Brand Value for Big Sales: Insights from Satish Dharmarajan

This one is the 8 of Hearts from the Selling Value card deck. Oh, my gosh! If a buyer ever asked me to help them with a business case, I'm inside quietly jumping up and down rejoicing because they're asking me to do what I would like to be doing with them anyway. So, instead of me walking them through and convincing them that this is an important thing that they really want to know the answer to, they asked me. Oh, my gosh! And so, if they've asked me for help with a business case, what they're really asking for is, how do I convince my executives that we should be spending money on this problem? Or a better way to say that is, how do I document the value of solving these problems? How much additional profit are we going to make because we spend money to solve these problems? That is such a phenomenal place to be because inherent value, the value of solving the problems, is the piece of the puzzle that we as salespeople so rarely spend a lot of time on, and yet we should. Because not only does it help our buyer when they're trying to sell it internally, it helps them when they're trying to justify the pricing or spending the money on solving this problem. But it also helps us build a relationship with our client because we're demonstrating to them, we understand their problems. So, absolutely, if someone asks us to help them with the business case, don't look at that as a chore. Look at that as a golden opportunity because they just asked us to do what we really should be doing with them anyway. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our cards, pick a card, read the saying, then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

1 Maalis 20232min

Ajit Ghuman is the Director of Product Management, Pricing, Packaging, and Customer Experience at Twilio. He is the author of the book Price to Scale. He's had Director of Product Marketing title at several companies, and he added pricing to his title in 2019. Ajit is fascinated by ancient mysteries. In this episode, Ajit educates us on pricing and packaging as he shares why he's passionate when it comes to changing the monetization stack, especially on companies being able to change pricing strategies a lot quicker than today. Why you have to checkout today's podcast: Learn how pricing can done through a four-step framework; Find out how to create a pricing system that can work well with all strategies; and Understand why it's an advantage to be able to change pricing strategies quickly "I think of pricing in a four-step framework. The four steps are packaging, pricing metric, tariff structure, and then price point." – Ajit Ghuman Topics Covered: 01:44 – How Ajit got into pricing 03:09 – Ajit talks about his book, Price to Scale, sharing the reason behind writing it and its key concept 04:40 – Backstory as to why Ajit wants to change the monetization stack 08:12 – Why the term quote to cash doesn't bother Mark vs. how Ajit sees it 11:01 – We need better systems to let the strategy come to life 13:16 – How to create a code to cash (pricing) system that can work well with all pricing strategies 16:33 – Do companies do this practice in pricing? 18:30 – Talking about companies not monitoring usage of their product 19:59 – How often should companies tweak their packaging? 23:08 – How Ajit and Mark decide what feature goes into what package 25:31 – Why Ajit is a bit averse to good, better, best 29:40 – Ajit's pricing advice 30:35 – Connect with Ajit Key Takeaways: "You have the best pricing strategy in the world, let's say you hire Mark Stiving to help you with your pricing, and you have the best thing on paper, but your systems don't let you operationalize it, so you're stuck in the water. That's what I'm saying. We need better systems to let the strategy come to life." – Ajit Ghuman "You're not going to have people write code all the time to do this. Otherwise, your main product will suffer. So just like you used to spend money on product analytics in the past or some other piece of core technology, I think there is a realization companies are having now, like somebody needs to build best practice products that do these things so that we can hook up into their APIs or their SDK and just do it." – Ajit Ghuman People / Resources Mentioned: Price to Scale: https://ajitghuman.com/pricing-book/ Code to Cash podcast: www.codeto.cash/author/ajitpal/ Dor Sasson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/datapm/ Connect with Ajit Ghuman: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajitpalghuman/ Email: ajit@pricetoscale.com Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mailto:mark@impactpricing.com

27 Helmi 202330min

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on January 18, 2023, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/another-ridiculous-fee/ [powerpress] If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

