Real value comes from real differentiation. Real value is turned into perceived value through marketing.  When we're up against the competition, which most of the time we all. Our customers are buying perceived differentiation. They look at our product or competitors' products. What's the difference in price and is it worth it? And the, ‘is it worth it’  has everything to do with the difference in capability, the product differentiation, the features that are different.  “Build real differentiation, but we have to make sure our customers know it.” - Mark Stiving Now we may have built the best product in the world. We may have built a product that is much, much better than our competitors, but if our buyers don't know that. If they don't believe that, then they're not going to choose our product buyers.  Aren't buying based on real differentiation? They're buying on their perceptions or what we'll call perceived differentiation. Our job as a company should be to build products that are truly better than our competitors.  In other words, build real differentiation, but we have to make sure our customers know it. And that comes through marketing. It comes through sales efforts. We have to make sure we're communicating the fact that our product is better/different than our competitors.  We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected].  Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

Ebrahim El-Ebiary is a Pricing Manager at Goodyear Tires. He’s been with Goodyear for six years now, having worked in Revenue Management at FedEx before that. Ebrahim is a Professional Certified Coach and he's genuinely interested in people and how they think. In this episode, Ebrahim talks about the importance of curiosity and good relationship to your pricing practice as you continue to make money through helping your customers do the same.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Learn about what revenue management is and the relationship it has with pricing Understand why it’s important that pricing people understand their customers’ future while having the customers take part in the creative process Find out about the benefits of having a good relationship with your customer and keeping that relationship until it lasts   “Before launching a very detailed analysis, ask the question, ‘how will this be used?’” – Ebrahim El-Ebiary   Topics Covered: 01:11 – How Ebrahim got into pricing 01:59 – Revenue management’s relationship with pricing and yield management 03:48 – Does Goodyear have revenue management? 04:40 – Defining a coach and what a coach does; Is Mark a coach? 06:05 – Pricing and coaching as different sides of the same coin 07:50 – Why curiosity is important in keeping relationships with customers 09:27 – Questions to ask in order to better understand a customer’s future 11:53 – Why it’s important for tires to be talking to each other 14:26 – Where the idea of communicating tires came from 15:42 – Having the customers take part in the creative process and keeping that relationship with them 19:08 – Being in a zero-sum game situation of price negotiation 23:12 – Expressing complex analysis into simple statements to not lose your customers 26:32 – Pricing advice for today’s listeners   Key Takeaways: “A coach is someone that supports people getting from where they are to where they want to get to, not where he or she wants to get, where they want to get to. A coach does not tell you or does not impose their point of view.” – Ebrahim El-Ebiary “Making money is “the easy part” of it (doing business). Having the story and the vision, now that's where moneys truly made in a sustainable manner.” – Ebrahim El-Ebiary “Discovering the future comes from asking about the legacy that they want to build mixed with free flow working sessions where we pick on each other's ideas jointly.” – Ebrahim El-Ebiary “One thing remains at the heart of business is people. Once we lock in that relationship of trust and joint creativity, then we come back to do business together. That relationship then grows and flourishes, and with that, profits grow and creativity grows and the demand for new products that didn't exist or new services from existing products come to life.” – Ebrahim El-Ebiary “Know the question you're trying to answer before jumping into a detailed analysis or investing in a pricing system software, hiring more people. Just know what question you're answering.” – Ebrahim El-Ebiary   People / Resources Mentioned: Goodyear Tires: http://www.goodyear.com/   Connect with Ebrahim El-Ebiary: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ebrahim-elebiary/ Email: [email protected]   Connect with Mark Stiving:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]  

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on December 15, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/the-best-attitude-for-a-great-value-conversation/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

Costs don't drive pricing, willingness to pay drives prices.  I remember 1989. Yes. I'm that old? I was selling automatic test equipment to the semiconductor industry, and I heard this story on the radio that changed the way. I thought about pricing and costs forever. Intel built the 46 DX, which is the very first dual-core microprocessor in the world. Very expensive.  Of course, AMD decided they were going to create a single core version and they charged a much lower price. So they've taken a lot of business away from it. Yeah. Intel's thinking ‘Hey, we better do something’. So Intel creates a single-core version of their microprocessor and they charge a price more competitive with AMD. And so now they're not losing quite as much business. Now, this story makes all the sense in the world until you learn how Intel made the SX. They first made a DX, a dual-core processor, and then they took an extra manufacturing step with a laser to disable the coprocessor. It actually costs them more to build an SX, a single-core version than it did to build the dual-core version. And yet they sold it at a much lower price. Well, how does that possibly make sense? It makes sense because. Our costs. Aren't what drives our customer's willingness to pay? It's the value to the customer that drives their willingness to pay. We should stop overemphasizing our costs, especially when we're trying to set pricing. It's really about customer value.  We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected].  Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

