Impact Pricing

It's absolutely true, people don't buy products, they buy solutions to problems. When we talk about our products, when we talk about our features, that doesn't truly resonate in the minds of our buyers. Instead, what we need to be doing is talking about the problems that we're going to solve as well as the results a buyer might achieve. When we can capture their attention, recognizing the fact that they have a problem and getting them to agree that they have that problem, and then describing the results they might be able to achieve by solving that problem, now we're getting their attention. These are things they can truly value. And by the way, maybe we're solving more problems than they originally thought they were when they were looking for a product like ours. When we truly understand problems and results for our marketplace, and we can talk to our customers that way, our customers then perceive a lot more value, which means we can win these deals at higher prices. And that's really the whole point. We ho

Jon Barker has been involved in managing government contracts from the supplier side his entire career. He started a company called PTW Solutions, where PTW means Price To Win, and they help companies win government contracts. Jon is an avid coach and he's coached both lacrosse and soccer. When coaching, Jon fosters a team environment, while learning the strengths and weaknesses of each individual to build up skills and confidence. In this episode, Jon talks about government contracting as he puts emphasis on why the government’s focus is set on cost-plus.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Learn how pricing runs in government contracting Discover what a “probability of win” means and why you should focus on deals with higher “probability of win” Find out resources you can visit as you look for data of your competitors’ prices   “Create your own internal models of the data that you use a lot to make those decisions, and have the ability to make the levers change easily. I think as a government con

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on March 23, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/peloton-tests-new-pricing-model/ 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/  

It really is fascinating that experts can translate our features into our benefits. And oftentimes as salespeople, as pricing people, as product managers or product marketers, we are experts in our own products. We think about a feature and we can automatically understand what those benefits are that our customers are going to achieve. But do our customers understand those benefits? And if they're experts then sure they do, but aren't we all trying to win new business? Aren't we all trying to find customers who are just getting into the product category, who are choosing between our products and our competitor's products? In these cases, our customers might know what the features are but they don't truly understand the benefits they should expect to receive. Imagine you've never, ever used a computer before and some salesperson tells you, yeah, this one has a terabyte static DRAM. You're thinking, okay, who cares? They have to be able to translate it into benefits. And so often when we speak to our potential

DeAnn Hammer is the Global Pricing Operations Manager at 3M, an industrial machinery manufacturing company that innovates with purpose and uses science every day to create real impact in every life around the world. She was originally a Marketing Manager in 3M. DeAnn was the valedictorian of her high school senior graduating class In this episode, DeAnn shares how she does the work of simplifying prices in a way that your customer understands as she puts emphasis on having not to negotiate once it’s properly done.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Find out why it’s a game-changer move for you to make buying a B2C experience for clients in a world of B2B; Discover how simplifying pricing removes the need for negotiating prices in the market; and Understand how price simplification unwinds the complexity in pricing   “If you make customers wait, you're going to lose the sale. Process and simplicity are going to allow you to grow your business even on really mature products.”  – DeAnn Hammer   Topic

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on March 16, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/pricing-people-shouldnt-set-prices/ 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/

Usually, when we think about creating a new business model, it revolves around pricing. It often revolves around, what are we going to charge for? If you think about what Netflix did when they first launched, you may recall Blockbuster was renting movies by the night, they were charging late fees. Most of their profit came from their late fees. Netflix on the other hand decided to offer a subscription where you could have one, two, or three DVDs at your house at any point in time, and you just paid a flat monthly fee. There were no late fees. What they did was changed the business model. They changed the pricing model. Now, how does this help everyone? Well, it helps everyone in the sense that now there's a group of people who prefer the subscription to the daily rental and they can go subscribe. We didn't eliminate one, although eventually, we did, but we didn't eliminate one, we just said let's offer more options to the marketplace. But in this case, especially the Netflix versus Blockbuster case, it was su

Jon Jennings is the Founder and Managing Partner of Jennings Executive Search, LLC. Jon is an official sponsor of this podcast. He began his career with a boutique recruiting firm, building relationships with C-Level accounting and finance professionals utilizing a research-based approach of study and analysis to best serve his clients. In 2012, Jon took this approach to a larger firm where he worked with several CFOs to build entire accounting and finance departments and gain a large firm perspective in how to build a successful practice. This experience led to the creation of Jennings Executive Search, LLC. In this episode, Jon discusses the current situation of the pricing market, specifically focusing on how things have developed since the pandemic began.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Discover how the market has been like since the beginning of this pandemic; Learn about the difference of hybrid, in office, and at home settings, as well as how this difference influence today’s job search;

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on March 9, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/the-value-of-teachers-vs-athletes/ 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/

Let's face it, pricing people, we're typically smart. We have to interact and interface with lots and lots of different departments. But we rarely have the authority to make decisions that impact the entire company. These decisions could be changing pricing strategies, changing pricing metrics, focusing on market segments that we're going to go target. It could be getting product people to use value as they make decisions on which products to buy, or marketing people to document what value looks like as they're doing their marketing messages, teaching salespeople how to sell value. All of these are crucial when it comes to us helping the company win more deals at higher prices, but we don't have authority. What we do have is the knowledge typically to help these things happen. The only people in the company who have the authority to force these things through, to convince people who might be reluctant to say, "Yes, okay, let's go try it," are executives. If we don't have executives driving pricing initiatives

