, first, go and try to talk to the customers.” – Vikas Pal Boaddh
Topics Covered: 01:44 – The happy accident that led to Vikas joining Honeywell 02:48 – What’s in the cost plus model that made Vikas passionate about it? 04:35 – Two things to take note of when implementing value-based pricing 05:51 – How Honeywell understands customers and their business 09:37 – Where should pricing sit in an organization? 10:53 – The difference in the roles of a pricing person and a product manager 12:32 – The first pillar in pricing frameworks for an organization 14:03 – The three other pillars of pricing organization 16:19 – The competition of having the credit for the price 18:36 – Where does Vikas put the focus when trying to become more efficient? 21:35 – Vikas’ pricing advice for listeners
Key Takeaways: “Know the customers inside out. Understand your customer base. If someone doesn't know [their customers], they will find it difficult to implement value-based [pricing].” – Vikas Pal Boaddh “It’s the pricing person's job to talk to the customers. Ask them about all the things which goes in their business, understand them, model them, dollarize them, and then set the price.” – Vikas Pal Boaddh “As a pricing person, I have a key say in what the price should be, but I just said, the people who own the product – for example, operating managers – they are the people who are kind of holding the price for that. They should be doing a final sign off on that. As a pricing person, it's my role to provide all kinds of inputs and guidance to help them reach there.” – Vikas Pal Boaddh
People / Resources Mentioned:
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| 15 Jul 2022 | Blogcast #63: To Fee or Not to Fee? | 00:03:42 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 8, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/to-fee-or-not-to-fee/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 28 Jul 2021 | Memecast #17:Create, Communicate, and Capture More Value for Your Business | 00:01:55 | |
Values should drive most business decisions Yes, it's true. Value should be. Almost everything that goes on inside your business. I learned this because I'm a pricing guy as a pricing guy. What we think about is, “Hey, I've got this product. What's the value of that to my buyer? To my customer? How much would they be willing to pay me?” But once you start thinking that way you realize, “Well, did we actually create a product that had value to our customers? Could we change the product? Could we create products that have even more value?” And then we start thinking. Well, how well does marketing do at communicating the value? "Value is that thing that really should be driving everything in our business. " - Mark Stiving Once I understand what buyers are truly valuing and how much they're willing to pay, do we put those things in our marketing messages? Are we finding the right types of buyers? And then you start thinking, will the salespeople truly understand the way buyers value the product, and can they help individual customers understand that value even better? In the end, value is that thing that really should be driving everything in our business. I like to think of it as we need to create, communicate and capture more value. And that's really what makes a business successful. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 26 Apr 2021 | The Power of Conjoint Analysis with Matt Johnston | 00:23:54 | |
Matt Johnston is the Founder and CEO of EPIC Conjoint. As a highly motivated seasoned commercial marketing professional possessing 25 years Pricing, Product and Segmentation experience with Tier 1 brands in Europe, North America, MENA and Southeast Asia, he is a huge fan of conjoint analysis but massively frustrated with the time, effort and cost barriers to conducting a conjoint study. So, instead of grumbling about its limitations, he designed and developed his own rapid conjoint platform EPIC Conjoint. In this episode, Matt talks about the confidence and reassurance conjoint study provides in coming up with crucial pricing decisions. And how it helps you differentiate from competitors. He also shares how he started EPIC Conjoint to provide a simple, fast, and inexpensive conjoint study.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“It's always very important to look at the transactional data, the behavioral data, the previous data that will inform your assumptions. But then cap it off by asking the customer.” - Matt Johnston
Topics Covered: 00:57 - How it was like starting his pricing career at Comedy Central 01:26 - An Impact partner in the course creation 03:03 - A funny story of how Matt started in Pricing 04:43 - How most pricing people never started with a pricing role 05:45 - What made start EPIC Conjoint 07:13 - The budget and the investment involved in designing conjoint analysis 08:41 - What drove the timing to put up EPICConjoint 10:18 - Bringing automation and rigor into the pricing process 14:31 - What do you need EPIC conjoint for 18:04 - How EPIC conjoint gives you an amazing capability to differentiate yourself based on value 19:32 - How conjoint captures price sensitivity 19:57 - Conjoint analysis being a big help in B2B companies 21:38 - How close to the truth can you get with conjoint analysis 22:15 - Matt’s impactful pricing advice on your business
Key Takeaways: “The point I'm trying to make is, actually there are a lot more use cases that you can apply conjoint to because it is a trade-off methodology.” - Matt Johnston “We capture that price sensitivity as well, in conjoint, at a segment level so you do see it, you can see that change.” - Matt Johnston “It [Conjoint] can keep the middlemen honest even within your organizations, the sales folks, it can keep them on as to where you can leapfrog them and actually check and see what exactly the customers are saying.” - Matt Johnston “The comfort and the confidence of launching them - new products or making price changes. Having done a conjoint, having been in that situation, is priceless.” - Matt Johnston
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| 20 Dec 2021 | How to Choose the Right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Your Value-Based Business with Luigi Prestinenzi | 00:27:30 | |
Luigi Prestinenzi is Sales IQ Group’s Co-Founder and Head of Growth. He founded this company in 2014 and has been helping companies unlock the full potential of their sales teams since then. Luigi has been in sales his entire career. He hosts the Sales IQ Podcast where he talks with various leaders from around the globe to discuss the art and science of sales and marketing, personal development, and the mindset required to sell more every day. In this episode, Luigi discusses the importance of creating value in your practice, and why understanding your customers is crucial.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“Before even going to a point of price and advocating any solutions, ask yourself a question. Do you know the problem they're trying to solve? Do you know the impact, the problem you’d help them achieve? Do you know the outcome that they're looking to achieve? If you can't answer those three questions, you're pricing too early and it's completely irrelevant.” – Luigi Prestinenzi
Topics Covered: 01:49 – Luigi’s narrative on how he got into sales 03:09 – Talking about Sales IQ Group and the importance of knowing what your customer values 05:57 – How does Sales IQ Group help people identify their ideal customer profile (ICP)? 07:39 – Why is it important to understand the KPIs in relation to knowing what your customers value? 10:16 – Mark’s dark days in the sales industry and how it reflects two things that really matter the most whenever one sells anything 13:23 – Luigi talks about derived value as he reminds us that we’re not heroes, just byproducts of what we help people achieve 15:18 – The perspective that effectively works in helping clients find the value piece 19:28 – A CPO client who chose the more expensive option in finding an integrator for areeba; Creating value in seeing unrecognized needs 22:33 – Talking about RFPs; People not going for experts and fixing the problems all by themselves 25:44 – What is Luigi’s pricing advice that could have a big impact on people’s business?
