Pricing and Value Selling: The Art of Asking Your Clients the Right Questions with Barry Edney

Barry Edney started his pricing career in Sposea, a digital pricing and consultancy company aiming to drive profitability by simplifying price data optimization, management and execution. It was in May 2021 when he started his own consulting firm called Burning Issues Consulting, where they help businesses deliver better top-line and margin results by focusing on where change needs to happen quickly – the burning issues.

In this episode, Barry talks about the importance of knowing the right questions to ask the right people so you can sell value the way your customers need it in their business.

Why you have to check out today's podcast:

• The importance of asking the right people the right questions in order to know what your clients really value;
• Why you should focus on value selling and avoid benefit selling;
• Why it's a must for you to make sure that what you're selling are the products that are giving you the big margin

"Focus on the margin drivers. If you have to be really cautious on your costs, focus on your products that generate your highest margin, and manage the rest of your portfolio for cash."

– Barry Edney

Topics Covered:

01:00 – How Barry got into pricing

03:21 – Considering the cost to serve in relation to delivering value

04:18 – One product, different audiences, and different levels of value

06:44 – Perceived value vs. intrinsic value

08:05 – Not knowing what your customers really value + asking the right questions

13:40 – Examples of open-ended questions

15:31 – Why you should avoid benefit selling

17:48 – Creating, communicating, and capturing value: Thinking about solving problems vs. building features

22:26 – Barry's piece of pricing advice for the listeners

Key Takeaways:

"When you start measuring the value that you deliver, it is so much easier to articulate it to your clients." – Barry Edney

"The value has to be presented in a different way. There has to be a different value or a different aspect of the value you can deliver." – Barry Edney

People / Resources Mentioned:

• Sposea: https://www.sposea.com/
• Burning Issues Pricing Consulting: https://www.burningissuesconsulting.com/
• AkzoNobel: https://www.akzonobel.com/

Connect with Barry Edney:

• Email: edney@burningissuesconsulting.com; barryedney@gmail.com
• Website: https://www.burningissuesconsulting.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barryedney/

Connect with Mark Stiving:

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