Steven Forth is Ibbaka’s Co-Founder, CEO, and Partner. Ibbaka is a strategic pricing advisory firm. He was CEO of LeveragePoint Innovations Inc., a SaaS business. In this episode Steven shares the shifting landscape for pricing professionals, emphasizing the rising importance of pricing strategists over analysts in leveraging AI for value-centric decision-making. Additionally, he highlights the possibilities beyond automation to include real-time recalibration of value models, enabling companies to better adapt to changing customer needs and market dynamics.

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:

• Discover the importance of custom packaging solutions designed to meet the unique needs of diverse users, adding significant value to their experience and allowing for optimized pricing strategies
• Find out how AI is impacting pricing strategies
• Understand the evolving role of pricing people: pricing analysts and pricing strategists

"What pricing people should be doing today is learning how to have productive conversations with AI agents."

- Steven Forth

Topics Covered:

02:44 - Discussing about platform pricing and solution pricing in the context of AI

05:40 - The challenge that pricing platforms presents when it comes to quantifying value for all users

07:06 - Generative AI versus computational knowledge AI in the case of Wolfram Alpha

10:20 - Highlighting the value of packaging solutions tailored to specific needs which can be more valuable to users

12:06 - What goes in the pricing world with AI around

18:38 - Pricing strategists becoming increasingly important, need for better systems to facilitate meaningful conversations and decision-making

20:11 - Would it be possible for AI to make people inside the company understand what value is to customers

24:08 - Six types of value drivers according to Ed Arnold

27:03 - The challenge of building large amount of value models

30:20 - Steven's best advice to pricing people

31:12 - Building a value model through client interviews

Key Takeaways:

"Why don't people focus more on value? I think part of this is because many of us find it easier to look inside our own company than outside to our customers." - Steven Forth

"In an uncertain world, having options and being able to generate options gives you a much more adaptive and resilient business." - Steven Forth

"They [pricing people] need to be learning how to ask the AI questions. They need to be learning how to train the AI so that it can better answer those questions." - Steven Forth

"They [pricing people] need to be understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the answers they're going to get. Because like it or not, you are going to be using an AI, you are using an AI, in your work today, even if you're not aware of it." - Steven Forth

People/ Resources Mentioned:

• Wolfram Alpha: https://www.wolframalpha.com
• Stephen Wolfram: https://www.stephenwolfram.com
• Mathematica: https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/
• Pros: https://pros.com
• Zilliant: https://zilliant.com
• Ed Arnold: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-quantify-value-service-ed-arnold/
• McKinsey: https://www.mckinsey.com
• Microsoft Co-Pilot: https://copilot.microsoft.com

Connect with Steven Forth:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenforth/
• Email: steven@ibbaka.com

Connect with Mark Stiving:

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