Impact Pricing

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on September 14, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/how-to-give-salespeople-discount-authority/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This one is the Queen of Spades from the Selling Value card deck. It turns out that when we shop for something, especially if it's something that we've never owned before, we've never purchased before, we are not experts in the product. We're trying to learn as much as we can about what makes sense. What's going to be good for us. Where's the best bang for our buck. We are not experts in the product category. And yet, if it's something that we've bought many, many times, as we become expert, then we stop thinking about what are the benefits I need to achieve and we start thinking about what are the features. Possibly my favorite example of this is imagine buying a computer. I'm guessing you've bought many computers in your life and you understand what many of the features do for you. For example, the size of the hard disc or the size of the RAM. And when you walk into a Best Buy store and you're going to buy a new computer, when the geek says to you, "Yeah, this one does emails and photos really well." You're thinking, "Go away, I don't want to know the benefits. Tell me what's the size of the hard disc, how much RAM, where's the processor speed." On the other hand, imagine it was your first computer. And someone walks in and says, "This is a two-gigabit processor with quad processors and two terabytes of hard disc and 256 gigabytes of memory." And you're thinking, "Is that good or not?" Because then you need the benefits. Most of the time, if we've got a direct salesperson selling a product, we're selling to somebody who hasn't bought the product before. We're selling to somebody who isn't an expert. And what that means is we should stop talking about our features, we really need to talk about our benefits. Features are simply proof points that we can achieve the benefits. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This is also an example of how Pricing Table Topics works. Grab a deck of our cards, pull out a random card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. This will improve your understanding and more importantly, your ability to communicate important concepts about value. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Geraldine Carter runs She Thinks Big Coaching where she helps CPAs do less without sacrificing revenue. Although her target market are CPAs, she actually has a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Cornell University. She was also a cycling guide for Backroads and now hosts her own podcast called The Business Strategy for CPAs. In this episode, she talks about the structure of pricing in the accounting industry and the reason why most CPAs are underpriced. She then discusses her so-called "effortless value" where accountants could earn more without having to do extra work. Finally, she shares her tips on how accountants could earn more by having expertise and charging their clients more. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Learn why you should have a deep expertise instead of being a generalist Acquire techniques on how to increase your value without doing more Discover the reason why charging more is better for you and your clients "It's good for your clients to charge them more" – Geraldine Carter Topics Covered: 01:33 – How Geraldine got into pricing 03:10 – The problem of pricing in the accounting industry 05:24 – What is Menu Pricing and its difference from Subscription Pricing 09:16 – CPAs are not a subscription 10:11 – How "billing" works in CPAs 11:56 – The prevailing mindset among CPAs 13:11 – Why having a deep expertise is essential in getting better prices 17:04 – The mindset that needs to be changed in the accounting industry 17:54 – What is "Effortless Value" 20:49 – Geraldine's bicycling pricing story 24:06 – Pricing table topics: Subscriptions have three revenue buckets: win, keep, and grow. Manage all three. 27:51: Geraldine's pricing advice Key Takeaways: "You can legitimately be given the marketplace and the absence of segmentation, become an expert and have expertise that the client cannot find anywhere else, either in their zip code or on the Internet. It just doesn't exist. There's so little competition that if you in fact do have deep expertise." – Geraldine Carter "Effortless value is this idea of going through your business and looking at all the ways you could improve. You could add value to your clients experience without it being more work." – Geraldine Carter "Your buyers take your price as a signal of quality. And if it is not high enough for what they are expecting to pay, they will keep on walking." – Geraldine Carter "If your delivery is dialed in and your clients are delighted and you make good on your promise, they will continue to stay." – Geraldine Carter People / Resources Mentioned: She Thinks Big Coaching: https://geraldinecarter.com/ Smart Strategy for CPAs: https://www.businessstrategyforcpas.com/ Jonathan Stark: https://jonathanstark.com/ Ron Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronbaker1/ Selling Value: How to Win More Deals in Higher Prices: https://www.amazon.com/Selling-Value-Deals-Higher-Prices/dp/1737655217 