Key Takeaways: “How can you help extract value if you don't understand what the customer's goals and objectives are, and ultimately, what they value? This is where there's a misalignment in the sales profession.” – Luigi Prestinenzi “Companies that are happy with the customer base – they just don't have enough customers – and often what they do is they've got one message for everyone. They've got the same message for an accountant that they might be selling to and a manufacturing business, when fundamentally, those businesses behave very differently. They've got different needs. Their goals and objectives are different. The challenges and their trends are different. They should segment them and then start to think about the message that resonates for the industry sector that they're dealing with.” – Luigi Prestinenzi “They're the two things that really matter when we're selling anything. We’re either helping them achieve a better result, or helping them fix a problem that helps them achieve a better result, or it's de-risking something within the business that could have essentially stopped them from achieving a particular result. Anything outside of that, it doesn't become a priority. The biggest competitor a seller or a company selling a product or service he's competing with is not the competitor; it's the status quo.” – Luigi Prestinenzi “We're not the hero. We're just a byproduct of the outcome we're helping the person achieve. We've got to continue to remember that – we are not the heroes in the conversation.” – Luigi Prestinenzi “Your pricing conversation is not what they're buying. They're buying the outcome that your pricing conversation allows them to achieve, and that starts at the very first level of interaction that we have with someone.” – Luigi Prestinenzi
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| 09 Jan 2023 | Pricing for Success: The Seven-Step Plan for Winning More Customers at Better Prices with Mark Peacock | 00:32:06 | |
Mark Peacock has been a pricing consultant since 2017. Currently, he is the managing director of Price Maker, a company that helps their businesses differentiate themselves from the competition by means of having a smarter pricing. He is also about to release his new book titled “Pricing for Success: The Seven-Step Plan for Winning More Customers at Better Prices” In this episode, Mark talks about what’s written in his newest book, “Pricing for Success: The Seven-Step Plan for Winning More Customers at Better Prices”. He shares the fundamental ideas behind the seven steps and gives insightful sample situations in which the seven steps can be applied.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“Take the time to do your pricing strategy properly, and put your prices up because it is the most powerful lever you can use to increase profitable growth.” – Mark Peacock
Topics Covered: 01:27 – How Mark got into pricing 02:35 – The reason why Mark wrote his book, “Pricing for Success: The Seven-Step Plan for Winning More Customers at Better Prices” 03:42 – Step 1: Where do you want to go? 06:43 – Step 2: Know what your customers think about you 08:02 – Step 3: Being aware of your competition 11:02 – Step 4: Product 13:13 – Step 5: Pricing 15:45 – Mark Peacock’s thoughts on having more than one pricing model for a product 17:17 – Step 6: Proposition 19:21 – Mark Peacock’s favorite behavioral economics example 22:47 – Step 7: Profit 24:53 – How Mark would address the issue of credit grabbing among departments in cases of sales improvement 28:59 – Mark’s pricing advice 30:09 – Connect with Mark Peacock
Key Takeaways: “Pricing, ultimately, is always a subset of business strategy, of your company goals. So, you've got to be clear. You got to know where you want to get to. Otherwise, you'll end up floundering with your pricing.” – Mark Peacock “Product and price are two sides of the same coin. When I buy products for a price, I want to know what I get as a customer and equally as a seller, you need to know everything that's included in your product offering.” – Mark Peacock “Without changing the pricing, you can achieve an effective increase in prices of 4% by changing how you present the prices. And I think this whole question of how we present pricing is just as important as ‘What's the number? What's the strategy?’ Because it makes such a difference.” – Mark Peacock “Having a clearly written pricing policy is such an important thing. And I literally say in my book, ‘Write it down’. And it doesn't have to be long, it doesn't have to be complicated.” – Mark Peacock
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| 23 Feb 2022 | Memecast #47: Creating Value | 00:01:49 | |
When we think about pricing, typically we have a product in hand and we say, how much does our customer value this? How much are they willing to pay? Now, we're going to put a price tag on that. And that's really important. We want to be able to do that well. And that's typically what we think of when we think of pricing. But if we take a step or two backwards in the business process, the fact that we as pricing people understand value, we understand how customers perceive value. Imagine if the product managers or developers or whoever's defining the products that we're going to build, imagine if they understood this concept of value the way we understand the concept of value. Because then they could be creating products that our customers actually value.