Mark Stouse is the Chairman and CEO of Proof Analytics. He was 2020’s Top 10 Most Influential Analytics Leaders. He was also CMO/CCO at Honeywell Aerospace, so he has tons of experience. Mark also hosts his own podcast called “Accelerating Value”, a weekly podcast aimed at guiding people in creating, defending, and proving value with the help of experts. In this episode, Mark discusses how analytics lead SaaS businesses to success as he shares insights most SaaS entrepreneurs need to know about the relationship between analytics and pricing.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Discover how a different way of consulting like analytics can help SaaS businesses to become profitable nowadays; Know how much of a game changer analytics is in terms of keeping the relationship between customer loyalty and pricing intact; Find out how the scientific sense of inquiry helps pricing people reach greater heights in relation to sales and pricing with clients   “It isn't that you say, ‘Hey, what are you willing to pay for this?’ That's not the question. You've got to say, ‘tell me about what you're really trying to solve for here and how big a problem is this to you. What would make you feel spectacular?’ Then let's talk about the technical realities, and then let's talk about a price.” – Mark Stouse   Topics Covered: 02:02 – Getting exposed to pricing and learning things through failures with Mark’s experience in Honeywell Aerospace and Proof Analytics 04:06 – Diving into the world of pricing with the help of advisors he trust 06:41 – Starting out in a SaaS company and initially doing consulting: a good way for one to be profitable 09:02 – A different consulting model – analytics – for a better, faster, and cheaper reality nowadays 13:16 – Business and the gap it has with data scientists due to the lack of contextual understanding in both concepts 18:23 – What does Proof Analytics charge for and why is that the right thing for them to charge for? 20:20 – Talking about the concept of 10 models equals 10 questions and how COVID affected the business industry in the past two years 26:05 – The differences in the opportunity costs of small and large companies 30:23 – A model as an indicator of customer success and people’s obsession with margins 33:25 – What makes SaaS beautiful is that it concerns value at all times 35:30 – Mark’s pricing advice for the listeners   Key Takeaways: “If you want to talk about a lesson in the reality of economics, start a SaaS company and you will learn more than you ever dreamed was out there.” – Mark Stouse “The problem has been not the math and not even the data. It has been the issue of how do we operationalize analytics so that everybody is able to make a better decision today than they were making before when they didn't have analytics. It really is taking the existing reality and making it better, faster, cheaper.” – Mark Stouse “Data scientists really don't typically have much subject matter expertise about any part of the business, so as the business person, you have to be very prescriptive with the data scientist in terms of laying out the non-mathematical equation.” – Mark Stouse “If you're a very large enterprise and you're spending $150-$200 million on marketing, what you are really after is maximizing the upside and minimizing the negative impact EPS from bad investments. That's what you're really after. If you are a much smaller company, you're really trying to avoid, among other things, being a two-time loser.” – Mark Stouse “The intersection of customer loyalty and pricing is also a piece that is usually ignored, because pricing is seen in a very short cycle sense rather than something that's a longer time.” – Mark Stouse “The human being has become key to the success of set which probably really and truly always was or should have been. There was just this unhealthy obsession with 90% profit margins.” – Mark Stouse   People / Resources Mentioned: Proof Analytics:https://www.proofanalytics.ai/ Honeywell Aerospace:https://aerospace.honeywell.com/   Connect with Mark Stouse: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/markstouse Email: [email protected]   Connect with Mark Stiving:    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]  

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 [email protected].  Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn  

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 [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

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: Discover how important it is for you to understand the customer’s business first before making them understand how much money they’re going to make once they buy your product; Understand the four pillars of pricing frameworks in organization; and Find out how you can become more efficient in pricing through tips that will help you avoid repeatedly doing the same thing with progress.   “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: Food Tech:https://www.foodtech.com/ Honeywell:https://www.honeywell.com/us/en   Connect with Vikas Pal Boaddh: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikas-boaddh-673a896/?originalSubdomain=my Email: [email protected]   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]  

Yes, pricing is really hard. I personally find it frustrating when I look at companies, doesn't matter the size of the company where they're focused a lot on how do we keep costs down? How do we cut costs? We have procurement people. We hire specific procurement people whose job is to get costs down and their job is to learn how to negotiate better so that we can pay lower prices. And I'm not saying those are bad things. But, you know, pricing is so much more powerful. What if we could negotiate better on our sales side? What if we could communicate value better to our marketplace? What if we understood value to where we could set our prices at a higher point and maybe even build products that have more value. “Pricing is hard. There's no doubt, but that's what business is all about. It is definitely worth investing. I don't know why companies don't.” - Mark Stiving We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected].  Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

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: Discover why data is power and how the understanding of it makes everything better; Understand why an analyst needs to be a good overall communicator if he wants to be good at what he’s doing; Find out how knowing your competitors help you understand where your company and your products should fit in the field.   “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   People / Resources Mentioned: Ferrellgas: https://www.ferrellgas.com/ AmeriGas: https://www.amerigas.com/ Ivan Winfield: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanwinfield Eaton Hydraulics: https://www.eaton.com/us/en-us.html Syngenta: https://www.syngenta.com/en Resideo: https://www.resideo.com/us/en/   Connect with Kevin Coppinger: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmcoppinger   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]  

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on November 24, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/value-based-mindset-is-hard-for-an-individual/  If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

I've spoken with lots of CEOs who believe that they should get higher margins and they want higher margins. And, by the way, doesn't everybody want higher margins? But the key is the CEO as well as pretty much everybody else in the company doesn't truly understand what value means to the customer.  And what that means is that the products they're building aren't necessarily. That valuable to their marketplace.  “Build products that deserve higher margins. “- Mark Stiving If everybody could switch their mindset to believing in value, to understanding what customer value really looks like, we could truly build products that had a lot more value in the marketplace and then charging higher prices and getting higher margins. That just goes along with building better products.  We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected].  Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

Scott Miller is an experienced pricing professional with over 12 years of proven leadership in achieving profit oriented sales growth through advanced pricing techniques. Currently, he works as the Vice President of Pricing at Fiserv. Scott guides the pricing team in developing creative proposals for clients on Fiserv sales of $3B annually. He successfully led and implemented profitable growth and pricing strategies in Fortune 500 companies across numerous industries. In this episode, Scott shares insights in relation to his pricing journey, from the very start of being inspired by Neil Brisbane and now working as Fiserv’s VP of Pricing.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Discover how you can avoid cannibalization of your own sales in other regions as you start going global in business; Know why understanding the context – your customer, your competitors, and outside influences – is important in doing pricing decisions; and Learn more about formula-based pricing and its difference with cost plus pricing   “Understanding the context of the situation is key in making pricing decisions. Understand the customer's viewpoint, understand the competitors that are involved in that situation, even outside influences, as much as you can, a consultant or not. I think those are the key things, and I think those are what people should think about when they're pricing.” – Scott Miller   Topics Covered: 01:24 – How Scott started his career in pricing and what he loves about it 4:11 – Talking about Scott’s exposure to different concepts, the rebates, and the relationship between pricing and the customers 8:29 – Leaving Motorola and working in Hollister 11:40 – Going back to Motorola in a global role, dealing with arbitrage, and taking the risk of currency fluctuations 15:55 – Scott’s new environment in Air Gas and the discussion about formula-based pricing’s difference to cost plus pricing 19:27 – Why do people consider the pass through of AWS costs? What should they consider in doing so? 24:10 – Starting his journey with Fiserv through LinkedIn 26:05 – Discussion about companies taking all their overhead costs which affect their product’s standard price 27:41 – “Understanding the context of the situation is key in making pricing decisions.”   Key Takeaways: “We didn't have a ton of tricks. Mostly, it was just paying attention to our own selling price.” – Scott Miller “We didn't deal with it [the risk of currency fluctuations] from the other side of trying to put the risk on the customers; we took the risk.” – Scott Miller “The formula itself – coming up with something that's agreeable to both parties, you have to be kind of specific in how it ends out in the contract to make sure if for any reason that index goes negative on you, you’d want to make sure that that's not a price break. That this is only zero or up. It's not a ‘Now, we're going to start cutting costs because the index has went under.’ You have to be careful.” – Scott Miller “Try to do it on a calendar date rather than like a 12-month from contract date, because you get into the business of constantly running these calculations. If you can get away with just doing it once a year, then maybe you're just looking at the labor cost once and the transportation costs depending on how you built those formulas. Otherwise, you're redoing it every time the contract comes due.” – Scott Miller   People / Resources Mentioned: Fiserv: https://www.fiserv.com/   Connect with Scott Miller: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmillernetwork/   Connect with Mark Stiving:   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]  

