How to Stop Undervaluing Your Product—And Start Getting Paid What It's Worth with Rich Mironov

Rich Mironov provides product management leadership and coaching to large and small tech companies, with more than 150 clients since 2001. His focus includes: Coaching VPs of Product and CPOs, Organizing the product organization, and Stepping in (occasionally) as a 'smokejumper' VP of Product Management.

In this episode, Rich shares that product managers must define economic value before development. He believes sales teams should communicate, not calculate, value using simple tools. And he advises focusing on broad market data instead of over-relying on top accounts.

Why you have to check out today's podcast:

• Learn how to define and communicate economic value effectively.
• Understand how sales teams and product managers can align for better pricing decisions.
• Gain actionable tips on framing value in sales conversations without overwhelming buyers.

"You want to look for an aggregate set of data about what's happening in your marketplace as opposed to attaching a lot of overweight to your two largest accounts."

- Rich Mironov

Topics Covered:

01:22 - Describing his journey into product management and an overview of his role here

03:40 - Differentiating B2C pricing versus B2B pricing as it relates to product management

09:33 - Discussing the balance between standardized pricing for most customers and the reality of frequent one-off deals in B2B

11:28 - How to systematize B2B pricing to reduce one-off deals and encourage standardization

16:59 - Aligning sales compensation with margin to protect long-term profitability

18:39 - Highlighting how enterprise sales teams generalize individual client demands as market-wide needs

20:26 - Why product teams must define economic value before development

25:00 - Agreeing that product teams must define value early but debates how to present it, with Mark favoring customer-driven insights and Rich emphasizing the need for quantifiable justification to close deals

26:25 - Acknowledging that while ROI calculators aren't inherently trusted, they're valuable as a conversational tool

28:37 - Rich's best pricing advice

Key Takeaways:

"I believe a fundamental obligation of product management if we're building something that needs this kind of discussion [communicate economic value], is to do the economic math before we start the development. Not after." - Rich Mironov

"Expecting my sales team to be economists is unrealistic. And so, on the product side, I feel like I owe my sales team some narrative that they can read off the page, yes, fill in the numbers, fill in the values, or fill in the quantities. But the value story has to be baked into the product." - Rich Mironov

"We lead with benefits, we lead with stories, we lead with vignettes, we lead with problems. But the last two paragraphs of that have to justify somebody actually signing a contract." - Rich Mironov

People/Resources Mentioned:

• JPMorganChase: https://www.jpmorganchase.com
• New York Stock Exchange: https://www.nyse.com/index

Connect with Rich Mironov:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richmironov/
• Website: mironov.com
• Email: rich@mironov.com

Connect with Mark Stiving:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/
• Email: mark@impactpricing.com