Disrupting Pricing with AI: Insights from Steven Forth

You probably know that when we're negotiating, we do gifts and gets. We don't give anything unless we get something in return. Purchasing people are always asking us for discounts and sometimes we have to give in. We give a discount to a client or a customer. What should we get in return? Well, we should be thinking first about the things that are hard costs for us to serve our clients. For example, maybe there's a shipping cost. Maybe it's a warranty cost. But there are things that are truly that cost us money and if we can get those as clawbacks, as our gets when we give something, then we're actually giving up a lower margin. Many people call this pocket price. So, pocket price is, what's the price after I've looked at what are my costs to serve that individual customer. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This impactful insight came from the book, Selling Value, which I wrote to help salespeople win more deals at higher prices. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

22 Jun 20221min

Daniel Elizalde was an IoT Product Manager Instructor at Stanford University. He used to work as the VP Head of IoT at Ericsson, but he has now narrowed his focus from IoT to climate tech firms. Daniel now helps climate tech product teams accelerate their product’s time to the market. In this episode, Daniel talks about his book, The B2B Innovator’s Map, as he explains why delivering value to your champion is a huge game-changer in the business world.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Discover what the book The B2B Innovator’s Map is all about; Understand why you, as a vendor, should understand what value means both to your company and to your customers; and Find out why you should look for champions and not for buyers, especially when you’re still starting in doing business   “When you are testing a potential solution, pricing has to be one of those things that you have to prototype. You have to prototype the packaging and the offering and how you actually present it to the customer.” – Daniel Elizalde   Topics Covered: 01:55 – A Narrower Focus: Daniel shares the backstory on how he’s decided to shift his focus from IoT to climate tech firms 04:11 – Daniel talks about the benefits of running his own consulting practice 06:18 – Helping other people, still, in the space of IoT 07:41 – Why Daniel wrote his book, The B2B Innovator’s Map 09:46 – The difference between B2B and B2C in terms of the way people do innovation + the content of Daniel’s book 14:35 – Relating Mark’s Selling Value book to Daniel’s B2B Innovator’s Map 18:51 – Understanding the strongest problems that your customers have as one of the main points in the book 21:50 – Looking for a champion, not a buyer persona + the goal of innovation 28:36 – Daniel’s piece of pricing advice for the listeners   Key Takeaways: “For an actual advisory project where I'm involved at the strategic level, I'm going to give priority to the climate tech companies, but that doesn't mean that there are no other avenues where people can get access to some of my experience.” – Daniel Elizalde “In my experience, a lot of the B2B products fail because they don't deliver value to their customers, like, customers don't see the benefit, they don't want to buy it, so they've failed. Value has to be delivered throughout, and so, therefore, value plays an immense part throughout the journey.” – Daniel Elizalde “Granted, as a vendor, your own solution is not going to be the fix for the whole problem, and you're part of the whole puzzle. But as a vendor, you have to understand what are those pains, what are those problems that your customers are having, because that's where the opportunity to deliver value lies.” – Daniel Elizalde “The value needs to be big for a big problem so that you can get a solution in the door.” – Daniel Elizalde “It's not about the users at this point. It's about delivering value to the champion because ultimately, that's the person that's going to open the door for you.” – Daniel Elizalde   People / Resources Mentioned: The B2B Innovator’s Map: https://danielelizalde.com/b2b-innovators-map/ Ericsson: https://www.ericsson.com/ Selling Value: https://www.amazon.com/Selling-Value-Deals-Higher-Prices/dp/1737655217/ Crossing the Chasm: https://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-3rd-Disruptive-Mainstream/dp/0062292986   Connect with Daniel Elizalde: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielelizalde/ Website:https://danielelizalde.com/   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com

20 Jun 202231min

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on May 11, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/data-and-or-value/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

17 Jun 20223min

If buyers are asking us for a business case, or help to write their own business case, what they're trying to do is document economic value. How much money is our product going to make or save their company? Well, this is awesome because what we want to do is help our buyers understand value. This is the exact best situation that we could possibly be in. So, what we as salespeople should be doing is understanding, how is it that our buyers get value from our products? And I can tell you it's not our features. And in fact, it's probably benefits, but it's benefits translated into, first, what's the problem we're solving for the customer? What's the expected result the customer might get? And finally, how do we turn that into dollars for that individual customer? When you've mastered this skill, and you can talk like this constantly, you will definitely win more deals at higher prices. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This impactful insight came from the book, Selling Value, which I wrote to help salespeople win more deals at higher prices. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