If we think about the products or the features that we create and how they drive value, we'll end up creating better products, products that our customers love more, products that we can charge more for. So, yes, product management, the creating value part, is huge. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 05 Oct 2022 | Memecast #78: King of Clubs: Executives Show Interest in Value | 00:02:30 | |
This one is the King of Clubs from the Selling Value card deck. What we really want is for our salespeople to be able to communicate the value of our products to our customers. It turns out that's so much easier to do when our marketing department has figured out and created the materials and the support to help salespeople go do that. But then marketing has to understand how is it that our customers value our products. And this is so much easier to do, if our product people create products that truly have value to our customers so they understand the value that our customers get from our products. It turns out very few people truly understand how much value we get, and if we want our entire company to truly think about value, to be able to communicate value, create value, capture value, the best and easiest way to do that is for the executive team to show interest about value. And what that truly means is that executives should be asking questions, how is it that customers are going to value this new feature, this new product? How much will they value it? How is it different from our competitors and how much do they value that differentiation? What problems are we solving? What problems are we solving our competitors aren't solving? Executives showing interest in value can help drive value to be a mindset inside the entire company. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This is also an example of how Pricing Table Topics works. Grab a deck of our cards, pull out a random card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. This will improve your understanding and more importantly, your ability to communicate important concepts about value. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 28 Oct 2022 | Blogcast #78: Value-Based Prospecting | 00:03:31 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on September 21, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/value-based-prospecting/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 07 Jun 2021 | Pricing Strategy for Different Channels with Larry Walsh | 00:28:18 | |
Larry Walsh is the leading go-to-market advisor to technology executives, channel leaders, and solution providers around the world. Widely known for his ability to cut through problems and challenges facing vendors, distributors, and solution providers, Walsh is sought for his advice, counsel, insights, and consultation on channel strategies and technology market trends. In this episode, Larry shares how to determine channel profitability and the economic equation that goes with it. He talks about how brand presence is one of the determining factors to persuade channels to take the risk of selling your product. He also differentiates how you can make money or compensate channel partners for selling a product directly versus selling a subscription for a product. He also shares what his company, Channelnomics, does.
Why you have to check out today's podcast:
"Once you fall out of that zone where there's none of the endemic margin in your pricing to support yourself plus your partners, then stop selling to your partners." - Larry Walsh
Topics Covered: 01:38 - How he transitioned from being the newspaper editor to a channel guy 03:22 - What he thinks of channels 05:17 - A channel being a sales motion 06:08 - Talking about parallel channels and channel strategy 07:20 - Pricing strategy for channel partners 11:15 - What he thinks as a mistake when dealing with channel partners 11:57 - Determining channel profitability and the economic equation associated with it 14:57 - How brand presence affects channel partners' decision to sell a product 15:57 - When can you go shallower on the margin 16:30 - First mover advantage in terms of consideration 17:30 - Selling a SaaS through a channel versus selling a physical product through a channel 21:53 - How to compensate a channel partner for a subscription type of sales 22:56 - How do you make money on a sell-through-sell on a more consumption-based model 24:19 - Differentiating the subscription and consumption-based models 25:03 - Talking about lock-in terms and renewal rates 25:44 - Larry's pricing advice that has a great impact on your business 26:57 - What is Channelnomics and what does it do
Key Takeaways: "What we look at when somebody comes to us looking for a channel strategy, the first thing we want to know is, who's the customer? What does the customer need from you, or what does the customer need to be successful with your product? And that will then define the chain or the channel that it goes through." - Larry Walsh "To me, a channel is a sales motion. And that can include direct relationships; it can include automated relationships. So, it's not the ‘what’ that's doing, it's the ‘how’ it's being done." - Larry Walsh "Often, a mistake that's made when dealing with channel strategies is thinking about this as what do I have to pay versus what do I have to do to enable? Or what do I have to do to engage with a partner to be a good go-to-market, have a good go-to-market relationship?" - Larry Walsh "When I think about channels, what I'm thinking about is selling relationships." - Larry Walsh
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| 10 Jun 2024 | Navigating Price Changes: Overcoming Fear and Implementing Strategy with Patrick Meegan | 00:29:02 | |
Patrick Meegan is a Managing Director at Investor Group Services. Experienced in technology, industrials, consumer products, retail and e-commerce, subscription programs, pricing, and product strategy. In this episode, he delves into the complexities of pricing strategies, emphasizing the importance of aligning prices with the perceived value and understanding market segments. She also explores the nuances between B2C and B2B pricing, highlighting the transparency in B2C and the significance of marketing and packaging in consumer products. Additionally, she provides insights on implementing price changes effectively in different organizational sizes and navigating the challenges of setting prices through distribution channels.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
"Spend time pressure testing the ideas." - Patrick Meegan
Topics Covered: 01:51 - The best way to teaching case studies and the how to go about each case 02:49 - How he ended up in pricing despite lack of pricing background 03:59 - Value-based pricing and understanding buyer behavior 05:03 - The process of generating pricing insights 06:39 - Application of a framework to generate pricing insights 08:57 - Challenges and strategies for executing pricing changes, particularly in larger organizations 11:17 - Overcoming fear of raising prices. 13:08 - Strategies for reducing fear and uncertainty when implementing price increases 15:42 - The appropriate role of salespeople in pricing decisions 17:32 - The importance of setting and managing price floors and discounting policies for salespeople 21:34 - Maintaining pricing integrity and avoiding discounts 22:46 - The differences between B2C and B2B pricing strategies and how crucial is setting the end user price first when selling through distribution or channels 26:46 - Pat's best pricing advice
