Pricing Table Topics: 8 of Clubs – Buyers Who Buy without Considering Competitive Alternatives

Dick Sobel was with Emerson for 21 years where he mostly worked on pricing roles. Currently, he is the managing director of PricePoint Partners, a company that helps clients achieve significant gains in price realization and profitability with salesforce implementation utilizing cloud-based Acuity Margin Management BI software. In this episode, Dick talks about the work they do at PricePoint Partners as he points out the importance of assessment and consulting in coming up with optimal solutions to clients' problems. He also touched on the topic of AI interference in the pricing world. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Learn the work that PricePoint Partners does, the range of clients they serve, and how they could help your company in pricing Find out why you can't rely on AI alone in doing prices and why AI can do better in B2C than in B2B Find out why today is the best time to raise your prices "Inflation's persistence is here to stay for a long time. And if you're not doing something right now, you are really missing out." – Dick Sobel Topics Covered: 01:49 – How Dick got into pricing 04:40 – How Emerson did pricing before, and how they moved to value pricing as time went by 06:50 – The work that PricePoint Partners does, and the range of clients that they support 08:21 – Is PricePoint Partners a software company, or a consulting company? 10:23 – What prompts companies to focus on pricing 13:19 – Does PricePoint Partners charge for assessment? 14:58 – Why assessment is an essential part in consulting, and why you should definitely pay for it 17:25 – Why you should be careful in using AI, and why pricing people and clients are still more comfortable 22:02 – Dick's pricing advice 23:32 – Connect with Dick Sobel Key Takeaways: "Somebody has to be in charge somewhere that can at least gather the crew together and make it [changes in pricing strategy] happen." – Dick Sobel "At least for the people that I deal with, I don't feel comfortable having or I don't think they're even comfortable in having black box artificial intelligent price recommendations where "Okay, here's the price you should charge for this product, for this SKU". And it's given to the salespeople arbitrarily. There's got to be this human interface still. And so, yeah, you can look at it, but be careful." – Dick Sobel "This idea of "Well, you know, we're just going to try to hold the line", you keep doing that, you won't have a business." – Dick Sobel People / Resources Mentioned: Emerson: https://www.emerson.com/en-us/global PricePoint Partners: https://pricepointpartners.com/ Resilience Capital: https://resiliencecapital.com/ Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ap/ Vendavo: https://www.vendavo.com/ Connect with Dick Sobel: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardsobel/ Email: rsobel@pricepointpartners.com Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com

10 Apr 202324min

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on March 1, 2023, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/wow-a-price-decrease/ [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/

7 Apr 20233min

This one is the 7 of Clubs from the Selling Value card deck. Anytime you're in a sales situation, we think to ourselves, Hey, we need to be selling against our competition. We need to point out why we're better than our competitors. Yeah, and maybe we do. I'm not going to say we don't need to do that. However, if we take the time to help the buyer understand, what's the underlying problem they're truly trying to solve? What's the value of solving that problem? And how it is that we help them solve that problem? It builds trust. They start to know that we understand their situation, we understand their problem. They believe that we'll be better at solving it simply because we've expressed the fact that we understood it. Oh, and when we help them build the business case, they are grateful because they need this information to help sell up inside their organization anyway. Because no one's going to buy something unless they know that it's going to help them make more money. And so, we need to help our buyers create that business case. So, it really is imperative that even if you know you're going to have competition, take the time to help your buyers understand the value of solving the problem. Not just focusing on why we're better. 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, and 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/

5 Apr 20232min

Alex Galkin is the Co-Founder and CEO of Competera, a pricing optimization SaaS company converting technologies into ready-to-use products for enterprise retailers worldwide. Alex has been a mentor at his startups for several years, and he's a Ukrainian who left four days before the war started. In this episode, Alex helps us understand the pricing and ML work that they do at Competera as he talks about the three models they always put into use. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Understand why you should treat pricing as a process Find out how Competera helps their clients in making pricing decisions Discover three models that Competera puts into use as MLs look for reasonable factors to make a price adjustment "Pricing is a process, and you need to continuously improve as any other process in your organization." – Alex Galkin Topics Covered: 01:04 – How Alex got into pricing 03:07 – The work that Competera does in relation to pricing, and how they do it 08:28 – Using ML-driven price recommendations: Competera creating a 'gray box' 12:35 – Talking about the portfolio-wide pricing/portfolio optimization 14:12 – An ML example of the decoy effect 17:20 – Alex explains how their smart product segmentation works; a product bringing more people in the store 23:09 – Alex's pricing advice 23:49 – Connect with Alex Key Takeaways: "ML is not a human. He's not trying to play with the price; he's changing only if he sees the reasonable factor to make this price adjustment." – Alex Galkin People / Resources Mentioned: Competera: https://competera.net/ Connect with Alex Galkin: Email: galkin@competera.net LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrgalkin/ Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com