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on November 17, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/freemium-or-free-trial/   If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

Gross margin never matters to pricing. Occasionally, contribution margin does. This might feel like accounting to you.  Gross margin, contribution margin…. but you've probably heard me say, 'Fixed costs never matter to pricing. Never, never, never.’  Now, if you believe that here's a really simple accounting concept.  “Gross margin includes allocated fixed costs to the cost of a product. Contribution margin does not include allocated fixed costs. “- Mark Stiving So if we simply take the rule that fixed costs never mattered in pricing, then when we're making pricing decisions, we shouldn't be looking at gross margins. Sometimes we want to look at contribution margin, especially if we're pricing. Uh, take it or leave it type products.  And we can talk about that some other day.  So please don't use gross margin.  We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected].  Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

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: Find out why you must know what your customer values in order to provide them with what they want; Learn why understanding ICPs and KPIs is important for your sales growth; Rather than losing a client because you thought you did what was right, find out how to close deals effectively.   “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   People / Resources Mentioned: Sales IQ Group: https://www.salesiqglobal.com/   Connect with Luigi Prestinenzi: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luigiprestinenzi/?originalSubdomain=au   Connect with Mark Stiving:   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]  

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 [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

Do I really have to tell you how pricing is for?  I hope not, but let's talk about powerful pricing. It is incredibly powerful.  You might've heard that, if you could improve pricing by 1% on average, that has an impact of 10% or 11% profitability on your company. This is huge.  “Pricing is such an amazing topic. It's complex, quantitative, and psychological. It's huge, powerful, and emotional. Most of all it's fun.”- Mark Stiving This is powerful, but I have to say what I think I love the most about pricing is nobody else really understands it.  Once we become an expert at pricing, a value, and we're able to communicate that in other departments, in our company, we ended up building our own reputation. We build our own value inside the company because we're able to do things and we know things that other people don't. Now that doesn't mean that we can be A-holes about it. We have to teach. We have to be collaborative.  We're helping people do their jobs better. But if every department in the company focused on customer perceived value, which is something that you and I understand better than most, then the company would be much, much better off. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected].  Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn  

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: Learn how to instill a focus on pricing within your organization Find out how to differentiate your product and communicate your value Discover how to drive a transformative change within your company by partnering with salespeople to sell on value rather than price   "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   People/Resources Mentioned: McDonald's: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mcdonald%27s-corporation/ Ecco Restaurant: https://www.ecco-atlanta.com/   Connect with Kate Mandrell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-mandrell/   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on October 27, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/pricing-saas-on-top-of-aws/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

Nobody cares about your features. They only care about what value your features provide them.  That happens to be one of my favorite sayings. ‘Nobody cares about your features.’ And what's pretty fascinating is when you look at companies' webpages, what do they talk about?  They talk about their products. They talk about their features and it's true. Nobody really cares.   “Nobody cares about your features. They only care about what value your features provide them.” - Mark Stiving Actually experts can look at one of your features or look at your product and say, yeah, I know what that does for me. I know what value, I'm going to be able to get out of this. But how many people are truly experts when they're shopping for your product?  Most people look at your features and don't know if that's important or not. They don't know if they need it.  They don't know how much value they're going to get from it. If they buy your product and use that feature a much better approach is to think about value.  What does value mean to your customer? And I can tell you what value actually means. It means they have a problem. Can you identify with the problem they're looking for a result?  What's the result they're hoping to achieve and achieving that result provides value to them. In the B2B world, that value is measured in dollars in increased profitability.  Our job needs to be, how do we find the words to resonate with our marketplace?  How do we find the ways to communicate that we're providing value to our buyers and not expecting our buyers to look at our feature set and understand what we can do for them. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected].  Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

Joe Woodard's vision is to "transform small businesses through small business advisors." And in the service of that vision, he and his team educate, coach, provide resources and build communities for small business advisors, with the overarching goal of empowering them to play a powerful, high-impact advisory role with their clients. In this episode, Joe shares how you can create product differentiation that provides maximum pricing leverage where people lean in to the product’s value more than the price.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Find out the key factors that create pricing leverage Find out how to make your services or products more valuable Learn how to truly get differentiated from among the rest of your competitors   "Well, I'm going to restate something I've already said: Be unlike everybody else. But I'm going to state something I haven't stated before: Make sure you over-manage your brand because you could be unlike everybody else, and nobody knows it." - Joe Woodard   Topics Covered: 01:50 - Talking about classical Greek 02:40 - Coaching business with a pricing attitude 06:40 - Getting rid of clients you don't want to work with and keeping the ones you want 11:18 - How 'relationship work' gets the highest capacity yield off the least valuable clients 12:34 - Leveraging your unique knowledge or skill to add value to your client 18:39 - Product differentiation: flat fee versus hourly pricing 25:59 - Is it impossible to get accountants to coach their clients on price and what are they capable and very good at doing 28:46 - Joe's pricing advice that can create a significant impact on one's business   Key Takeaways: "Just because you're valuable and essential, though, doesn't mean that that creates pricing leverage. You must also be differentiated and unique, and ultimately you must be wealth-generating." - Joe Woodard "To have an empowerment impact on small business, they must be healthy themselves, and health naturally involves healthy pricing." - Joe Woodard “Their problem is they're underpricing because they're penalizing their own efficiency. So, you're benefiting from the fact that they're penalizing themselves. And as long as that exists in the space, and it's going to exist in the space pervasively that people are flattening it out to increase efficiencies and gross profit margin, you are not going to be able to compete on price. So, the only way to get out of that trap for you, as the client and them as the professional is to not offer flat fee services, but instead to offer subscription services.” - Joe Woodard   People/ Resources Mentioned: Ron Baker: https://impactpricing.com/podcast/ep44-ronald-j-baker-trash-the-timesheet-exploring-opportunities-in-subscription-businesses/ Xero: https://www.xero.com/ Sage: https://www.sage.com/en-us/ Intuit: https://www.intuit.com/ H&R Block: https://www.hrblock.com/ Liberty Tax: https://www.libertytax.com/ Tax Slayer: https://www.taxslayer.com/ Turbo Tax: https://turbotax.intuit.com/   Connect with Joe Woodard: Website: https://www.woodard.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/quickbooksadvisor/   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on October 20, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/pricing-saas-on-top-of-aws/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