Key Takeaways: "If we can't understand from the buyer's side what's driving their purchase, then it's hard for us to understand how to sell to them, how to negotiate, where to hang the value, how to package and how to structure the pricing model." - Patrick Meegan "I cringe so much when I see people going out with a price of whatever it is with a discount right along with it because whatever value established you just eroded by saying it wasn't worth that." - Patrick Meegan "Your portfolio also plays an important role in how you can influence pricing." - Patrick Meegan
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| 07 Jun 2024 | Blogcast: B2B Market Research Is Overrated | 00:02:24 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on April 18, 2024, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/b2b-market-research-is-overrated/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 23 May 2022 | Trust as a Pricing Lever: How Customer Trust Affects Pricing with Stéphane Joanis | 00:28:44 | |
Stéphane Joanis started his career as a Chemical Engineer. It is with Thermo Fisher that he got involved in business and pricing, and just this January, Stephane launched his own consulting business which he calls SJ Performance, LLC. This is where he practices his expertise in B2B Instrumentation Pricing as he and his team provides coaching to help you build a strong pricing culture in a way that provides confidence and leads to trust. In this episode, Stéphane educates us on the importance of achieving organizational transformation in a company as you value the trust in the relationship you have with your customers.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“The data is a means to the answer, towards getting insights. But it’s a foundation. Only data can trump politics. So, I think it's important to get your data and extract value from that data. Out of the specifications, go and get what is that value to your customer.” – Stéphane Joanis
Topics Covered: 01:40 – How Stephane got into pricing; the importance of trust 03:32 – On building trust: Attack the processes, not the people 05:55 – Starting his business to guide people towards organizational transformation 06:28 – What organizational transformation is all about 08:56 – The trick to see something as a loss vs. as a gain 11:13 – How to help people have a value-based mindset: Specification language vs. value language 14:00 – Talking to customers and splitting up win-loss 16:07 – Formula of sales velocity and how that relates to trust 19:31 – “I will raise your price to the extent that I'm not breaking your trust” 23:12 – Intuitive/statistical hearing as a way to talk to customers 25:01 – Stéphane’s pricing advice
Key Takeaways: “Everybody has a different point of view. There's so much psychology behind it. As you pointed out, there's a trust element. We have to agree to disagree. We have to have a certain level of trust, because everybody has a different objective with price. And so, how do you get everybody together, and how do you get prices aligned between them? It requires a certain level of trust if you want to do it well.” – Stéphane Joanis “That's the key to organizational transformation. It's not just about a process; it's about the people as well.” – Stéphane Joanis “You have to show what the customer is losing for them to truly appreciate what you have to offer and the value of your product and service.” – Stéphane Joanis “There's a price to trust.” – Stéphane Joanis
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| 23 Aug 2023 | Pricing Table Topics: 2 of Diamonds – Involve Finance with Monitoring the Value-based KPIs. | 00:02:25 | |
This one is the 2 of Diamonds from the Selling Value card deck. I'm often asked who should own pricing, and one of the departments that often comes up is finance. And of course, I'm not a huge fan of finance owning pricing. And the biggest reason is finance doesn't truly understand the value of our products. Usually that's going to be someone in product management, product marketing, or even sales, which I'm not a fan of them owning pricing either. However, finance so much wants to be involved with pricing. It's so crucial to their projections. It's so crucial to company growth, which they care a lot about. They really want to be involved with pricing, even though they don't understand value. So, how do we get them involved in pricing? That's pretty simple. Finance has a bunch of quant people. They have access to every piece of data inside the entire company, and they have the desire to make us or help us do better in our pricing. And so, let's figure out what are the KPIs, the key performance indicators, that we really want to track inside our company. And let's ask finance to help track those, keep us on track, make sure that we don't see any anomalies. We know what the trends are. Finance is a fantastic department to help us manage our KPIs. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our cards, pick a card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 06 Apr 2022 | Memecast #52: Fixed Costs | 00:01:51 | |
This one may be intuitive, may not be intuitive, but it turns out that if your fixed costs change, for whatever reason, if they go up, if they go down, it really should have no impact whatsoever on your pricing. For example, let's say you need to buy a new piece of factory equipment, and it's really expensive, and it makes your fixed cost go way up. Did buying that new piece of factory equipment for you change your customer's willingness to pay? No, it didn't. Customers are still willing to pay the same amount. They still can choose between you and a competitor. Well, did you changing your fixed costs changed the way your competitor prices for whatever reason? No, it doesn't. The only thing that matters to us when we're doing pricing is thinking about how our customers are making decisions and how we can make optimal decisions based on that. And I can assure you that your fixed costs have absolutely nothing to do with how much your customers are willing to pay. For that reason, your fixed costs never matter to pricing. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 08 Dec 2023 | Blogcast: The 5 How’s | 00:03:35 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on October 26, 2023, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/the-5-hows/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 01 Apr 2022 | Blogcast #48: Direct Customer Impact | 00:03:14 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on February 23, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/direct-customer-impact/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 29 Oct 2021 | Blogcast #26: Value Propositions vs Value Selling | 00:03:06 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on Sept 16, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/value-propositions-vs-value-selling/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 11 Apr 2022 | Behavioral Economics: The Psychological Side of Pricing, the Secret Sauce to More Sales with Gerald Smith | 00:30:48 | |
Gerald Smith is a Professor of Marketing at Boston College. He's been a Pricing Consultant with Strategic Pricing Group and Monitor Group since 1987. Gerald is the author of a relatively new book, “Getting Price Right: The Behavioral Economics of Profitable Pricing”. In this episode, Gerald discusses the power psychology holds in pricing in relation to behavioral economics as he talks about the soft side of pricing alongside the importance of framing.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“Ask yourself and ask your pricing team, what do customers get and what do they pay for what they get? And say, is everybody in the industry doing it the same way?” – Gerald Smith