3 Apr 202324min

This one is the 7 of Hearts from the Selling Value card deck. It is true, value propositions really are awesome. Marketing teams, companies, sit around to try to figure out, what's the value proposition of this product? And it turns out that we can often come up with something that's pretty good, pretty general. It essentially is the solution to a problem that most people have, and we think of that as the value proposition. But the thing is, the value proposition isn't specific enough. Anytime you go to an individual customer, or an individual buyer, they've got different problems. Maybe our value proposition caught their attention, got them to come talk to us. But in the end, we need to understand, what are the specific problems that that buyer has? What's the result that that buyer's looking to achieve? And then help them figure out, what's the business case for that? How much value, or additional profit, will they make because they're solving those specific problems? So, I love value propositions. They're just not magic words that are enough to get people to buy. 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, and 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/

31 Mars 20232min

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on February 22, 2023, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/lessons-from-the-library/ 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/

29 Mars 20233min

Casey Brown is the President of Boost Pricing, and she has been since 2011. She started her career as a Chemical Engineer at GE, and she's been in pricing for almost 20 years now. Casey loves whitewater kayaking, and she's a big Buckeye fan. In this episode, Casey explains how important it is for sellers to connect with the emotional component of the buyer/s as she shares her knowledge on how to substantially increase your ability to earn higher prices. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Learn how crucial the seller's mindset and beliefs are to the business' profitability, especially as to whether they're operating from a place of confidence or fear Find out why you should not put the blame on cost increases when doing a price increase Understand the power of taking into consideration the emotional component, like selling value through the language, mind, and heart of your customer "I have yet to find, even in this current economic climate, a company that doesn't have some pricing opportunity, and I would just ask everyone to keep looking for it. It's there." – Casey Brown Topics Covered: 01:33 – How Casey got into pricing 04:54 – Mark to Casey: Why don't I know you? Why have I never seen you before? 07:00 – The biggest problem in sales being the lack of recognition that there's a problem 09:33 – Is Casey trying to compete with people who are doing sales training and education? Both yes and no 11:33 – An exchange of Mark's and Casey's magic formulas in communicating price increases 15:05 – More about blaming costs and cost-plus pricing 18:02 – Teaching salespeople how to properly sell value 20:40 – Convincing Mark that the emotional component is as important in B2B as it is in B2C 29:17 – Casey's pricing advice 30:08 – Connect with Casey Brown Key Takeaways: "Our entire profession – we are the best kept secret in business. And frankly, if more people understood how impactful pricing is to the profitability and how easy it is to pull that lever, there'd be a lot more of us." – Casey Brown "It does not occur to most people that the biggest opportunity to make a huge improvement in your pricing performance very quickly is not necessarily to fix your strategy, but instead to help the team understand the skill set and mindset gaps that your team has." – Casey Brown "Connecting with the emotional component of the buyer is not just a consumer phenomenon." – Casey Brown People / Resources Mentioned: Pricing with Confidence (Reed Holden's book): https://www.amazon.com/Pricing-Confidence-Leaving-Money-Table/dp/0470197579 Connect with Casey Brown: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseybrownboost/ Email: casey@boostpricing.com Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mailto:mark@impactpricing.com

27 Mars 202331min

This one is the 7 of Spades from the Selling Value card deck. It is true that when a buyer's asking for help justifying a purchase, this is the ultimate opportunity to influence that sale. Let's take a step back for just a minute and think about what a customer is going through. And if you ever have the opportunity to help a buyer understand their underlying problems, what's the value of solving those problems, you've become a trusted advisor. You've become someone that this company, this person, looks to for real information so they can make smart decisions. Now, this is a very different decision process than, how is your product better than somebody else's product? Instead, they've brought you in to help create the business case. What a great position. And if we go to the table that I have in the Selling Value book, you'll find that this is the beginning of the trust or the relationship journey. Where they say to you, would you please help me answer, is this a good place for me to spend my money? Is this a good place for my budget? And if we can help them with that, not only have we helped them solve a problem they're trying to solve, but we've built that trust and credibility in their eyes that no competitor could ever catch up to. So absolutely, this is the biggest opportunity you have to influence that sale. 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, and 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/

24 Mars 20232min