I hate the word commodity. When I see product managers or marketers or salespeople using it, it makes me think they're lazy. It makes me think they haven't thought through what they're really saying because there really is no such thing as a commodity.  Think about the ultimate commodity product for second and that's gold. I could look online and tell you what the spot price is for gold right now.  And then I could go to a webpage and I could buy a gold medallion and it turns out if I go to more than one gold broker, I'm going to get a different price for that gold coin. “There is no such thing as a commodity. There is no such thing as a commodity. There is no such thing.” - Mark Stiving Now, why is that even possible?  This is a commodity.  How could one company be charging me more money than another company would?  Well, there are lots of reasons. Maybe the company that charges more has faster delivery or better credit terms, or they've built a reputation with me, or they have a better looking webpage or they do a better job at marketing and attracting customers. There are lots of possible reasons. Maybe the gold itself is a commodity, but there's so much going on around any acquisition, any purchase that we shouldn't be thinking about our product as a commodity, because the moment we think we have a commodity, we stop thinking about how can we differentiate it? How can we create value in the buyer's mind? So repeat after me. There is no such thing as a commodity.  We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected].  Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

Mark Cox has been fortunate enough to have sold, structured, and negotiated some of the largest single-sale transactions in North America (including a billion-dollar transaction with a top-10 U.S. bank). He founded In the Funnel (ITF) with the mission of dramatically improving the performance and professionalism of business to business sales teams. He accomplished this via (1) Public Sales Workshops for salespeople and sales managers and (2) Sales Enablement Consulting. During this episode, Mark discusses how it is crucial for salespeople to focus on selling value instead of price. The company would benefit from this move economically, ensuring long-term profitability.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Learn how your capability to communicate as a salesperson contributes to your customer’s desired business outcome Uncover top 3 business leader's desired outcomes for each sales transaction to help you lead the sales conversation with value rather than pitch Learn the 'common sense revolution' every salesperson needs to achieve top-tier results   "Don't give a price until you understand the impact of the solution on the customer." - Mark Cox   Topics Covered: 01:19 - The economic impact of selling on value versus on price 02:39 - Talking about the crisis in professional sales 05:44 - Understanding the customers' problems and the desired outcome they want to achieve 09:00 - What should transpire in a value conversation 14:28 - Breaking the wall that often goes up in an encounter with the salesperson 16:41 - Talking value in terms of communication not so much in financial exchange 19:37 - Overcoming fear in outbound demand generation 21:50 - Professional sales compared to performance art and a professional sport 23:38 - How to capture that value proposition in twenty minutes 25:05 - Pricing advice that gives a great impact on one's business 25:49 - Understanding 'solution selling'   Key Takeaways: "Let's get a little away from trying to persuade and control and trick and do all of these crazy things. Why don't we just actually help buyers buy, help them make great decisions, help them get to a better future? And the more they believe we're sincere and authentic in our desire to do that, the better off we're going to do." - Mark Cox "The near version of a salesperson to trick somebody into doing something, nobody wants to get persuaded to do anything." - Mark Cox "People don't buy software; they actually buy what it does for them. The one thing I will kind of call out that I'd love to see a little more up today in professional sales, we're trying to help. The big job though is, we do really need to understand that customer we're reaching out to." - Mark Cox "This is why we identify this ideal customer profile really, what are they going through? What are they trying to do? And so instead of selling my product when I'm talking to a client or prospect, the first couple of conversations are: just let me understand you and your business and your environment and what you're trying to achieve. "- Mark Cox "The whole sort of system right now in professional sales is a little bit broken. And that's where we're coming at it with just saying, let's just have this common-sense revolution here. Let's start to sell the way somebody actually wants to buy and start to sell the way you want to buy. And also go at this whole thing so you can be proud of what you do for a living." - Mark Cox   People / Resources Mentioned: Philip Squire: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipsquire/?originalSubdomain=uk Levi's: https://www.levistrauss.com/   Connect with Mark Cox: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markandrewcox/ Email: [email protected]   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

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 [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

Buyers by perceived value, but perceived value is easiest to come about. If we build products that are better than our competitors, and then we make sure we communicate that to our customers so they understand our products are better. “You create real value by improving your products and services relative to your competition.”- Mark Stiving So I break this up into real value and perceived value perceived says, yes, we had to have done our marketing, but real value says. Is our product truly better than our competitions?  If you want to win more deals, we should be building products that truly are better than our competitors. So let's be thinking about what it is that our competitors have? What can we do better?  And in particular, what problems does our marketplace have that our competitors are not addressing? If we can do that exceptionally well. And then we're able to communicate that to the marketplace.  We end up winning more deals at higher prices.  We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected].  Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn  