Topics Covered: 01:39 – The start of Gerald’s pricing journey with Thomas Nagle and Reed Holden 03:08 – Gerald talks about his dissertation in relation to his new book, Getting Price Right 04:33 – The behavioral/soft side as potentially more powerful than the logical side 06:39 – The main point of Getting Price Right – the psychology of the sellers, the people that really set price 09:11 – Talking about the dominant pricing bias of salespeople giving discounts all the time 13:07 – Pricing strategy vs. pricing orientation 15:15 – Framing as one of the foundational theories of economics 18:09 – Discussion about Apple’s pricing slogan and the company having huge margins 22:45 – The power of behavioral economics – psychology; analysis vs. gut 24:12 – Talking about frame of references and setting price metrics 27:45 – Gerald’s piece of pricing advice for today’s listeners
Key Takeaways: “We always think of pricing as a hard skill, as a quantitative skill. My students say to me, ‘Professor, tell me the formula for setting price.’ And I say, ‘No, no, no, folks.’ I mean, pricing is a soft skill that also brings in hard skills, for sure, so there are both skill sets.” – Gerald Smith “Sellers are also psychological and absolutely driven by psychology.” – Gerald Smith “One of the very dominant biases in pricing is that people have a tendency to discount price all the time. It's very irrational, and it, in fact, violates the principles of both psychology but especially economics, because economics says that people should rationally maximize the profits of the outcomes that are before them. And in the case of many people that apply this kind of discounting bias, they don't focus on the profits; they focus on the sales, and sales are not profits.” – Gerald Smith “Salespeople that work for somebody else are more likely to discount, but salespeople that do their own thing are less likely to discount. When they're selling their own place, they want to make sure that they maximize their profits if they can, but if they're selling for somebody else, they're happy to take that deal. That's because they get paid a commission on the deal. It is endemic to the world of pricing that people do this.” – Gerald Smith “Psychology is powerful. Analysis is terrific, but psychology is absolutely vital.” – Gerald Smith “Consumers or buyers give, but they also get. And so, if I can change what they get and what they give, then that can be very powerful.” – Gerald Smith
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| 04 Sep 2023 | Master Pricing Strategies with Data with Sebastian Baier | 00:21:43 | |
Sebastian Baier is the founder of Buynomics, an AI for ultimate customer-centric RGM decisions- in one SaaS solution. In this episode, Sebastian discusses how Buynomics' AI utilizes vast amounts of consumer behavior data to generate virtual customers, enabling the implementation of optimal pricing strategies.
What you will learn from this episode:
"Collect data however ugly it might look." - Sebastian Baier
Topics Covered: 01:12 - What got him into pricing 02:47 - Buynomics and what it does 04:41 - Understanding customer simulation and segmentation in the way Buynomics work 08:03 - Talking about segments and distribution densities 12:24 - How Buynomics helps provide what-if analyses for pricing strategies 13:29 - Creating customer models for B2B when there are not enough data available 17:28 - Sebastian's thoughts on Mark's suggested solution for B2C clients 19:11 - Salesperson as a value driver for B2B customer simulation 19:48 - Sebastian's best pricing advice
Key Takeaways: "Even if you don't have great data [with B2B], you'll use the data because you have to have a model of the world." - Sebastian Baier “To make statistics work, you have to have a certain number of customers.” - Sebastian Baier "It's really very valuable just to start collecting the data, and look at them as you would as a consultant.” - Sebastian Baier
People/Resources Mentioned:
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| 03 Sep 2021 | Blogcast #19: I Hate Loss Aversion | 00:03:10 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 28, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/i-hate-loss-aversion/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 03 Jan 2022 | Unlocking the Power of Pricing Analytics to Optimize Your Pricing with Kevin Coppinger | 00:32:28 | |
Kevin Coppinger is currently the Director of Analytics in Ferrellgas. He is passionate about leading groups that turn large data into an asset, providing leadership the opportunity for insights and actions. In this episode, Kevin shares his analytics journey as he talks about the importance of data in providing better service and becoming a better service provider in the field.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“Figure out who your top three competitors are and find their biggest weakness and their biggest strength when it comes to product offering and price.” – Kevin Coppinger
Topics Covered: 02:40 – Talking about his failed CPA journey and how it led him to pricing 05:57 – Discussion about insurance, price segmentation, and the cost-plus model 09:20 – Ferrellgas and what Kevin does as he works there 14:04 – Ferrellgas tank users vs. non-Ferrellgas tank users and using analytics for overall betterment 20:16 – Why a good analyst needs to be a good interviewer and communicator nowadays 26:37 – How his background in accountancy helped him in switching to analytics 30:01 – Kevin’s pricing advice for the listeners
Key Takeaways: “Price is the most important signal that a company sends to its consumers but willingness to pay is almost as important as what they think of your actual product.” – Kevin Coppinger “Customers would want to behave the way we wanted them to behave, so that they could control their price.” – Kevin Coppinger “You should shop insurance every three years. I know it is a pain in the butt, it's a hassle to move it especially if you've got all of your property insured with one place, but every three years, you should call just to check. It keeps your insurance company honest and it will most likely keep a couple of dollars in your pocket.” – Kevin Coppinger “The more we know about the house and the more we can connect into how they use their energy, the better we can be for them and for ourselves.” – Kevin Coppinger “Good pricing can only come with good data, and good data is usually tied to good understanding of your prices.” – Kevin Coppinger “Data is power. Pure and raw data is pure and raw power and it is scary and it needs to be a little bit controlled and molded a little bit. But if you can help a company, if you can help analyst hone that data better, they become smarter, their companies become smarter, and us – we, as consumers – will inevitably benefit if more companies start using their data to much more intelligent fashion.” – Kevin Coppinger
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| 17 May 2024 | Blogcast: Show Me The Value! | 00:02:26 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on March 28, 2024, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/show-me-the-value/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 26 Sep 2022 | Finding Value in the First Call: Asking the Right Questions with Bryan Whittington | 00:30:18 | |
Bryan Whittington is the founder of ebs/growth, a firm that helps companies create a more effective sales team. Also, he is the host of the Talent Sales & Scale podcast, and was a sales trainer for over ten years. In this episode, Bryan discusses how he handles exploratory or discovery calls. He explains how he talks with his clients and potential clients in order to find the root cause of their problems, and shares some of his techniques to get these clients to propose the possible solutions to their problems themselves.