Connect with Geraldine Carter: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geraldine-carter/ Email: [email protected] Website: https://geraldinecarter.com/ Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mailto:[email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on September 7, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/why-you-should-give-salespeople-discount-authority/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This one is the King of Diamonds from the Selling Value card deck. If a salesperson doesn't believe they're going to win selling your product, they're not going to try to sell your product. They don't want to bang their head against a wall. They're going to go sell whatever happens to be easiest. But the next step is, assuming they can sell our product, how do we get them to sell it and win at the higher prices to stop giving away deep discounts? Well, the question becomes, does a salesperson truly believe your product is worth the price? If a salesperson has confidence that their customer is going to get so much more value than whatever the price is that we're going to charge, then they're much more likely to win at higher prices. If a salesperson questions the amount of value customers might get, if a salesperson doesn't believe deep down in their soul that this product is a great product for their customer, then they're going to tend to discount. They're going to offer discounts and hope that the buyer says, "Yes, finally, the value that I receive is worth the price that you're asking." What we want is for our salespeople to go in confidently. What we really want is for our salespeople to understand the value that we deliver, truly believe the value we deliver, and be able to communicate that value to the buyer. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This is also an example of how Pricing Table Topics works. Grab a deck of our cards, pull a random card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. This will improve your understanding and more importantly, your ability to communicate important concepts about value. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Dor Sasson is the co-founder and CEO of Stigg, a company that helps clients grow with pricing through a software that enables them to control what can be priced and packaged separately, and make adjustments without having to do coding. He has also been a Senior Product Manager at New Relic, a technology company which develops cloud-based software to help website and application owners track the performance of their services. In this episode, Dor shares how his experience in New Relic led him to explore the field of SaaS packaging and how his company, Stigg, aims to provide solutions to packaging problems from the developers' end. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Pickup ideas about the adjustments to be done when switching to usage-based pricing Discover how Stigg could help you on your packaging and pricing problems Learn the importance of asking the right questions in the success of businesses "Talk to your customers, ask them about their willingness to pay. There are amazing frameworks out there for how to ask the right questions. It will unlock immense, deep understanding of how your customers think about your pricing and will really help you to nail down your own pricing strategy. – Dor Sasson Topics Covered: 01:11 – How Dor got into pricing 03:59 – What is "entitlements"? 04:52 – Adjustments made by New Relic upon switching to usage-based pricing 08:09 – The work that Stigg actually does 15:48 – The difference between buyers and users 16:35 – Situations in the past where Stigg would've been a big help 20:51 – Dor's vision and mission for his company, Stigg 23:49 – Pricing table topics: "Good, better, best" pricing is significantly more effective within a market segment 26:38 – Dor's pricing advice Key Takeaways: "The way we like to think about Stigg is, we want to build out an infrastructure that is so easy to implement and so easy to adopt from the application side that it makes it really fast and easy for product and growth teams to introduce new pricing plans, changes in existing pricing plans." – Dor Sasson "The value that we unlock is for builders and growth leaders out there that are looking to use pricing as a vehicle for growth and help their companies continue to adapt to changing markets, continue to adapt to how they scale into new customer segments, and basically make sure that they give their buyers more options to use their software." – Dor Sasson "Our North star by the end of the day is not only helping our customers be faster in the way they introduce changes and launch new pricing but also ultimately unlock growth by allowing more flexibility for their buyers to use and consume their products." – Dor Sasson "There is no "one size fits all" in pricing. The first thing you got to do is understand in a very deep and thoughtful way, who are your customer segments, and good, better, best is actually a really good strategy to approach different customer segments and make sure that you build your pricing in a way that fits or is more aligned to the way each segment perceive value." – Dor Sasson People / Resources Mentioned: Stigg: https://www.stigg.io/ New