Jennifer Kerr is a results-driven professional with a proven track record of delivering top and bottom-line profitability. She is a strategic thinker with the ability to create a strategy, vision, and execute to promote business growth. With a focus on capturing customer value, she consistently delivered projects on time and on budget.    In this episode, Jennifer talks about designing your sales compensation plan and structure to drive behavior and incentivize salespeople appropriately.       Why you have to check out today's podcast:    Discover how to use sales compensation to motivate salespeople to bring in more revenue for your company     Learn how to use KPIs to motivate your sales team to close deals at higher prices by incorporating them into your compensation structure   Find out how salespeople can sell value rather than price        "Value-based pricing has to meet value-based selling in order to be effective."   - Jennifer Kerr      Topics Covered:    01:25 - What led to a pricing role for Jennifer  02:24 - How the pricing tool she created impacted the company  04:34 - A general overview of sales compensation    08:26 - Strategic initiative that is a win-win for both the company and the salesperson  08:50 - How to drive better performance from salespeople  13:27 - The importance of sales compensation base salary to incentivize salespeople  17:23 - What you can do when salespeople don't close any deal after taking the necessary steps   18:38 - Framing an incentive plan side-by-side with value-based selling  20:21 - What is selling value all about  21:40 - Why do salespeople not able to articulate value selling naturally?  25:08 - Leveraging behavioral economics and behavioral insights on salespeople  25:27 - Sharing a tip on how she's using behavioral economics   28:46 - Salespeople wanting a path of least resistance and why they do and how not to let them lead with price      Key Takeaways:    "When you think about more program-based selling, if you're a company or an organization that are on a more mature level, then I think you might want to stop considering widget-based pay, which, in and of itself, could be the lever to pull to get salespeople to sell deals at higher prices and get more margin." - Jennifer Kerr    "If you have four or five steps, and you're not aware, then the design might be off. I go back then to, is the plan design right? I mean, plan design harder." - Jennifer Kerr    "Sales are hard. And that's where I think as pricers, we can certainly help frame up that value base, that value pitch, and flip it into value-based selling. And I think organizations that really focus on that end up winning more than they end up losing." - Jennifer Kerr    "When I say selling value, I think it's how does my product, how does my service impact the P&L of the person I'm selling that to whether it's B2B or how does it impact the household that I'm selling this to. To me, that's value selling because you're not starting with price. And if you start with price, you've already lost in the war of price." - Jennifer Kerr    "Price the product based on its value and the value to the customer. And then go value-base sell it. That's transformational for any organization." - Jennifer Kerr      Connect with Jennifer Kerr:       Email: [email protected]  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-kerr63/      Connect with Mark Stiving:       Email: [email protected]  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ 

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on October 6, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/dont-sell-credits/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

Simon Kucher & Partners did a study that found that a huge percentage of people thought that they were in a price war. But when you ask the people who thought they were in a price war, who started it. It was like 80% said the other guy started it. Remember that last deal that came in and the sales person said, ‘Hey, we really have to do a deep discount. Otherwise, we're going to lose this.’ And so we did a deep discount.  What is your competitor just seeing? They just saw you competing on price. "Don't compete on price, compete on value." - Mark Stiving We often think our competitors are competing on price, wherein truth, they're thinking the exact same things we are. How can we win more deals at higher prices? How can we change the conversation to value instead of price? So my recommendation is to focus much, much more on value than on price.  See, if we can win deals that way your competitors are trying to do the same. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected].  Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn  

Wendy Johnson started out as an M&A consultant at Accenture, and she got to IBM ten years ago. Now, she is the Vice President at PagerDuty. In this episode, Wendy talks about the reasons you work with a consultant and not just with someone internally. She emphasize the idea of looking at pricing not as a project but as a process that needs tweaking as you go along and not overhauling.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Discover the reasons how companies benefit from hiring external consultants Find out the advantages and disadvantages of hiring external vs. internal consultants. Find out how to hire and work with an excellent consultant to avoid wasting money, time, and effort.   “Structure your data and your dashboards in a way to inform all your decisions and such that all of the decisions you make in pricing could be data-driven.” - Wendy Johnson   Topics Covered: 01:39 - Why is it relevant to talk now about a topic on consultants 02:15 - Getting consultants versus hiring them 04:52 - Making the most of a consultant’s engagement with the company 06:04 - Engaging consultants and the value they contribute to the company 07:25 - Driving force behind onboarding a consultant 08:11 - Observation on how consultants work 09:03 - Consultants hiring their own excellent talents 11:00 - Why hire a pricing leader in your company before hiring a consultant 12:34 - What you can do to get other executives involved in getting a consultant 13:12 - One good thing to think about getting data analysts to get involved with consultants 13:58 - Way of knowing for a successful engagement 15:32 - Disagreeable actions consultants do and how to avoid them 17:18 - Thoughts on hiring second consultants and pricing 19:21 - Her pricing advice that could greatly impact one’s business 20:28 - Important KPIs she looks at in her dashboard   Key Takeaways: “I found that the best way to use consultants and the best way to enter into those relationships is to have a structured engagement with a very finite piece of work or finite task. I think a lot of times the project is too broad. And you end up when that engagement ends, not being left with enough to actually use the work they've done.” - Wendy Johnson “I think we have to be thoughtful when we engage the consultant not only thinking about the piece of work that they want us to deliver but including what it's going to look like after they leave, like what tools are they leaving for us to use, to reassess.” - Wendy Johnson “There's been a scenario where we knew we just did not have enough feet on the ground doing a huge transformation. You don't necessarily want to hire a lot of talent, because that capacity need is temporary. So, then you figure out how to fill that temporarily, with consultants, or there's a specific skill set that you know and that's temporary as well.” - Wendy Johnson “I think if we have an answer to our question at the end of the engagement, and then if we have a way to continue doing that work, we're not stuck with that, that’s success.” - Wendy Johnson “Pricing shouldn't always be project work. You should build a framework, and there should be some consistent cadence and how you measure performance and you should be tweaking more than overhauling.” - Wendy Johnson   Connect with Wendy Johnson:   Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendykimjohnson/   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on Sept 29, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/usage-based-pricing-is-not-new/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

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 [email protected].  Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn  

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: Discover how strategic pricing is critical to defining winners and losers in today's increasingly competitive environment Learn about price implementation and how to go about getting people to adopt new strategies Learn how you can handle pricing when inflation occurs   “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: Quantiz Pricing Solutions: http://www.quantiz.com.br   Connect with Frederico Zornig: Website: http://www.quantiz.com.br LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fzornig/ Email: [email protected]   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on Sept 22, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/combining-cost-plus-and-value-based-pricing/  If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