Why you have to checkout today’s podcast:
“Pricing is a belief. You either believe that your price is not worth what you're asking, or you're able to convey that your price is worth it to your prospect, your buyer. But price is absolutely a belief. You choose which belief you want.” – Bryan Whittington
Topics Covered: 01:15 – How Bryan got into pricing 02:08 – Selling value vs. selling a commodity 05:08 – What to avoid when having a discovery call 07:02 – How to handle a discovery call, step 1 09:23 – Why it is better to setup that next meeting 13:30 – How to handle a discovery call, step 2 14:19 – Why you shouldn’t allow your clients to rate their problem a 7/10 15:01 – How to handle a discovery call, step 3 17:59 – Finding out the root cause of the clients’ problems 22:54 – When and how to name the price of your solution based on the magnitude of the problem 24:46 – Pricing table topics: “Salespeople use every tool available to close a deal. When given authority to discount, they will use it more often than necessary” 28:20 – Bryan’s pricing advice
Key Takeaways: “Sales is how you identify what their challenges are, whether or not you can solve the problem of those challenges, and then understand the value of you fixing those problems for that organization will be, and you can charge an appropriate value for it.” – Bryan Whittington “That conversation should take anywhere between 5 to 8 minutes. And if it's longer than that, you've already started your initial first sales call, and I wouldn't suggest you do that.” – Bryan Whittington “Often, the problem that the person brings you is never really the problem. We have to identify the real root cause to know whether or not your solution will work. If your solution won't work for that root cause, then make an introduction to somebody where it will.” – Bryan Whittington
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| 10 Aug 2022 | Memecast #70: Start with Your Goal | 00:01:56 | |
Pricing decisions can always help us achieve our goals. We need to make sure we understand what those goals are. I would start with understanding what the corporate objectives are. Oftentimes those are things like we need to raise our average selling price. We need to gain more market share. We need to have more margin. Typically, these goals, these corporate goals, are established by our CEO and our executive team, and they're there to drive increased market capitalization. However, your product may have a different set of goals than what your corporate goal is. So, what is the goal of your product? The goal of your product may be to bring more people into the platform so that we then have more people we can sell upgrades to. That's a great goal. We need to understand that as we're setting our pricing. Your goal may be we need to generate more revenue, more profit, so that we can fund other projects. That's a great goal. We just need to know what our goals are. As we're making these pricing decisions. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This impactful insight came from the book, Selling Value, which I wrote to help salespeople win more deals at higher prices. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now go make an impact.
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| 07 Aug 2023 | Brainstorming the ‘Ultimate Pricing Book Title’ with Sebastian Wrobel | 00:32:15 | |
Sebastian Wrobel is an energetic and passionate professional leader, helping companies achieve value and pricing excellence. Pushing digital transformation into lasting integration. Experienced in working closely with the C-suite and senior stakeholders to elaborate and drive major profit & growth optimisation plans. Building high performing teams by leveraging a collaborative and data driven leadership approach. In this episode, Sebastian provides valuable insights on how to create the perfect title for a pricing book. The goal of which is to capture the attention of individuals driving pricing within a company.