24 Helmi 20232min

This one is the 8 of Spades from the Selling Value card deck. When buyers are making a 'will I' decision, they're trying to decide, should I spend money to go solve this problem or not? Oftentimes, when they're making a 'will I' decision, they've got some problem that has boiled up, that's become an important problem, and they say, "Hey, maybe I'm gonna go consider buying a replacement, a solution, something to solve this specific problem for me." If you are in B2B sales, what your job needs to be at this moment is, what is the basic problem your buyer is trying to solve? Once we understand that problem, we can help them figure out what's the value of solving that problem. What this really means is, can we do an ROI calculation? At least the R part of an ROI calculation. Can we help the buyer figure out how much more profit will they make because they buy our product? This is called inherent value. Inherent value is what's the value of solving the problem, and it has nothing to do with, what's the value of your product relative to your competitor's products. We want to be thinking and helping our buyers think, what's the value of solving the problem? As salespeople, we always want to be thinking, what's the decision a buyer is making right now? What's the information that buyer needs to help make that decision? And when they're making the 'will I' decision, what they're trying to decide is, is this problem worth me spending my money to go solve? That's why we help them with the inherent value. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you wanna get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our cards, pick a card, read the saying, then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

22 Helmi 20232min

Dan Balcauski was a program leader for Northwestern University, where he also went to school seven years prior. He is the founder and Chief Pricing Officer of Product Tranquility, a company that helps high volume B2B SaaS CEOs define pricing and packaging for new and existing products. In this episode, Dan talks about pricing and packaging and how he applies its principles in helping B2B SaaS companies. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Learn about the similarities and differences of pricing model and pricing metrics Discover the fundamental principles of how to decide which features to put on which packages Understand why there is no such thing as absolute and optimal pricing "You don't really have a choice of whether you will have a pricing conversation with your customer. The only decision you get to make is when you're going to have that conversation. So I recommend having it as soon as possible." – Dan Balcauski Topics Covered: 01:13 – How Dan got the title "Chief Pricing Officer" 02:04 – The work that Product Tranquility does 02:16 – Dan's thoughts on packaging 04:31 – How Dan defines pricing metrics and pricing model 10:24 – How Dan decides which features go to which packages 16:50 – Dan's thoughts on good, better, best packaging 18:51 – How to decide if a specific feature shall go to good, better, or best packages 21:21 – How you should name your packages if you want to call them other than "good, better, and best" packages 23:24 – Dan's favorite thing to share people about pricing and packaging 26:08 – Do product managers use the word "value" the same way that pricing people do? 28:27 – Dan's pricing advice 29:58 – Connect with Dan Balcauski Key Takeaways: "When it comes to, especially SaaS pricing, most executives think that what you charge determines your success. In fact, who and how you charge determines your success. And the packaging is a huge element of how you charge. It really helps tell and align your value story so your sales and go-to market teams can really get your message across of the differentiated value that you bring." – Dan Balcauski "In general, the principle by which I look at this through, is that your bundles, offer configurations, and packages, in Mark's terms, should align to a particular customer segment." – Dan Balcauski "If we understand at a deep level what our customer segments need, what their constraints are, what they value, then we can make that decision much easier for them, which increases our sales velocity, reduces our customer acquisition costs, et cetera." – Dan Balcauski "If we don't understand the customer we're going after, the problems they have, the outcomes they want, the constraints that they face upfront, the rest of the conversation gets very muddled." – Dan Balcauski "There's the right price for the right moment in time for your stage of company, for the life cycle of your industry, for your competitive environment. But you're going to learn, you're going to get better." – Dan Balcauski Connect with Dan Balcauski: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/balcauski/ Website: https://www.producttranquility.com/ Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mailto:mark@impactpricing.com

20 Helmi 202331min

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on January 11, 2023, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/what-pricing-can-teach-sales/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