It seems obvious to me that we want to find the buyers that value our products the most and then sell to them.  But once we really start to understand what value means, when we start to understand that value is really about solving buyers' problems, what problems do they have? What results might they expect and value comes from what's the impact of those results? Once we understand that well, we start looking around and we look at many, many different potential customers or even existing customers. We can start to articulate, which are the problems that are most painful. “Find the buyers that value your product the most. Sell to them.” - Mark Stiving What are the results? People who have those problems are most likely going to experience going to achieve. And then finally, how important, how valuable, how impactful is it when people get that? When we can identify that. Now it's easy for us to say, oh, these are the people. Or at least these are the problems that are most impactful and that have the most value to solve. That's where we should be spending our time. When we try to spend our time selling products to people who don't value the solution or the results very much, we're really wasting our time putting in tons of effort. Find the buyers, the value, your product, the most. Sell to them.  We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected].  Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn  

Kyle Poyar is the Vice President for Market Strategy at OpenView since 2016.  He is responsible for helping OpenView’s portfolio companies accelerate top-line growth through deep insights.  He leads segmentation, positioning, channel/partner strategy, new market entry, and packaging/pricing initiatives, partnering closely with portfolio leadership teams. He also covers OpenView’s SaaS metrics and benchmarking research.   Previously, he worked for Simon-Kucher & Partners as a Pricing Consultant for six years.  Kyle earned his AB Economics & Environmental Studies at Brown University.  He graduated Magna cum Laude with departmental honors in Environmental Studies. In this episode, Kyle shares how you have to charge based on a pricing metric that has a lifetime value to your business.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Find out the many nuances of usage-based pricing and see where customers are seeing value and provide more of that Understand the nuances between consumers and businesses in terms of how they make purchase decisions so you create a long-term value and availability to expand customers over time Find out what forms part of your ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) and track them to see the health of your business   “Really do the work to figure out what are the one or two usage-based metrics that correspond with the value your customers see. You might find that, hey, these are things where the customers you keep or that spend more tend to consume more of that, as opposed to the ones who churn tend to, you know, consume less of it. And think about how you could maybe incorporate that as like a limit or a fence from one package to the next.” - Kyle Poyar   Topics Covered: 01:39 - Defining usage-based pricing 02:34 - Usage-based pricing being a customer-friendly model 04:40 - Is buying a hamburger at McDonald’s a usage-based pricing? 05:17 - Pricing metrics as also usage-based pricing 06:47 - The nuances to think about in usage-based companies 08:04 - That rollover minutes that is giving folks that peace of mind 09:10 - Understanding usage-based subscription tiers 10:23 - Kyle’s interpretation of Zuora’s report where it says 25% usage and 75% subscription 11:48 - Why minutes are probably not the best value driver or value metric for phone companies 13:50 - What is part of your annual recurring revenue (ARR) 17:11 - Lifetime value of customer 20:10 - How credits can get in the way of simplifying customers’ buying experience 23:34 - Are credits related to the value the customer gets or to the usage companies are using 25:50 - Credits as used and shown in arcade games 26:48 - Piece of pricing advice that can greatly impact one’s business   Key Takeaways: “You don't necessarily want to price out usage. If your usage metric is declining rather than increasing, you'd rather make a creative move and say, hey, we're going to give you unlimited usage, but we're going to charge you per gigabyte of data.” - Kyle Poyar “While you don't want to have unprofitable customers, you really need to simplify the buying experience for them. And trying to align how you charge with how someone sees value, and how your cost structure is set up is really on you. It's not the customer's responsibility.” - Kyle Poyar “A good way of thinking about credits is building a retainer for a customer and having an agreed upon rate schedule at which they will draw down that retainer.” - Kyle Poyar   People / Resources Mentioned: Twilio: https://www.twilio.com/ Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/ SendGrid: https://sendgrid.com/ Zuora: https://www.zuora.com/   Connect with Kyle Poyar: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-poyar/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/poyark?lang=en   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

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 [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

Robert Tinterov is a CEO at Atenga Insights Group. He is a serial entrepreneur, investor, Advisor, and his expertise are also in Sales, Marketing, General Management, Product development, and disrupting digital media. In this episode, Robert talks about how you can explore your pricing walls and use it to increase demand for your business and scale your growth.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Learn to identify your price walls so you can map prices according to your target audience and maximize profits Find out how to ask the right question about a person's willingness to pay Learn why pricing potential needs to be raised in the boardroom and how it can be done   “Learn and explore your price walls. Instead of avoiding them, work with them, use them and create higher demand for your products or services.” - Robert Tinterov   Topics Covered: 01:38 - How he got into pricing 02:45 - What does Atenga focuses on 04:00 - Three levels of potential users of Atenga 05:01 - People purchasing from Atenga versus Atenga selling to them 05:38 - A process they developed to help clients 07:36 - Reasons why price walls exist 08:19 - What usually is the last digit for pricing walls 09:08 - Asking a question on someone’s willingness to pay without being obvious about it 11:08 - How to arrive at the last digit that is nine and can they tell the difference in demand on 350 versus 359 12:17 - Ways Atenga finds customers 13:01 - Robert’s biggest concern 14:34 - Why is pricing not yet in the boardroom’s agenda and what can be done to Improve on this aspect 19:03 - Pricing advice that can create great impact in one’s business 19:46 - Starting small and doing the easiest but has the most impact to the company   Key Takeaways: “Our secret sauce (knowing one’s willingness to pay) is like enhancing well-known processes, and then combining that with accessible, firsthand survey data, instead of looking at transactional data.” - Robert Tinterov “I think the pricing question as such, is not being treated as it should in a lot of businesses, and hence why people don't really take care of this. That's why people are leaving money on the table. They're developing features and functions that people don't want to buy. And that won't create sustainable companies.” - Robert Tinterov “You can't do everything, but you need to do something, just start doing more about your pricing in your business, and you will see effects and results quicker than you can expect.” - Robert Tinterov   Connect with Robert Tinterov: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberttinterov/ Email: [email protected]   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

To be a pricing leader, you must be a value-based business.  Welcome to the Impact Pricing Memecast, where I take one of our daily memes and provide a little bit more insight behind the word.  In general, a company is either a pricing leader or a pricing follower. A pricing leader is someone who looks at the steady-state of pricing and says, we're going to change our prices first. “If you want to be a pricing leader, you really need to be focused on value, not on cost plus.” - Mark Stiving  And typically the rest of the market is going to follow that pricing leader. However, if you want to be a pricing leader, you really need to be focused on value, not on cost plus.  Especially not on competitive pricing. Once you, as a company can focus on value, you have the ability to see that the market is willing to pay more than what you are currently charging. You have the ability to see that your products are highly differentiated from your competitors or that you've got very loyal customers who are going to stay with you. Even if you raise prices above where they are relative to your competition.  When you adopt this concept of truly understanding how customers perceive value, then you have this ability to say, we're going to lead the price change because even if nobody ever follows, we're going to be better off. We understand the way our buyers are making decisions. But the great news is if you're a pricing leader and you choose to increase prices because you know, you can get away. The odds are really good.  Your competition is going to follow anyway, which simply raises industry profits, which also means your profits. So if you want to be a pricing leader, you need to be focused on value.  We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected].  Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

For a change, Mark doesn't have a guest for today. Instead, he answers questions he would have liked interviewers to ask him. And part of that is, he highlights some important ideas and insights inside his new book with the title of 'Win Keep Grow: How to Price and Package to Accelerate Your Subscription Business.' Join us in this episode as we get to preview some of the golden nuggets in Mark's newest book.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Find out the important revenue buckets you must manage in subscriptions, so you maximize revenue Find out the three essential value levers that companies who are running subscriptions should have to manage and think about to arrive at a good pricing decision Discover four ways to grow your customers, so you increase revenue   "One of many things I find fascinating about subscriptions is that many subscription companies have figured out I have to go win customers, and I have to go keep customers. But far too few have figured out, hey, I really should spend time growing customers. And the real reason for that is it's not urgent."  - Mark Stiving   Topics Covered: 01:05 - Why Mark wrote the book 'Win Keep Grow' 02:13 - The three key parts he considered when he wrote the book 03:05 - What he would do if he would rewrite the book and why 04:10 - How traditional businesses differ from subscription type ones 04:42 - Important three value levers that he built into the book 08:56 - Four ways to grow a customer 11:09 - Something fascinating about subscriptions 12:11 - Mark's recommendation to companies   Key Takeaways: "What I found fascinating about these three value levers is they seemed obvious to me as I'm working on subscriptions. And then you step back and say, Well wait, all three of those value levers are crucial for every business, we just don't stop and think about them that way." - Mark Stiving "If we can target a really clear market segment, and we can build a product around that market segment, we can create the right packaging for it; we could have the right pricing metrics for it, then that market segment might have a higher willingness to pay. We'll be able to keep them longer, and we'll be able to grow more revenue from them. So, it just makes a ton of sense for us to be focusing a lot on market segments in our subscription world. But we should be doing that in our traditional business as well." - Mark Stiving "The fact that we're constantly in contact with and helping and delivering value to our current customers gives us the ability to package our products in a way that we can continue to grow our revenue." - Mark Stiving "If we charge for the right things, and our customers use more of our product because we're charging for the usage of our product, they end up paying us more. But what's really important about that is, as our customers use more of our product, they're getting more value. It's okay that they pay us more. It isn't like we're trying to gouge them; we're simply saying to them, hey, as you get more value, you pay us more money. And that seems really reasonable." - Mark Stiving   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on Sept 8, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/messaging-a-price-increase/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

The best pricing metrics are highly correlated with users value metrics.  A pricing metric is what do we charge for McDonald's charges for hamburgers? That's a simple pricing metric, PayPal charges a percentage of the revenue that we collect. That's a pricing metric. There are many different types of pricing metrics, especially in the world of SaaS. We have the ability to choose many, many different possible pricing metrics. We could choose the number of clicks we could choose. The number of leads we could choose, the amount of data that somebody downloads or the number of gigabytes. Someone has access to there's many, many different possible. Pricing metrics. Probably the most common is users. How many users are there or a per seat basis, we get to choose what pricing metric we want to use. And what we want to do is choose a pricing metric that is highly correlated with a value metric and a value metric is how is it that a customer perceives value from the product. “Choose a pricing metric that is highly correlated with a value metric.”- Mark Stiving Now, if you think about Netflix a long, long time ago when they first came out, they put Blockbuster out of business. Well, how did they do that? They did that by changing the pricing metric metric. Blockbuster was charging rentals of a movie by the night plus late fees. If you forgot to return it, Blockbuster changed the entire pricing model. And instead of charging a rental per night, They charged a monthly subscription, which said how many DVDs you were allowed to have at your house at any one point in time. They just changed the pricing metric. And because people love that pricing metrics so much more than they loved paying late fees to blockbuster. Netflix took off. What you want to do is think really hard about how is it that your customers perceive value. And then see if you can find a pricing metric, what is it that we're going to charge for that is highly correlated with how your customers perceive that. PayPal is probably the most perfect example of this possible as a salesperson, as a selling company, I may X except revenue using PayPal. So somebody pays me money using PayPal, and I love getting more money. The more money I make, this is just awesome. This makes me happy. Well, PayPal takes a small percentage of that. Well, I don't like giving PayPal a small percentage of the money I make, but I like making money. I hope someday I pay PayPal a million dollars in a year because that meant I made $50 million. If they're taking 2%, you can see how their pricing metric is highly correlated with how I perceive value. That's what you want to be thinking about your best pricing metrics are highly correlated with users, value metrics.  We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected].  Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn  