15 Jun 20221min

EPIC Conjoint’s CEO Matt Johnston and CTO Pavel Knorr help companies win by enabling game changing product and pricing decisions. At EPIC Conjoint, experts combine their deep domain knowledge with innovative research platforms. With this, they enable clients to better understand their customer’s preferences so they can make precise product and pricing decisions at great speed. In this episode, Mark engages in a conversation about conjoint with EPIC Conjoint leaders, Matt and Pavel.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Learn the importance of running market segmentation studies and figuring out what people’s price sensitivity is to know which groups are becoming more price sensitive Find out why you should understand the challenges your target market is facing and react accordingly to that to be of help instead of going for your typical pricing mechanics Understand why you should be realistic in the way you do your design   “If you're addressing the question ‘what is the proper price right now?’ and ‘what is the proper price three months after?’ you have to properly specify the price intervals for that, and you have to deal with – specifically in conjoint – you have to deal with the realistic market situation. – Pavel Knorr   Topics Covered: 01:25 – The backstory of how Pavel got into pricing 02:49 – Going back to the story on how and why EPIC Conjoint came to exist 05:56 – Talking about EPIC Conjoint’s project which Mark got involved with 09:56 – The global economy, recession, and its impact on people’s purchase decisions 17:08 – The challenge that arises when inflation rises but incomes do not 21:40 – Making decisions in the midst of supply constraints 29:50 – What Mark loves about what Conjoint does + the beauty of Conjoint 31:59 – Pavel’s piece of pricing advice for today’s listeners 33:39 – Connect with Matt, Pavel, and EPIC Conjoint   Key Takeaways: “When you have product development background, for you, it's actually quite important when you want to come up with the product line up, when you're doing the product optimization, because it's fine to get the product which shows the overall quite good results with the aggregated view. However, in the reality, it might end up with the case when you have build the product that platform suggested to be the best aggregate of products in the market, however, nobody really needs it because all your market is several subgroups of the niche customers.” – Pavel Knorr “We believe most people make purchases based on their needs. And what we've seen in the work we've done with clients is that needs can dictate different willingness to pay under different price sensitivities.” – Matt Johnston “Conjoint is the good tool to compare yourself against the competitors, but it's not performing well when it's considering buy or no buy at all. All the magic behind the conjoint is something like 50% of success, because if you collect the bad data or from wrong people, you will have nothing as the output; nothing useful for you as the output.” – Pavel Knorr   People / Resources Mentioned: EPIC Conjoint:https://www.epicconjoint.com/ O2:https://www.o2.co.uk/ Telefónica: https://www.telefonica.com/ URIDU: https://www.uridu.org/ BMW: https://www.bmw.com/ Hyundai: https://www.hyundai.com/worldwide/ Audi: https://www.audi.com/   Connect with Matt Johnston: Website:https://www.epicconjoint.com/ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-johnston-5a53672 Email: mattjohnston@epicconjoint.com   Connect with Pavel Knorr: Website:https://www.epicconjoint.com/ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavel-knorr/ Email: pavelknorr@epicconjoint.com   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com

13 Jun 202234min

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on May 4, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/taking-the-ambiguity-out-of-value/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

10 Jun 20222min

Behavioral economics are fun. These are those tactics, the things that we see where our buyers are behaving irrationally, and yet we know they're irrational and we can take advantage of it. In fact, my dissertation in my doctoral program was on 99 cents, and why does 99 cents work, and it's because buyers tend to be irrational. We should think of each penny or each dollar is identical, but we don't. The thing is, although these behavioral economics tactics work, and we really should be paying attention to them because we want to present our pricing in the best light possible, it's only marginally effective. We need to get the value part right. If we don't get the value part right, it doesn't matter how we use our behavioral economics. Now, to be fair, you can get the value part right and totally mess up a deal with horrible behavioral economics. So, both are important. But you absolutely have to understand value and get that right if you expect to win more deals at higher price. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This impactful insight came from the book, Selling Value, which I wrote to help salespeople win more deals at higher prices. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me mark@impactpricing.com. Now go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

8 Jun 20222min

Magdalena Bay has been working in business development for eight years now. She is an expert in the MVNO market, but outside of work, she loves spending time with her kids and showing her golden retrievers at dog shows. In this episode, Magda educates us on how Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) work, especially with how Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and MVNOs price their offers.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Learn what the MNO and MVNO are all about; Understand how MNOs and MVNOs provide value to their customers; and Find out how pricing works in the MVNO market   “You need to give time to your customers so they can adjust to the new models you are trying to introduce. And maybe, sometimes, the strategy that you're implementing won't work in the beginning, but if you just wait little by little, then it can bring the results.”  – Magdalena Bay   Topics Covered: 01:45 – How Magda got into pricing 02:10 – Learning how Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) work 07:21 – Why pricing in the MVNO market is interesting 09:27 – Sample scenarios of how MVNO provides value to customers 11:34 – How pricing in MVNO works 14:26 – What it means to play on a breakage when you’re in the MVNO market 16:20 – Magda asks Mark: “How do you approach your consulting when you’re in a totally new industry for you?” 18:18 – Does Mark have plans of getting experience from other countries and industries? 23:14 – Magda’s piece of pricing advice for the listeners   Key Takeaways: “Pricing here is extremely difficult, in the sense that obviously, some of the customers wants to have everything the cheapest possible way. And in this setup, the infrastructure and building, everything cost your investment. You have to get your return on this investment. And as you mentioned before, MVNOs are always competing with these big boys, with MNOs, so this is almost impossible to be on the same pricing level.” – Magdalena Bay “Assuming that you would get also unlimited plans from the MNO, you are very limited on how much you can earn, because you are only limited to this, let's say, two zloty per bundle or two euro per bundle – just any number I’m saying now – and you can't grow on this, if you know what I mean.” – Magdalena Bay   People / Resources Mentioned: AT&T: https://www.att.com/ Verizon: https://www.verizon.com/ Orange: https://www.orange.com/ T-Mobile: https://www.t-mobile.com/ Free: https://www.free.fr/ Teleco: https://www.teleco.com.br/ Affinity Cellular: https://www.affinitycellular.com/ Airvoice Wireless: https://www.airvoicewireless.com/ Assist Wireless: https://www.assistwireless.com/ Beast Mobile: https://beastmobile.net/   Connect with Magdalena Bay:  LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/magdalenabay/ Email: baymagda@gmail.com   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com

6 Jun 202226min