Gerald Smith is a Professor of Marketing at Boston College. He's been a Pricing Consultant with Strategic Pricing Group and Monitor Group since 1987. Gerald is the author of a relatively new book, “Getting Price Right: The Behavioral Economics of Profitable Pricing”. In this episode, Gerald discusses the power psychology holds in pricing in relation to behavioral economics as he talks about the soft side of pricing alongside the importance of framing.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Find out what the hard side and soft side of pricing are all about, and why the behavioral side of pricing is more powerful than the logical side Understand why companies do framing, as well as why a frame of reference is important in pricing Discover why there’s power in psychology when talking about behavioral economics   “Ask yourself and ask your pricing team, what do customers get and what do they pay for what they get? And say, is everybody in the industry doing it the same way?” – Gerald Smith   Topics Cover

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on March 2, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/indirect-customer-impact/ 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 may be intuitive, may not be intuitive, but it turns out that if your fixed costs change, for whatever reason, if they go up, if they go down, it really should have no impact whatsoever on your pricing. For example, let's say you need to buy a new piece of factory equipment, and it's really expensive, and it makes your fixed cost go way up. Did buying that new piece of factory equipment for you change your customer's willingness to pay? No, it didn't. Customers are still willing to pay the same amount. They still can choose between you and a competitor. Well, did you changing your fixed costs changed the way your competitor prices for whatever reason? No, it doesn't. The only thing that matters to us when we're doing pricing is thinking about how our customers are making decisions and how we can make optimal decisions based on that. And I can assure you that your fixed costs have absolutely nothing to do with how much your customers are willing to pay. For that reason, your fixed costs never matter t

Reginald Tomas Lee is a Professor of Business Analytics at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, and he's been involved in supply chain since ’96. Reginald’s most recent book is called Project Profitability. And one fun thing, he can't go on vacation, because he has two killer dogs. In this episode, Reginald shares wisdom with regards to the modeling he’s been making as he talks about the power of helping people understand more clearly how what it is that they do impacts cash.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Understand why you should start seeing things from a cash perspective in relation to knowing what it is that it enables you to save Learn about the difference of cash cost and non-cash cost through situational examples from real life experiences Find out how your actions and decisions impact how you generate cash in a business   “Don’t focus on accounting margins.”  – Reginald Tomas Lee   Topics Covered: 01:17 – How Reginald shifted from being a mec

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on February 23, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/direct-customer-impact/ 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/  

It's true, pricing can have an instantaneous response. I often think of it as the nuclear bomb of marketing mix variables because you can change it today, impact the market immediately, and it's really hard to take it back. Now, compare that to the other marketing mix variables. If you've taken a marketing class, you know the four P's. You know the other three besides price, or your product, your place, and your promotion. Product is obviously, what are we building? The place is, what's the distribution channel look like? And then the promotion is, how are we marketing it? How are we talking about it in the marketplace? We could change our marketing. We could change our product. We could change our distribution channel. And each one of those would have an impact on our revenue, on our sales. But it takes a long time for that impact to ripple through. On the other hand, if I change price today, people will change their mind today. Some people will choose to buy, some people will choose not to buy, simply becau

Pedro Piccoli Soares is currently Senior Executive Manager of AI Pricing at SIXT, a travel arrangement / car rental company that’s known to be a provider of high-quality mobility services. He mentors startups, and has an Engineering degree. He also has a purple belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. In this episode, Pedro shares his knowledge when it comes to behavioral economics as he and Mark talk about how it works in relation to mental accounting and pricing.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Discover why it’s important for companies to understand why they’re doing pricing and why they’re having a price change Understand why you should still be relative to your competitors’ price change even when they’ve already made the mistake of decreasing their prices Learn more about behavioral economics, its tactics, and its relationship with mental accounting and pricing   “So, we've mentioned several different effects of behavioral economics and several different examples of how they can be applied on real busi

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on February 16, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/another-netflix-price-increase/ 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/  

The whole point of pricing, value-based pricing, is to charge what customers are willing to pay. And almost by definition, loyal customers like us more, they would be willing to pay us more. This is the big exception to the rule of charge what a customer is willing to pay. My intent when I do price segmentation and charge different customers different prices is I also want to think about the lifetime value of a customer. If you have a customer who loves you, they're very loyal to you, and yet they find out that you are charging them more than anybody else, it will upset them. You have a really high probability of losing them as a customer. And if you do, you lost the lifetime stream of value. So, my advice, treat loyal customers really, really well, and don't charge them more than other people. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. 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.

Duane Dufault is currently a Fractional CRO at Forward and is a Strategic Advisor at Abaqus Inc. Before this, he was Fractional VP of Sales at The RockED Company Inc. Duane is a dad of four lovely daughters. In this episode, Duane shares the power behind having all departments in a company understand value in order to help the customer see and understand value as well in accordance with their reasons for buying a product.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Discover why it’s important for you to teach your sales reps to unpack value and not create it Find out why it’s a must for you to help people understand what it is that they’re actually paying for upon purchasing your product Understand the reason behind having clients voice out their problem and a salesperson being able to connect the product as a solution to what a client needs to be solved   “Just make it easy, seriously. The easier you can make it for people to figure out the pricing on your product, the easier it is for them to buy. Simple