Relic: https://newrelic.com/ Connect with Dor Sasson: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/datapm/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DorSasson Website: https://www.stigg.io/ Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on August 31, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/why-you-should-not-give-salespeople-discount-authority/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This one is the King of Clubs from the Selling Value card deck. What we really want is for our salespeople to be able to communicate the value of our products to our customers. It turns out that's so much easier to do when our marketing department has figured out and created the materials and the support to help salespeople go do that. But then marketing has to understand how is it that our customers value our products. And this is so much easier to do, if our product people create products that truly have value to our customers so they understand the value that our customers get from our products. It turns out very few people truly understand how much value we get, and if we want our entire company to truly think about value, to be able to communicate value, create value, capture value, the best and easiest way to do that is for the executive team to show interest about value. And what that truly means is that executives should be asking questions, how is it that customers are going to value this new feature, this new product? How much will they value it? How is it different from our competitors and how much do they value that differentiation? What problems are we solving? What problems are we solving our competitors aren't solving? Executives showing interest in value can help drive value to be a mindset inside the entire company. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This is also an example of how Pricing Table Topics works. Grab a deck of our cards, pull out a random card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. This will improve your understanding and more importantly, your ability to communicate important concepts about value. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt is the partner of willingnesstopay.com where they help companies create pricing models that radically accelerates growth and unlocks the value of their underlying technology. He has founded and sold two different companies, and he has a master's degree from Harvard. He also has an upcoming book called "The Pricing Roadmap" which will be published this December. In this episode, Ulrik enumerates four (4) things that he thinks are the most important in SaaS pricing. He also shares his methods on product segmentation and explains why the traditional "good, better, and best" product tier is lacking some important details. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Learn about designing your models as well as the structure of SaaS pricing Find out how different 'tiered packaging' is to Mark's idea of good, better, best Understand what prescriptive solution is and why you should not do it "Usually, people underestimate the pricing power they have in the market. So, I see, even if you had to do it blind, the chances that you could make more money by raising prices, even poorly, is better than what you're doing." – Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt Topics Covered: 01:47 – How Ulrik got into pricing 05:43 – The top four things that really matter in SaaS pricing 08:22 – There are no perfect outcomes; only workable and functional outcomes 09:27 – How Ulrik does product segmentation 12:09 – What is prescriptive solution and why you should avoid it 15:19 – Ulrik's attempt on product packaging with conjoint analysis 18:04 – What Ulrik likes about being a pricing consultant 19:45 – Ulrik's thoughts on the three tiers of products (Good, Better, Best) 21:24 – How Ulrik actually defines the tiered packaging model 22:08 – The specifics of "Tiered Packaging"; how it's different from good, better, best 28:30 – Ulrik's pricing advice 29:59 – Connect with Ulrik Key Takeaways: "If you have segments that are so different that they need different pricing models and product models, that's the first thing you need to figure out." – Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt "There are two different high level tool boxes to do price discrimination; pricing matrix and packaging. Packaging runs on functionality, and pricing metrics on some volume or usage." – Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt "There's not a perfect outcome. There is a workable outcome, functional outcome to run through. And then you might want to go back and change something if there is a better outcome to be had." – Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt People / Resources Mentioned: The Pricing Roadmap: https://www.willingnesstopay.com/saas-pricing-book Connect with Ulrik Lehrskov-Schmidt: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ulriklehrskovschmidt/ Website: https://www.willingnesstopay.com/ Email: [email protected] Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mailto:[email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on August 24, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/qdoba-knows-their-buyers-decision-journey/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This