What you will learn from this episode:
"Start your [pricing] journey wherever you are, and accelerate on your journey wherever you are. The investment is paying off, always." - Sebastian Wrobel
Topics Covered: 01:17 - A quick fun story on how he got lost for two days in the mountains 01:55 - What got him into pricing? 03:02 - Valugram as a company -- what it does 07:30 - What most companies are missing out on in regard to value and pricing 08:04 - Understanding the 'discovery process' 11:06 - Thoughts on value and pricing as understood by experts in their own fields 13:31 - Gaining business confidence 15:59 - Challenging the idea behind this title for a book: The Secret to Skyrocketing Profit 18:45 - Feedback on this title - Leveraging Value: CEO's Blueprint for Driving Profits 22:40 - Will addressing CEOs in the book title encapsulates all other people who are driving pricing other than the CEOs? 24:53 - An analysis of the title - The Power of Value: The CEO's Secret Weapon to Driving Profits 30:57 - Sebastian's pricing advice 31:25 - How to connect with Sebastian
Key Takeaways: “Value selling is not applicable to all products. Neither all client segments. Where it is applicable, you should do it properly.” - Sebastian Wrobel "Gartner study shared that this is the critical aspect about winning deals, enabling buyers to make a decision in the right one." - Sebastian Wrobel "As pricing people, we tend to think in profits. But for me, leveraging value is more. Not only profit, but it's about driving revenue, top line growth, and also customer loyalty." - Sebastian Wrobel
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| 27 Mar 2023 | Value Bread Blues? How to Announce Price Increases with Casey Brown | 00:31:15 | |
Casey Brown is the President of Boost Pricing, and she has been since 2011. She started her career as a Chemical Engineer at GE, and she's been in pricing for almost 20 years now. Casey loves whitewater kayaking, and she's a big Buckeye fan. In this episode, Casey explains how important it is for sellers to connect with the emotional component of the buyer/s as she shares her knowledge on how to substantially increase your ability to earn higher prices.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“I have yet to find, even in this current economic climate, a company that doesn't have some pricing opportunity, and I would just ask everyone to keep looking for it. It's there.”
Topics Covered: 01:33 – How Casey got into pricing
Key Takeaways: “Our entire profession – we are the best kept secret in business. And frankly, if more people understood how impactful pricing is to the profitability and how easy it is to pull that lever, there'd be a lot more of us.” – Casey Brown “It does not occur to most people that the biggest opportunity to make a huge improvement in your pricing performance very quickly is not necessarily to fix your strategy, but instead to help the team understand the skill set and mindset gaps that your team has.” – Casey Brown “Connecting with the emotional component of the buyer is not just a consumer phenomenon.” – Casey Brown
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| 02 Jan 2023 | Price Optimization in SaaS with Nikhil Kotcharlakota | 00:25:42 | |
Nikhil Kotcharlakota is a civil engineer by profession. He worked for Electrolux for eight years where he was head of pricing for almost two years. Currently, he is a co-founder of PriceOps, a company that aims to provide an all-in-one pricing solution for SaaS companies. In this episode, Nikhil talks about how his experience at Electrolux changed the way he looked at pricing. He also discusses about his company, PriceOps, and how they aim to provide a complete, optimized pricing solution to SaaS companies using different pricing models.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“Having the focus on price and getting value out of what you're offering is a very important thing.” – Nikhil Kotcharlakota
Topics Covered: 01:30 – How Nikhil got into pricing 03:01 – The work that Nikhil’s company, PriceOps does 05:59 – How PriceOps plans to utilize usage data for billing and pricing 07:05 – PriceOps’ biggest challenge: using outcome-based pricing model for SaaS companies 11:19 – The other pricing models that PriceOps is eyeing besides usage-based and outcome-based 12:24 – How PriceOps aims to recommend whether to use per-user model or per active user model 15:12 – What Nikhil learned as he shifted from traditional pricing to subscription-based pricing 18:38 – Why Nikhil loves pricing operations 20:17 – Without execution, pricing strategy does not matter 20:50 – Nikhil’s pricing advice 22:02 – The revenue point at which businesses should hire a pricing person 23:54 – Connect with Nikhil Kotcharlakota
Key Takeaways: “The best part about pricing is it's always at the center of the strategy or you'll get to work with a lot of teams; product management, sales, accounting, finance, I mean, literally every team in the company.” – Nikhil Kotcharlakota “Companies have realized the consumer is king. So, they're trying to build an experience for the consumer so they continue to buy the same product over and over again.” – Nikhil Kotcharlakota “If the operations are not set up properly or if there are no processes for the pricing team, a strategy might be there, but they may not be able to execute on the strategy, which will then result in loss in price or price leakage.” – Nikhil Kotcharlakota
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| 13 May 2022 | Blogcast #54: Shrinkflation, the Hidden Price Increase | 00:03:17 | |
This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on March 30, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/shrinkflation-the-hidden-price-increase/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 10 Nov 2021 | Memecast #31: Think about the Lifetime Value of a Customer | 00:01:55 | |
I don't really want you to just sit around and think about lifetime value. What I want you to do is think about lifetime value and how that influences your business, how that influences your pricing and your product development and your. If you're in a subscription-type business, this becomes so obvious. Because we need to win a new customer. We want to keep that customer. "Think about the lifetime value of a customer. Think about it and then do something about it." - Mark Stiving We want to grow that customer and we can start to think about if I could win a customer over their entire lifetime, how much revenue. How much profit do I think I'm going to end up getting from that customer? And SaaS companies or subscription companies actually do a pretty good job at this, but if you're not a subscription company, you should be thinking the exact same thing. You put out a lot of energy and money in order to win a new customer. You have a high customer acquisition cost. You obviously want the sale that you got. But can you think about that lifetime value? Can you get that person to buy more things from you to buy over and over again? And this has everything to do with how well we treat the customer, what our customer service looks like. Do we have follow-on products? Are we staying in touch with them? There are lots of reasons and things, decisions that we can make once we start focusing on the lifetime value of a customer. Think about it and then do something about it. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:
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| 28 Nov 2022 | #CLASSIC Value-based Pricing: How to Get Started and How to Succeed with Stephan Liozu | 00:26:10 | |
Stephan Liozu is the Founder of Value Innoruption Advisors, a boutique consulting firm specializing in disruptive approaches in value, pricing, and strategic management. He helps leaders in organizations that want to get started in pricing by conducting assessments and building road maps. In this episode, learn all about value pricing and how to use the right pricing toolbox to come up with a price based on how much a customer believes a product is worth.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
“Critical problems are around value. Pricing comes later.” – Stephan Liozu
Topics Covered: 01:01 - How Stephan got into Pricing: having been named ACP deployment officer for Owens Corning Europe taking care of the pricing module in SAP 02:37 - The role of a chief value officer: Being the chief conductor of all the value and pricing activity in an organization. 05:50 - The whole process of measuring value, creating, and capturing it using the dollarization methodology 07:39 - Going through value creation: looking at the customer problem, do a better job of understanding the customer problem, uncovering it through market research, insights, and ethnographic research 09:14 - ‘99% of businesses are there to create value, oftentimes they don't know what value really means.’ Stephan's thoughts on it. 13:40 - Conversations put your customers at ease. Stephan's perspective about value conversation and the challenge that goes with it. 16:30 - Why do companies don't understand what product value is? Stephan states the three reasons why. 17:58 - Why is it important to ask the right questions? 19:18 - Customer segmentation is an often-neglected part of a value conversation. Another reason why companies don't think about value. 19:54 - What Stephan is up to these days: leveraging technology to a lot of his work focusing on monetization of software and data. 21:03 - Hardware product companies are giving away the software as a way to sell their hardware. We hear Stephan's idea about it. 22:32 - Talking about cost and value in SaaS companies. The challenge of communicating the value of its product. 24:49 - He couldn't care less about focusing more on the value of a product. His one pricing advice that could impact your business.