17 Helmi 20233min

This one is the 9 of Diamonds from the Selling Value card deck. Let's start with, what is a trust journey? A trust journey is when a buyer comes to you, you're the salesperson, a buyer comes to you and asks you for help figuring out what they need to buy, and they never go look at a competitive alternative. Your job, when they come talk to you, is to talk about, what's the value of solving the problem? What's the best solution to the problem? And importantly, you never ever mention a competitor. As far as your concerned competition doesn't even exist. When you can recognize that a buyer is going to buy from you without having looked at competitive alternatives, let me assure you, that buyer is not price sensitive. They're looking at, "Ooh, I've got to get this problem solved." They're not out spending their time trying to figure out, where do I get the best bang for the buck? That doesn't mean that we're going to gouge them, but it surely means that we don't have to give them deep discounts. How do you know if a buyer is on a trust journey or the relationship journey we talked about last week? The best question I've found to ask is, "If you don't buy this, what will you do?" We didn't imply there was competition. In fact, we implied there wasn't competition. And if they say, "Well, if I don't buy it, I'm going to go look at your competitor," then you know that competition is in the decision process. But if they say, "I don't know, or nothing," you know competition is not in the decision process. In which case they are not price sensitive. Don't give a big discount. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our cards, pick a card, read the saying, then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

15 Helmi 20232min

Armin Kakas is an expert in analytics, having lots of education in statistics, machine learning and A.I. He has an MBA, and he was a former VP of analytics at American Tire Distributors. He is also the founder of Revology Analytics, a revenue growth analytics consulting company. In this episode, Armin talks about data analytics and its crucial role in pricing and in businesses as a whole. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Learn the importance of gathering and understanding data both in B2B and B2C setups Find out why pricing and price adjustments must be base on data and customer feedback and should never be done internally in a company Learn how to communicate and unite insights from both the points of view of business people and statistics people "There needs to be a much smarter, much surgical way to manage discounts and really reward those customers that have the highest lifetime value or highest volume versus other things." – Armin Kakas Topics Covered: 01:55 – How Armin got into pricing 03:35 – B2B vs B2C: Armin's experience in applying pricing data analytics, and which one he prefers 05:57 – Armin's insights on B2C based on data 06:46 – What is promotional effectiveness 07:34 – Products Armin used to promote on Black Fridays when he worked at BestBuy 09:09 – Why CPGs must have a strong understanding of the relationship between price and value 10:19 – Why companies should asses price and value based on customers' response and not internally 13:08 – How businesspeople and statistics people shall communicate their insights with each other 18:41 – The most common problems Armin find when solving data problems for companies 20:06 – Why companies should have an "algorithm" that tells them how much to buy when a manufacturer offers big discounts 23:18 – Armin's pricing advice 25:28 – Connect with Armin Kakas Key Takeaways: "One of the easiest, quickest insights you can get is by figuring out which are the lowest ROI promotions that are not delivering any value for you or your customers or any of your channel partners, cut them, and reinvest it elsewhere in other growth areas of the company." – Armin Kakas "I think that price-value curve tends to change, especially in CPG quite often. And so, doing that more often is really, really beneficial for companies. And doing it in the right way." – Armin Kakas "All this unproductive inventory gathering dust in warehouses, clearance price optimization is a huge opportunity. Just really creating some automation and some dynamic methods to clear out the product that is tying up your capital and is actually lowering your productivity as well as your operating profit." – Armin Kakas "When you ask the question, "What are some of the other areas that make a huge impact for companies?", it is really things related to customer analytics, and that has two sides; One is providing insights… and then, the other side is providing actionable insights to the customers themselves." – Armin Kakas People / Resources Mentioned: Win Keep Grow: How to Price and Package to Accelerate Your Subscription Business – https://www.amazon.com/Win-Keep-Grow-Accelerate-Subscription/dp/1631954784 Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits – https://www.amazon.com/Impact-Pricing-Blueprint-Driving-Profits/dp/1599184311 Connect with Armin Kakas: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arminkakas/ Email: armin@revologyanalytics.com Website: https://www.revologyanalytics.com/ Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mailto:mark@impactpricing.com

13 Helmi 202326min