one is the King of Hearts from the Selling Value card deck. It's true, value-based pricing is impossible because value-based pricing simply means charge what your customers are willing to pay. And yet you don't know how much your customers are willing to pay. You can't read their mind. You don't know the answer and you never will know the answer. But instead of assuming we're ever going to get perfect, let's assume we can get better. We can adopt this as a mindset. If we're thinking always about how much is our market, our customer, willing to pay. All of a sudden, we change our thinking from cost-plus, we have to cover our cost type thinking, to, could I get more from this customer? Could I get more from this marketplace? And as we start thinking that way, we also start thinking, can I create products that deliver a little bit more value? Can I communicate my value better to my customers? Can I help my customers, or my buyers, understand that there's way more value there than they originally thought, and therefore they would be willing to pay us more money? Once we start to understand and think about how is it that our customers value our products, then we have the ability to price and capture more of that value, meaning more profit to us. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This is also an example of how Pricing Table Topics works. Grab a deck of our cards, pull out a random card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. This will improve your understanding and more importantly, your ability to communicate important concepts about value. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Bryan Whittington is the founder of ebs/growth, a firm that helps companies create a more effective sales team. Also, he is the host of the Talent Sales & Scale podcast, and was a sales trainer for over ten years. In this episode, Bryan discusses how he handles exploratory or discovery calls. He explains how he talks with his clients and potential clients in order to find the root cause of their problems, and shares some of his techniques to get these clients to propose the possible solutions to their problems themselves. Why you have to checkout today's podcast: Learn how an expert like Bryan Whittington handles discovery calls Acquire new techniques in scrutinizing your clients' problems Discover smart ways to find a solution to your clients' problems "Pricing is a belief. You either believe that your price is not worth what you're asking, or you're able to convey that your price is worth it to your prospect, your buyer. But price is absolutely a belief. You choose which belief you want." – Bryan Whittington Topics Covered: 01:15 – How Bryan got into pricing 02:08 – Selling value vs. selling a commodity 05:08 – What to avoid when having a discovery call 07:02 – How to handle a discovery call, step 1 09:23 – Why it is better to setup that next meeting 13:30 – How to handle a discovery call, step 2 14:19 – Why you shouldn't allow your clients to rate their problem a 7/10 15:01 – How to handle a discovery call, step 3 17:59 – Finding out the root cause of the clients' problems 22:54 – When and how to name the price of your solution based on the magnitude of the problem 24:46 – Pricing table topics: "Salespeople use every tool available to close a deal. When given authority to discount, they will use it more often than necessary" 28:20 – Bryan's pricing advice Key Takeaways: "Sales is how you identify what their challenges are, whether or not you can solve the problem of those challenges, and then understand the value of you fixing those problems for that organization will be, and you can charge an appropriate value for it." – Bryan Whittington "That conversation should take anywhere between 5 to 8 minutes. And if it's longer than that, you've already started your initial first sales call, and I wouldn't suggest you do that." – Bryan Whittington "Often, the problem that the person brings you is never really the problem. We have to identify the real root cause to know whether or not your solution will work. If your solution won't work for that root cause, then make an introduction to somebody where it will." – Bryan Whittington People / Resources Mentioned: ebs/growth: https://ebsgrowth.com/ Talent, Sales & Scale Podcast: https://ebsgrowth.com/podcast/ Connect with Bryan Whittington: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brywhittington/ Email: [email protected] Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on August 17, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/training-salespeople/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This one is the King of Spades from the Selling Value card deck. It's true, value-based pricing is the most profitable pricing strategy you can adopt. If you think about it, the definition of value-based pricing is charge what your customers are willing to pay. Now, that seems pretty simple, but if you knew exactly how much your customers were willing to pay, and you charged that amount, then you can't possibly make more money. If you charge less than that amount, you end up leaving money on the table. If you charge more than that amount, your buyer doesn't buy. So, by definition, value-based pricing is the most profitable pricing strategy you can adopt. However, it's impossible to do perfectly because there's no way that you know how much somebody is willing to pay for your product. We can't read our customer's minds. What we can do though, is adopt this as a strategy, an attitude, a goal, and continue to do things so that we can learn more and more about our markets and our customer's willingness to pay and get to the point where we're capturing more of it each time. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This is also an example of how Pricing Table Topics works. Grab a deck of our cards, pull a random card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. This will improve your understanding and more importantly, your ability to communicate important concepts about value. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Dinaz Zaq is the Director at Revenue Pricing Consultants in London, the "home of revenue management and pricing expertise" that focuses on increasing profitability through diagnostic review. Dinaz spent 20 years in Revenue Management at British Airways, and also worked for resorts, hotels, and cruise lines. In this episode, Dinaz explains how airlines, hotels, and cruises do pricing as she shares some of the strategies they use in line with the factors that affect their pricing decisions. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Understand how most airlines, hotels, and cruises do pricing; Discover the strategies they use and the factors that affect their pricing decisions; and Find out why each employee – even the cabin crews – are important on getting customers and providing great service "The biggest thing that you need to get right is your demand before you make any pricing decision at all." – Dinaz Zaq Topics Covered: 01:32 – How Dinaz got into pricing 03:02 – How do airlines do pricing? What factors affect their pricing decisions? 10:03 – The strategy behind "I will get the best price on a domestic flight if I book it six weeks before my flight" 11:47 – The difference between pricing hotels and pricing airplane seats 14:06 – Why hotels don't hold their prices really high for last-minute travelers 15:53 – Hotels and discounts on their rates 16:40 – What is the strategy of cruises when it comes to pricing? 20:35 – Pricing table topics: "Every employee creates or destroys value" 22:35 – Dinaz's pricing advice Key Takeaways: "Things depend, really, on the strategy that the airline follows and what's the flavor of the day as far as their management is concerned." – Dinaz Zaq "You might get some hotels that won't drop their price. Some might even take walk ins at the door for a cheaper price. They don't want to publish it on the internet. Airlines might. It's about, you know, when we talk strategy, when you try to hold the price then drop it later, you can sell it through a different distribution channel so that it doesn't hit the public and therefore not destroy your pricing strategy." – Dinaz Zaq "Their strategy is to fill it to 100%, and that's why you might find cruise prices dropping near at the time quite a bit. But what the customer misses out on is you may not get your best cabin if you wait too long, because the people that are regular cruisers, they have got all the balconies and then you'd be stuck somewhere on top of the discotheque or in a noisy area or whatever." – Dinaz Zaq People / Resources Mentioned: British Airways: https://www.britishairways.com/ STR: https://str.com/ Marriott: https://www.marriott.com/ Hotwire: https://www.hotwire.com/ Priceline: https://www.priceline.com/ Booking.com: https://www.booking.com/ Hotels.com: https://www.hotels.com/ Connect with Dinaz Zaq: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpcltd/ Email: [email protected] Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on August 10, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/discovered-value/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This one is the Ace of Diamonds from the Selling Value card deck. When companies or people inside companies say we sell a commodity, what that says to me is they don't understand the value of what they offer. It may absolutely be true that you sell a commodity-like product where we're selling gold coins and your gold coins are exactly the same as your competitor's gold coins. And we could think of that maybe as a commodity, but then that's really not what we're selling. What we have to sell are all the things that go around the gold coins or go around our commodity-like product. We should be thinking about what are the services? Can we do better delivery? Can we do better payment terms? Can we make our customers trust us more? Can we give them better advice? There are many, many different ways that we might be able to add value to our buyers above and beyond the individual product that we're selling. I often think that when people are saying the words, we sell a commodity or our product is a commodity, they've actually stopped thinking about how they're better than their competition. They've stopped thinking about what their buyers really care about. So, in my mind, there really is no such thing as a commodity and all companies should banish the word. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This is also an example of how Pricing Table Topics works. Grab a deck of our cards, pull out a random card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. This will improve your understanding and more importantly, your ability to communicate these important concepts. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Dominick Latorre is the Senior Director of Yield and Inventory Management at Sinclair Broadcast Group. He used to be the Manager of Pricing and Planning at Spectrum Reach, and he's the Assistant General Manager of the Men's National Team in USA Ball Hockey. In this episode, Dominick explains how they price slots for broadcast advertisements as he relates it to how airlines do pricing for their seats. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Learn how Sinclair does pricing for perishable inventory like ads Understand how it's related to how airlines price their seats Find out why it's important that your sales people know how to make sure that your service is priced effectively "It's educating yourself on different industries outside of yours and how you can take those concepts and those ideas and apply them to your business. – Dominick Latorre Topics Covered: 02:01 – How Dominick got into pricing 04:12 – Sinclair's goal to improve efficiencies with the local pricing experts and revenue with pricing 06:41 – "It is not what I wanted. It's not what I wanted to buy." 09:25 – Relating and comparing how Sinclair does pricing to how airlines price their seats 14:46 – The factors that affect how Sinclair price the programs 18:38 – Pricing for political campaigns 23:01 – Pricing table topics: "Create real value with differentiation. Create perceived value with marketing." 25:36 – Dominick's pricing advice Key Takeaways: "I'm very happy with the choice I made back in 2007-ish to get into pricing, because as obviously as you know, it's the biggest driver of profit if you're priced correctly, so much more than sales volume or anything else." – Dominick Latorre "With the various choices for marketing dollars these days, you can't be upsetting clients and pulling multi-million-dollar deals because we weren't priced effectively and given them a rate that from day one it should have been a premium program; obviously, the demand is there. We should be charging it based upon that." – Dominick Latorre "You can drive more revenue by lowering your rates, and we've seen that in some cases." – Dominick Latorre "We talk to our sellers all the time. Sell the value of the program. Don't combine it with other solutions. Don't sell a customer what we call a 9A4P rotator, where basically that customer spot could fall anywhere between that time period. That's not selling value. Look at the value of our solutions and price accordingly to them." – Dominick Latorre "With so many marketing solutions out there and dollars to be spent, you have to make sure that you're priced effectively. And again, talking about value, making sure that the buyers see the value in your solution." – Dominick Latorre People / Resources Mentioned: Sinclair Broadcast Group: https://sbgi.net/ Professional Pricing Society: https://www.pricingsociety.com/ Connect with Dominick Latorre: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominicklatorre/ Email: [email protected] Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mailto:[email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on August 3, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/perfect-pricing/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This one is the Ace of Clubs from the Selling Value card deck. One of my favorite sayings when I'm teaching is, nobody cares about your product. What's fascinating is when you look at a company's website or you look at how somebody wants to talk about what it is they're going to offer you, they want to talk about their product. I so much want to tell you, oh, I'm a pricing expert and I train people on pricing. But that's the product. What we really need to be doing is talking about the problems that our buyers have and the outcomes or the results they might be able to achieve. Experts are able to take our features and say, oh yeah, I get what that means to me. But most of our buyers aren't experts. What we need to be able to do is instead of talking about our product, talk about the problems that our buyers might have. I might go to a VP of sales and say, do your salespeople tend to discount too much too often? Now that's a problem. And if that resonates with this VP of sales, now we have something to talk about. But for me to walk in and say, I'm a pricing expert, and I teach salespeople how to sell value. That's all about me. And it only resonates if that person truly is an expert, and they have the problem. So, I love to say nobody cares about your product. What we have to be doing always is thinking about our buyers' problems and the results they might achieve. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This is also an example of how Pricing Table Topics works. Grab a deck of our cards, pull out a random card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. This will improve your understanding and more importantly, your ability to communicate these important concepts. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Marcos Rivera is the Founder and CEO of Pricing I/O, a training and coaching boutique helping high-growth B2B SaaS companies accelerate ARR growth and market share. Marcos was the Operating Executive for Product Management and Pricing of Vista Consulting Group, and is the author of the book "Street Pricing: A Pricing Playlist for Hip Leaders in SaaS". In this episode, Marcos shares his insights on some the common problems in the subscription industry. He also talks about the different ways to approach pricing adjustments in relation to software innovations, and discusses the hot topic of usage-based pricing. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Find out what the three biggest pricing problems are when it comes to subscription and know why you shouldn't do those Discover why people don't pay much attention on the expansion part of land and expand, and learn how to go for it if you want to Understand why it's a good step to raise prices on the subscribers with highest usage first "Go out there, get data, experiment and raise your confidence, and the pricing problem gets so much easier." – Marcos Rivera Topics Covered: 01:32 – How Marcos got into pricing 02:33 – Biggest pricing problems in subscriptions: (1) Pricing without aligning their package of value to their clients 04:00 – Why decoupling pricing and packaging is difficult 04:47 – Enhancing your pricing when introducing software innovations 06:31 – Biggest pricing problems in subscriptions: (2) Underpricing 09:08 – Biggest pricing problems in subscriptions: (3) Overcomplexity in the model 10:55 – People not focusing on the expansion part of the commonly used phrase in SaaS, "land and expand" 14:02 – Understanding usage data in providing better value to your product 16:17 – Getting things to levels of sophistication and sophistication at scale 18:29 – Where, when, and how to utilize usage-based pricing 24:38 – Pricing table topics: "Raise prices on the subscribers with highest usage first." 26:12 – Marcos' pricing advice Key Takeaways: "The way to start with pricing, especially if you already have an existing model and you're looking to enhance it, believe it or not, is not where most companies start, which is "how much should I charge with this new thing?" It's the first thing on their mind, the first question on their mind, but that question doesn't get answered until you understand how your value is being changed..." – Marcos Rivera "There's nothing wrong with land and expand, but what often happens is that it's mostly land and very little expand…. When you place so many of your chips on the land part of it, you start being overly generous with your limits or overly generous of what you're including. What ends up happening is you put so much of your expansion opportunity into the land that your expand opportunities are limited. Overly heavy on the land makes it tougher to expand." – Marcos Rivera "Be a little bit careful about over indexing on what they're doing in the system because you don't want to inadvertently discourage them from using the product." – Marcos Rivera "Value is not in the people using it. The value is in the machines doing, and the volume and frequency with which it's doing it." – Marcos Rivera "Remember, perceived value gets stronger and better with more usage. That correlation works out really well." – Marcos Rivera People / Resources Mentioned: Pricing I/O: https://www.pricingio.com/ Vista Consulting Group: https://vistacg.com/ Vista Equity Partners: https://www.vistaequitypartners.com/ Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/ Slack: https://slack.com/ Connect with Marcos Rivera: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcoslrivera/ Website:https://www.pricingio.com/ Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mailto:[email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on July 27, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/pricing-table-topics/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This one is the Ace of Hearts from the Selling Value card deck. Selling value really does do a lot of things. But if you imagine for a second that a buyer has some expectation of how much value they're going to get from our product. That is a good indicator of their willingness to pay, it's a good indicator of how urgent it is that they want to solve the problem or buy the product. But what if we had the ability to increase the amount of value that person expects to get from our product? For the sake of argument, let's say we 10x it. We make our product really valuable to them. All of a sudden, they're willing to pay more. They want it. They want it now. They want it faster. And so, we're going to increase our average selling price, we're going to shorten the sales cycles. And of course, if they believe we're going to deliver a 10x, they're going to buy from us instead of from our competition. And once we can recognize those buyers who really are going to get a lot of value from our product, then we get better prospects as well. So, it turns out when we can sell value, we really do increase win rates and average selling prices. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This is also an example of how Pricing Table Topics works. Grab a deck of our cards, pull a random card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what the card says. This will improve your understanding and more importantly, your ability to communicate important concepts. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Mark Stiving is a widely recognized pricing expert and marketing pro who teaches companies how to boost revenues and realize their true value. He is the host of the Impact Pricing podcast, helping people win more business at higher prices through value, and has authored three books which all revolve around pricing. Ron Baker is the Founder of VeraSage Institute, dedicated to helping professional knowledge firms bury the billable hour and trash timesheets. He has published seven books around the topics of business and pricing, and also is a radio talk-show host for The Soul of Enterprise. In this episode, Ron engages in a pricing metric discussion with Mark as they share their insights on cost-plus, hourly pricing, and subscriptions. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Deep dive into discussions about different pricing metrics, focusing on cost-plus, hourly, and subscriptions Find out why putting time in your service and charging by the hour isn't an ideal way to charge clients Understand why providing value is better than charging hourly or using cost-plus pricing "There's always going to be people and businesses that use cost-plus and other inferior methods like hourly. They're going to be out there, but they're just not where my focus is. My focus is on the other end, trying to help people price and create more value so they can capture more value. I'm not interested in working for people that want to price in an inferior manner, because I think that means they're not providing enough value to you." – Ron Baker Topics Covered: 01:17 – Mark's five top reasons/times when cost-plus pricing makes sense 04:36 – Reacting to Mark's five reasons / doing value-based pricing along with cost-plus pricing 08:13 – Pricing in micro and macro level businesses: cost-plus vs value-based 11:37 – Why Ron refuses to pay by hourly billing + how auto mechanics price their work 16:24 – Talking about Ron and Colin's difference in perspectives 18:04 – How Mark charges clients 'hourly' and what Ron has to say about it 23:04 – Discussion around subscription + today's topic in general: pricing metric 27:25 – Mark's tax guy + why hourly billing isn't ideal for Ron 31:17 – On announcing a price increase: Do something nice for your customers Key Takeaways: "If I could categorize everything I just said, I'd categorize it in two categories. One is sometimes, customers demand it – so that would be Apple and government, and sometimes, it's just more efficient as a business to do cost plus than it is to do value-based pricing." – Mark Stiving "In the world of cost plus and efficiencies, one could make the argument. I'm not saying this is true by any means, but one could make the argument. If I was in a very low margin, highly competitive business, it might be less expensive and more efficient to just do cost plus than to spend time trying to figure out what each customer's willing to pay me." – Mark Stiving "One of my favorite sayings is customers hate price increases, but they'll hate it a little bit less if you blame increasing costs." – Mark Stiving "The billable hour is what I'm crusading against, but on a larger perspective, the billable hour is cost-plus pricing." – Ron Baker "At a macro level, there's no way that costs justify price or determine price. Can't be. Otherwise, no business would ever go bankrupt." – Ron Baker "If somebody really did abuse you, then why would you ever work with that person?" – Ron Baker People / Resources Mentioned: The Soul of Enterprise:https://www.thesoulofenterprise.com/ Colin Jasper:https://www.linkedin.com/in/colin-jasper-7a401213/ Win Keep Grow:https://www.amazon.com/Win-Keep-Grow-Accelerate-Subscription/dp/1631954784 Time's Up:https://www.amazon.com/Times-Up-Subscription-Business-Professional/dp/1119893526 Marco Bertini:https://marcobertini.com/ The Ends Game:https://marcobertini.com/book/ Connect with Ron Baker: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronbaker1/ Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on July 20, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/subscribe-to-heated-seats-in-a-bmw/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This meme is the Ace of Spades from the Selling Value card deck. Selling value really is the skill of increasing customer perceived value. If you think about it, our customers don't really know how much value they're going to get from our products. And yet we as salespeople, product people, pricing people, we've seen other customers use our products. We've seen all the different places where they get value from our products. And if we've done a really nice job, we've been able to quantify some of that value that some of our previous clients have gotten. Doesn't it make sense then that in a sales situation we find a way to help this buyer, someone who's evaluating our current product, to learn about and understand all the different ways our product might be able to add value to them. And once we can do that were increasing the amount of value that customer perceives for our product. This is how we win more deals at higher prices. So, selling value really is the skill of increasing customer perceived value. We hope you enjoy this memecast. This is also an example of how Pricing Table Topics works. