Value Bread Blues? How to Announce Price Increases with Casey Brown

Robert Ribciuc is the Managing Partner at EBITDA Catalyst. He helped establish, grew, and managed a successful advisory/consulting firm focusing on pricing strategy and analytics, go-to-market optimization, and revenue management for middle-market corporate and private equity portfolio (PE) clients in diverse industry verticals. In this episode, Robert shares the need to understand the veterinary business as a whole, from the service to the non-service products to come up with the best pricing strategy.   Why you have to check today's podcast: Understand how veterinary practice is different from other industries Consider the use of good, better, best pricing strategies when dealing with veterinary services and products Learn to holistically understand the veterinary business from the two sides -- the service and the non-service aspect to create best pricing strategies   "The hypothetical practice where the veterinarian also acts as the practice manager which the more you go up in size you have multiple practices, and then you get to these corporate entities, they try to avoid that like the plague." - Robert Ribciuc   Topics Covered: 02:31 - Robert's thoughts on what is said as unreasonable expenses in taking care of pets 07:07 - Understanding the dynamics of the veterinary practice as totally different from other industries 11:49 - How are the bigger veterinary companies leading when it comes to price increase? 14:22 - Payment schemes to consider for veterinary expenses 15:22 - How should veterinarians deal with pricing  17:19 - Staying in the veterinary business for long-term 18:17 - The concept of having a practice manager responsible for pricing, instead of the practice owner [implementing the good, better, best pricing] 22:01 - How to effectively manage pricing for the diverse range of services and products offered by a veterinary practice  27:49 - His definition of business success   Key Takeaways: "One of the trends we should talk about is adoption or non-adoption of insurance in this space and other types of concepts from pricing like subscription or wellness plans, where instead of having that one time pain that is potentially dramatic and brings you to tears, you have a tiny bit of pain every month, but hopefully short of tears." - Robert Ribciuc  “If you are one of these practices and you're selling a product, you take the case of medication that's being sold. And some of these practices sell some of the medication physically in the practice. And then there are providers like vet source, which is a way to have your online pharmacy that's like your practices ordering portal for your practice customers, that's a pretty significant part of revenue for a practice. And so there are questions over there. How do you get sophisticated with pricing in that space?” - Robert Ribciuc    People/Resources Mentioned: Blue Pearl Emergency: https://bluepearlvet.com Banfield Pet Hospital: https://www.banfield.com Mars: https://www.marsveterinary.com General Mills: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Mills Blue Buffalo: https://bluebuffalo.com VHMA: https://www.vhma.org/home   Connect with Robert Ribciuc: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ribciuc/ Email: robert@ebitdacatalyst.com   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com

2 Okt 202332min

This one is the Ace of Diamonds from the Impact Pricing card deck.  Value-based pricing truly is a never ending journey. Think about what it means. It means we're going to charge what a customer is willing to pay. But you can't read your customer's mind. You have no idea exactly how much someone's willing to pay you. And so we can make decisions inside our company to get us closer and closer to that number. We can do experiments. We can do interviews. We can, by the way, sell more value, communicate value better, increase that willingness to pay. And so everything we do should be focused on how much is that customer willing to pay. But because we can't read their mind, we can't be perfect. And if we can't be perfect, that means we can always get better. My recommendation is don't pretend that we have value-based pricing done. Consider value-based pricing as an attitude, it's the goal. It's the journey that we're on to get better and better at capturing more of the value we deliver to our customers. 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 Impact Pricing 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/

29 Sep 20232min

This one is the Ace of Hearts from the Impact Pricing card deck.  It is true, the single most profitable pricing decision any company can make is to adopt value-based pricing. Now value-based pricing is hard to do, but it has a really simple meaning. It means charge what your customers are willing to pay.  If you had the ability to read your customer's mind and you knew exactly the most that they would pay for your product, then you could charge that and you'd win the deal. And you couldn't have won it at a higher price. And if you charged a lower price, then you left money on the table. So that's absolutely the optimal approach.  Of course, if our salespeople do a better job at communicating value, then we could increase how much our customers are willing to pay. So this isn't the whole deal, but understand the concept is, we want to be able to charge what our customers are willing to pay. And to do that, it's really an attitude inside our company.  We should be thinking instead of, hey, we charge based on our costs and we charge based on our time. We charge based on the fact that prices or costs went up. All of these things can impact how much a customer is willing to pay, but the single thing that should be driving our pricing decisions is thinking really hard about the willingness to pay of our buyers. 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/