Key Takeaways: “Our competitors are also looking at the customer problem. So, we got to do a better job at understanding the customer problem, uncovering it through market research, insights, ethnographic research.” - Stephan Liozu “I wanted not to be a CPO chief pricing officer, I wanted to be a CVO chief value officer, because our critical problems are around value, you know, pricing comes later.” - Stephan Liozu “Psychologically it puts your customers at ease when you have a conversation, whether it's in creation mode, in quantification, validation, and communication.” - Stephan Liozu “To be doing the work in value, you have to have value conversations.” - Stephan Liozu “If we have to continue doing everything in finance around the product, then we're not going to achieve our goal to show the value of everything else we do in the bundle.” - Stephan Liozu
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| 18 Aug 2023 | Pricing Table Topics: 2 of Clubs – Salespeople with Authority to Discount | 00:02:34 | |
This one is the 2 of Clubs from the Selling Value card deck. Salespeople are going to use every single tool they have available to them. Absolutely, they're going to use value selling if we've taught them how, and they understand, and they're doing a great job. But even if they're using value selling, it's very easy for them to offer discounts. And there's this attitude or belief that offering discounts helps close a deal faster. And maybe it does. Maybe when a customer or a buyer asks you for a discount, it takes longer to say no and explain why. And we could have just said yes and close the deal and we're done. Wouldn't that be great if it worked that way? But here's the key. Every dollar that we discount comes straight off of our profit. We still have to cover all of our costs, and so our margin just got shrunk by more than our revenue did on a percentage basis. So, if we want our salespeople to not rely on price, we have to make it painful for salespeople to offer discounts. How do you do that? Create a compensation plan that as they give bigger discounts, the percentage or the size of their deal goes down faster than the revenue goes down because salespeople are incentivized to close deals as fast as possible. And we want to make sure they're incentivized to close deals quickly at the highest possible price. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our cards, pick a card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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| 04 Mar 2024 | Exploring Game-Changing Pricing Dynamics for Different Industries with Arnab Sinha | 00:32:32 | |
Arnab Sinha is a Managing Director and Senior Partner in the Philadelphia office of Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the North American Lead for Pricing Topic, as well as Global Lead for Revenue Management. In this episode, Arnab shares what's behind writing the book 'Game Changer' and discusses how the pricing strategy frameworks discussed inside the book works for the different industries like software, consumer packaged goods, pharmaceuticals, among others.
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
"Figure out how much value you want to share, and how you communicate that, because that's what drives long-term value creation." - Arnab Sinha
Topics Covered: 01:14 - How he got into pricing and why he never regretted choosing it over mechanical engineering 03:48 - What's behind writing the book 'Game Changer' 06:21 - Pivotal role of value creation in pricing strategy as gleaned from the book 08:03 - How his pricing strategy framework be used in software companies 11:40 - Significance of understanding customer needs and tailoring offerings accordingly for both acquisition and retention, with competition in mind 14:25 - The strategic pricing approach for consumer packaged goods companies 17:34 - Understanding the 'uniform game' in the consumer packaged goods and how it is influenced by factors such as brand strength and price gap elasticity in relation to competitors 20:08 - From a static view of pricing strategy in the CPG towards a dynamic approach utilizing AI and machine learning to model the best pricing strategy 22:00 - Innovative pricing strategy in pharmaceuticals 26:42 - Pricing based on where value is created 29:22 - Arnab's best pricing advice 30:03 - Discussing on how much value should one keep
Key Takeaways: "I think the competitor's price is a critical input. And this is where we weave it in through something like your brand strength and your brand equity." - Arnab Sinha "And this is where I think our belief is, it is not just about the one-time value of one transaction, but you need to think about the lifetime value of all of the consumers you will be serving." - Arnab Sinha "...at the intersection of the cost and competitive game, you need to understand if you are creating value and make a choice of how much value you want to share regardless of what game you're playing. Because in the absence of value creation, there is no transaction." - Arnab Sinha
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