With over 20 years of software experience, Ryan Glushkoff provides pricing and product marketing expertise for business-to-business (B2B) software companies. This includes offer packaging, pricing, market research, and pricing strategy and organization. Prior to founding Fraction8, Ryan cut his teeth in both the pre-sales and post-sales world for both mass-marketing and custom-enterprise software companies, which gives him a unique perspective on how SaaS companies need to price and market themselves for success. In this episode, Ryan shares what important data set his qualitative and quantitative interviews and surveys uncover to arrive at a pricing decision.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Find out the three types of competitive research you can use to understand your competitors’ offer structure so you come up with the right pricing decision Learn about what different companies are using in their pricing structure Find out what is of utmost reason for putting your price online   “Pricing is a team sport. All of those different groups need to be part of the decision. So, it's incumbent upon the product team to steward the rest of the organization through that decision making process.” - Ryan Glushkoff   Topics Covered: 01:36 - What he does as a B2B technology pricing consultant 03:32 - Doing qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys 04:17 - Aha moments when it comes to clients saying what they claim customers value versus what customers say they value 05:16 - Important data points uncovered with qualitative and quantitative interviews 05:57 - What is competitive research and its different types 07:44 - Times when you consider pricing as part science and part art 08:46 - Going the same pricing metric as the competitor versus charging with better options 09:56 - Sharing his concern about using different pricing metrics 10:38 - Perpetual license of moving to SaaS 11:23 - Touching on usage-based pricing 12:43 - Outcome-based pricing being a version of user-based pricing 13:47 - PayPal and tollbooth pricing 14:41 - Are Lyft and Uber subscription-based companies 15:06 - Price structure of AWS and how it’s different from Uber 18:48 - Regularly buying diet Coke compared to subscription-based 19:37 - What he thinks of putting pricing online 21:42 - When it’s not proper to pricing online 23:28 - His thoughts to a recommendation of putting a price range versus none at all 24:35 - Which way to go -- put price online or not 26:14 - When do companies miss part of their pricing research 26:44 - Where should pricing lives in a company 30:24 - How pricing is screaming for a center of excellence type of approach 31:58 - His best pricing advice that can have a great impact on one’s business 32:27 - Does he actually ask, ‘What are you willing to pay’ 33:33 - Mark’s answer to Ryan’s question on why he asks, ‘What are you willing to pay’   Key Takeaways: “Competitive research is something that is really good to know, but since every company has their own unique value proposition that they bring to market, just copying a competitor, you're probably leaving something on the table by doing that, or you're selling yourself short.” - Ryan Glushkoff “If you'd ask which side of the fence I would come on, or land on for, whether to put your pricing online or not, I would err on the side of putting it online. The idea of maintaining positive control of the sales conversation is paramount. Especially if you do your homework and you're confident in the research that you've done that informs the value of your solution, the price that people are willing to pay.” - Ryan Glushkoff “I really think it [Pricing] should live in the product organization because the product owner is really the CEO of the product; the product team has the deepest understanding of the problems that the buyer and the user are facing. They have the deepest understanding of how to go about solving those problems, through the features and capabilities that the solution is offering.”  - Ryan Glushkoff   People/Resources Mentioned: PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/ph/home Lyft: https://www.lyft.com/ Uber: https://www.uber.com/tw/en/ AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/   Connect with Ryan Glushkoff: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glushkoff/ Email: [email protected]   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on Sept 1, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/the-cost-of-win-keep-grow/  If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn

There's really only two basic types of value that customers can get. And that's real value and perceived value. Real value is after they've bought the product they're using it. How does it truly impact their life? How does it really make a difference or solve their problems or yield results?  That's real value in the world of B2B. We could think of real value as economic value. How much more money does it make or save the customer? That's real value. However, before somebody buys the product, they don't really know the real value. “Perceived value is the only value that matters in price.” -Mark Stiving In fact, nobody really knows how much value any specific customer is going to be able to get from any specific product. What that means is that before somebody purchases our product, it's all about perceived value. What does a customer believe they're going to get after the fact? What we need to be thinking of in terms of setting prices or communicating value to our marketplace is making sure our buyers maintain the highest level of perceived value possible from our product.  Now I'm a huge proponent of creating products that have real value and then making sure we communicate that value to our customers. So their perceptions are really close to reality.  We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected].  Now go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn  

Jeff Robinson is the CEO at Revolution Pricing LLC and Author of Price for Growth! In this episode, Jeff shares how pricing should be a strategic effort in driving a company's growth. He talks about how pricing executives should think in terms of long-term margin, having growth precedes profit.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Find out why pricing people should be at the front and center in driving value conversations for strategizing a company's growth Learn how to look at the customers' value long-term and generating profit for life rather than looking out for profit for a year and ruining your long-term profit Discover the two macro goals of pricing so you think of it as a long-term profit-generating engine   "Think about the growth aspect of your business before you think about the profit aspect of your business. Think about the engine of growth before you think about harvesting profits." - Jeff Robinson   Topics Covered: 01:31 - How he started his pricing career 02:34 - Sharing his story of why he stayed with PROS for almost two decades 04:46 - What happens when salespeople have discount authority 06:20 - Different pricing models 07:36 - Are salespeople the best ones to determine pricing strategy? 10:18 - What he thinks of price differentiation 11:53 - Fairness in pricing - what it really means 15:19 - It's almost never really about pricing; it's about value 17:58 - Can pricing people make or add more value as an internal consultant? 20:40 - What he'd like to see happen at the level of Pricing Director 23:06 - Pricing's two different kinds of macro goals 26:14 - What growth strategy should look like 27:40 - Win, keep, grow - what does it refer to 29:42 - Jeff's pricing advice that can greatly impact one's business    Key Takeaways: "Price differentiation is not only fine, I think it's desirable. But I think you got to do it in a way that you can maintain a good customer experience across your customer base." - Jeff Robinson "Customers hate that they're getting priced based on their willingness to agree. If it's not fair, you're going to get a lot of blowbacks. If it is fair, then they'll play along. Look at the airline industry; you have tons of differentiated pricing. But I think most people understand the game; they understand there's some objectivity behind where the pricing is coming from." - Jeff Robinson "Pricing needs to be at the forefront. I think pricing should be integral to the entire growth strategy of the company. And the reason I say that is because I think they have the most data. And I think they theoretically have the capability to understand all these intersections, if that makes sense." - Jeff Robinson "Can pricing people make or add more value as an internal consultant? Yeah, definitely. Because as an internal consultant, they can operate at a level where they can add a lot of value, and they don't have to go into every minute detail. They can go into the level of detail that's needed." - Jeff Robinson "The whole idea is if you think about growth precedes profits, then from a pricing perspective, pricing leadership should be thinking about growth first, and then thinking about profits when the time's right." - Jeff Robinson   People/Resources Mentioned: Price For Growth by Jeff Robinson: https://www.amazon.com/Price-Growth-Revolutionary-Step-Step-ebook/dp/B08Z5YTGTZ   Connect with Jeff Robinson: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrobinson4/ Email: [email protected]   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

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 [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: [email protected] LinkedIn