Impact Pricing

Jon Jennings is the founder and managing partner of Jennings Executive Search. Established in 2014. His vision was to shape a firm anchored in transparency and value creation.  In this episode, Jon discusses the strategies for hiring pricing professionals and building a dedicated pricing team that significantly contributes to a company's strategic success.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Discover how to effectively structure your pricing team and determine the optimal number of pricing professionals to hire based on your company's size Explore crucial steps to assess pricing role offers, ensuring a thorough understanding and avoiding impulsive decisions Learn important factors to consider when hiring pricing professionals for high, mid, and entry-level pricing positions   "Once you can build those relationships with sales and the customers and understand what really makes them tick, it's a lot easier to price to it, to add value." - Jon Jennings   Topics Covered: 01:38 - How he paved a path into pricing 04:04 - What great impact a little tweak in pricing can do 05:12 - At what point are they able to start helping clients fix their pricing 06:18 - When do private equity firms decide to hire pricing consultants and pricing professionals 09:21 - Designing a pricing structure for a $50M manufacturing company 12:49 - How many pricing professionals you should hire given the size of your company 15:41 - Opportunities for pricing roles these days 17:39 - The best thing to do when looking for pricing jobs 19:06 - Insights on writing your resume and putting it on LinkedIn 21:23 - Vetting pricing jobs before jumping in 24:22 - A chance to talk and vet for a thousand individuals for pricing roles 25:14 - What does Jon look for when vetting people for pricing roles 27:54 - The need to think outside of the box when you're a pricing professional 28:40 - Jon's best pricing advice   Key Takeaways: When looking for job opportunities: "Look through your network. Just like anything, take your time, take a breath, it's going to be alright." - Jon Jennings “You don't need to jump at the first thing; evaluate it based on the merit of the opportunity." - Jon Jennings When vetting a job offer or a candidate for a job: "When it feels like they're covering something up or not, just not telling me the whole truth, that's when I get a little nervous." - Jon Jennings "They understand things connect, so that skillset tend, if they have some business acumen and a little bit of personality to go with it, they translate well to pricing." - Jon Jennings "I want to find people that like to break the wheel or build it, that's our approach to the more mid level. And the lower level is people that are just high achievers and with a quantitative math brain." - Jon Jennings   People/Resources Mentioned: Portco: https://www.portco.com GitHub: https://github.com   Connect with Jon Jennings: Website:  https://jenningsexec.com/pricing-strategy/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonjennings/   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com  

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on January 4, 2024, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/pricing-platforms-and-solutions/ 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/  

This one is the 9 of Spades from the Impact Pricing card deck.  There are two major rules in pricing that are hugely valuable to your organization. The first one is value-based pricing, which simply means charge what your customers are willing to pay. The second one is to adopt price segmentation.  Think about this for just a second. No two buyers actually are willing to pay the same price. Which means every buyer has a different willingness to pay. If we really want to adopt value-based pricing, at its best, then what we're doing is trying to figure out, how do we get individual people to pay us what they're willing to pay?  Of course, this is impossible to do perfectly, but it's not impossible to say, hey, this type of person, this type of customer, gets more value from our product. They're willing to pay more because they get more value. We see this all the time.  For example, it could be that when we sell to Asia, they're more price sensitive so they end up with a better price. And when we sell in the US or Europe, we end up charging higher prices. This is price segmentation and that's where the value is. There are several ways to do price segmentation. Those include understanding the characteristics of your customer. What information can you collect at the time of the transaction? And then, are there behaviors or hurdles you could put in their way so that those who are price sensitive are willing to jump that hurdle in order to get a better price?  So, my advice, think very hard about, how do you do price segmentation? How can you charge different customers different amounts based on their willingness to pay? We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. 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/  

Alex Costa is a Specialist in Strategic Pricing, statistical analysis, market intelligence, sales finance (P&L) statistical analysis, acting as a Sales Business Partner to guide the best pricing strategies, which increases revenues and margins (EBITDA). In this episode, Alex discusses the importance of both hard and soft skills in achieving success. He also highlights three of the eleven essential skills for pricing professionals and shares his insights on value-based pricing, emphasizing its comprehensive impact on the value process.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Find the optimal skills to prioritize as a pricing professional Discover effective techniques for engaging with salespeople in a manner that fosters collaboration instead of resistance Learn how to share information and knowledge within the company to foster a collaborative effort towards achieving shared objectives   "Hard skills and soft skills play a huge impact for you to be effective in your career in pricing." - Alex Costa   Topics Covered: 01:04 - How Alex pursued pricing 01:54 - Pricing is more than margin 02:47 - What he thinks is the best skill pricing professionals should have 04:16 - Why one has to think logically as a pricing professional 05:05 - Consultative versus reactive when engaging with sales  07:02 - How to invite collaboration rather than resistance from salespeople  08:55 - Discussing on the idea of sharing knowledge and information inside the organization 11:16 - Why emotional control matters 16:22 - What he thinks of value-based pricing 18:16 - Who should take the role of training sales teams for them to understand your product's value 19:26 - Looking at value not just of the product's attribute but the whole chain of it 21:53 - How you can get a hold of Alex's paper with this 11 skills 22:29 - Alex's best pricing advice   Key Takeaways: "I think the most important thing to us as pricing professionals is to engage with sales objectives, to understand what the goals of sales teams are. But of course, align with the goals of the organization." - Alex Costa "If you don't control your emotions, your emotions will control your career and your project." - Alex Costa "When you look for the satisfaction from the customer, what their perspective of the value that they will take from your product or services, you can position your pricing better." - Alex Costa "Sometimes they think, value comes just from the aspects of the product, the attributes of the product. But for me, the value in the mind of the consumer and the customers comes from the entire chain of value of the company." - Alex Costa   Connect with Alex Costa: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrecostaoliveira/   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com  

The podcast discusses three types of B2B value, including increased revenue, lower costs, and reduced risk. It explores the challenges of quantifying value in B2B and emphasizes the importance of revenue growth and cost reduction. Effective communication of value in B2B and revenue growth as the key value proposition for CEOs are also highlighted.