27 Sep 20232min

Ronald J. Baker is the founder of VeraSage Institute, a reformed CPA and cost accountant who has changed his mind on the value of timesheets and cost accounting. His quest is to bury the billable hour and timesheets.    He is also a radio talk-show Host, The Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Knowledge Economy heard on www.voiceamerica.com.  In this episode, Ron let us know why he changed his mind when it comes to the use of timesheets when setting up pricing. Hear his reasoning about why you should also get rid of timesheets. He offers profound insights, as well as examples and explanations, into how certain pricing value and cost models are appropriate for particular industries.    Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Learn why many companies in accounting and the automobile industry are switching to subscription pricing Discover how timesheets cause leaders to focus on the wrong metrics, especially in pricing and value setting No timesheets? Is it possible?    “Even if you’re a solo entrepreneur, have somebody else help you with pricing because it will put a spine in you and you won’t give yourself away.” – Ronald J. Baker   Topics Covered:  02:44 – Talking about four defenses for timesheets in relation to Pricing  04:41 – Taking into consideration the Cost of Goods Sold in setting the price  07:22 – Difference between a metric and measurement type of cost allocations  09:09 – Opportunity Cost and Sunk Cost  10:39 – Is time really considered in setting up pricing?  14:31 – Project management as a way of making better decisions in the future  15:47 – The best advantage of niching your expertise on  18:31 – The start of subscription pricing in the accounting world  21:30 – Insurance classified as subscription pricing  24:08 – What’s the best thing about hiring an accounting firm rather than accounting staff for your business  27:48 – His thoughts on cars leaning towards a subscription model  29:50 – Ron’s pricing advice   Key Takeaways:  “Keep in mind that I don’t need to see timesheets to know your firm’s costs. I need to know, I need to see your GL, your income statement and I need to know what your labor and all of that is. I’d much rather track revenue per person or labor cost per person, profit per person in a professional firm because that’s a true measurement.” – Ron Baker  “Even if they’re just starting out as a sole solo. Don’t have any employees. I still think they can put a price on things consistent with their opportunity cost and what they want, willingness to accept and function fine, and this is an integral part of this, as long as they step back after the job is completed and do an after-action review and learn from it.” – Ron Baker   “If you’re niched, if you specialize, it’s much easier to know what something’s going to take once you build up some experience.” – Ron Baker  “A subscription model is a way to lock customers in for life. So in value pricing to Oh you’re pricing, not the customer. And this is the subtle difference, but bear with me, you’re pricing the relationship and you're pricing the portfolio because you’re looking at it as a portfolio rather than a project or just a customer. You’re actually looking at the entire portfolio.” – Ron Baker  “We’re too busy. I think we confuse being busy with being effective and being profitable. And I’ll see a correlation there.” – Ron Baker    People/Resources Mentioned:  Bain & Company: https://www.bain.com/ McKinsey and Company: https://www.mckinsey.com/ Porsche: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche Canvas + Fair: https://drivecanvas.com/ Ed Kless: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edkless TSOE Episode #200: Interview with Reginald Lee: https://www.thesoulofenterprise.com/tsoe/lee2 Lies, Damned Lies, and Cost Accounting: https://www.amazon.com/Lies-Damned-Cost-Accounting-Management/dp/163157065X   Connect With Ron Baker:  VeraSage Institute: https://verasage.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronbaker1 Twitter: https://twitter.com/RonaldBaker Email: ron@verasage.com  The Soul of Enterprise: https://www.thesoulofenterprise.com/   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

25 Sep 202332min

This one is the Ace of Spades from the Impact Pricing card deck.  First, companies really do exist to create value for customers.  Think about what you do as a business. Everything you do is to get a customer to pay you money. And the only reason a customer would ever pay you money is if you are delivering more value to them than they're receiving. And so, our entire company needs to be focused on how do we create more value for customers? How do we deliver more value? How do we communicate the value?  But we spend all this time creating, communicating value, pricing is the one thing that we do that captures the value that we're able to create and communicate. So, when a buyer chooses to buy our product, they pay the price that we're asking, and that happens to be the transaction value. That's how we capture the value of what we deliver to our customers. 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/

22 Sep 20232min

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on August 17, 2023, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-price-variance/ 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/

20 Sep 20232min

With a decade of experience as an author, speaker, coach, and trainer, Carole Mahoney helps entrepreneurs, founders, and salespeople grow their businesses with a collaborative and science-based sales formula. In this episode, Carole shares how to make an engaging and collaborative sales conversation that makes your potential buyers feel valued and heard. In doing so, you transform your sales conversations into positive and fruitful interactions.   What you will learn from this episode: Learn about this exercise called 'Questions and Periods Game', how to go about it and how it works with your clients Discover the step-by-step process of doing the 'Questions and Periods Game' through a role play demonstration of Carole and Mark Find out the essential principles you need to know about the art of selling   "Selling isn't something we do to other people. It's something we do with them. And I think that's a fundamental shift that we need to start making in sales." - Carole Mahoney   Topics Covered: 01:17 - Synopsis of her book 'Buyer First' 03:34 - The best way to look at sales 06:03 - Carole coaching Mark on sales 11:57 - A sales conversation role play between Mark and Carole 16:05 -What is the 'Question and Periods Game' that she used to throw phenomenal questions at Mark? 20:30 - How to do the sales call without having to 'sell you' but to 'help you' 22:55 - Carole's valuable thoughts on Mark's sales technique 26:18 - How to handle a reply to a client's question at the end of the sales call, 'What do you think the next step should be'? 27:15 - What you should not fail to ask towards the end of the sales conversation   Key Takeaways: "Selling isn't something we do to other people. It's something we do with them. And I think that's a fundamental shift that we need to start making in sales." - Carole Mahoney "The more you drill down into a specific answer, the more you make them think and the more they start to wonder, maybe I don't know the answer to that. And then you find the opportunity to be able to offer an insight to them when you find out what insight matters most to them." - Carole Mahoney "When we talk about what we think, dopamine gets released in our brain. And so dopamine is that pleasure center. Like, we want more of that. That's why so many of us tend to get into talking about what we know instead of asking more questions. If we can get our buyers to talk more than we do, they're getting the dopamine released in their brains and they feel good about the conversation." - Carole Mahoney "Knowing who else can say no or who else can say yes and who else is going to be impacted by this [decision] is a critical question to ask towards the end of a call for your next step." - Carole Mahoney   People/Resources Mentioned: Buyer First: Grow Your Business with Collaborative Selling by Carole Mahoney: https://carolemahoney.com/books/buyerfirstbook/   Connect with Carole Mahoney: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolemahoney/ Website: https://www.unboundgrowth.com/   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com

18 Sep 202331min

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on August 10, 2023, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/defining-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/

15 Sep 20232min