This one is the 10 of Clubs from the Impact Pricing card deck. Face it, when you talk to a customer, what you really want to ask them is, "how much would you pay for them?" The problem is they won't answer that question. First, they probably don't know the answer to that question. But more importantly, in the back of their mind, they're thinking, Hey, I can't tell them the truth because if I tell them it's really valuable to me, they'll end up charging me a higher price. So, I'm going to come up with a number much lower. I'm going to game the system, or play a negotiation game without them even knowing I'm playing. Of course, that hurts us because we're trying to gather real information, how much would they pay? One question I found that works relatively well, I wouldn't call it scientific, but it's a great way to get just a perception of people's pricing. And that is, "how much do you think other people like you would pay for this?" It takes enough indirection in the question that they tend not to think about gaming the system. And instead they think, "Oh, well, that person over there is probably like me, so therefore they would probably pay this much." When you ask that question, what the buyer's thinking in their mind is, how much would I really pay, and that's how much I think other people would really pay. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. 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/  

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 designed to help companies create and capture value. In this episode, Steven discusses the growing significance of showcasing economic value to customers and the challenges that companies encounter in accomplishing this, particularly with regard to  AI monetization. There is a strong emphasis on the necessity for better understanding and communication of the value delivered by SaaS products to enable more effective value-based SaaS pricing strategies.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Look into the latest AI monetization report for 2024 and gain insights into the strategies for monetizing AI Find out the key trends in SaaS pricing related to AI for the year 2024 Discover the compelling reasons why AI is truly revolutionary and why it's crucial to embrace this transformative technology   "Don't panic and cut prices." - Steven Forth   Topics Covered: 01:37 - How is AI going to significantly influence SaaS and pricing this 2024 03:38 - The impact AI is going to have on most businesses in the interface, functionality, and internal workflow levels 06:59 - What this AI monetization report is all about 09:46 - Looking on the value of the solution more than just the AI tool 11:05 - Why B2B SaaS companies are under increased pressure to justify their prices based on the value delivered to their customers 13:12 - Quantifying and truly delivering value to customers and product management's critical function in understanding value 16:05 - Significant insights on customer success department's role in value quantification 17:02 - Discussion about using SaaS versus obtaining perpetual license 22:38 - Summarizing the three major trends this 2024 24:47 - Expressing optimism that companies adopt better tool sets to assess, track, document, and communicate economic value 25:38 - Steven's impactful advice   Key Takeaways: "Vast new areas of applications are going to be opened by AI and things that we couldn't do, or were too expensive to do in the past become easy to do and very affordable to do, already are today." - Steven Forth "If you can demonstrate value, then you have a lot of weapons that you can use against these [larger competitors]." - Steven Forth "AI is going to be moving rapidly towards monetization, which means it has to be able to demonstrate value." - Steven Forth "There's an overall pressure to better manage SaaS spending, which is going to lead to pressure on SaaS companies to be able to demonstrate that they are actually delivering value, not just happy users." - Steven Forth "Cutting prices is not going to solve your problem. That could just increase your churn. There's no guarantee that cutting your prices will reduce your churn." - Steven Forth "You can't compensate for a lack of value by lowering your price." - Steven Forth   People/Resources Mentioned: Open View:https://openviewpartners.com/blog/tagged/research-and-analytics/ Amazon: https://www.amazon.com Google: https://www.google.com/ IBM: https://www.ibm.com/us-en Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ap/?ir=1 Oracle: https://www.oracle.com/ph/   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  

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on December 21, 2023, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/why-your-salespeople-dont-sell-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/

This one is the 10 of Diamonds from the Impact Pricing card deck.  Different buyers value our products differently, hence, what that should mean to us is we get to do price segmentation, we could be charging different prices. But from a sales perspective, once we've got a price set and we need to go out and do prospecting and find which customers we want to go sell to, guess which ones are the easiest ones to win? The ones where they perceive the most value from our product.  If somebody is going to use our product and make a million dollars, they care a lot more than someone who's going to use our product and make $10. Can we articulate where's the value of our product, who's going to get the value, and then find those people who really get a ton of value and focus on them. That's where we should be doing our prospecting. That's where we should be doing our marketing. And if we have a list of prospects to go deal with, those are the ones we should be spending our sales effort and energy on. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. 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/  

In this episode, Todd Snelgrove, Senior Director; Value Advisory at SAP, discusses the importance of value quantification in pricing. He emphasizes the need for a structured process to carry it out effectively. Topics covered include quantifying value in B2C, the subconscious way of quantifying value, the decoy effect in pricing, evolving power dynamics in procurement, and the power of quantifying value in pricing strategies.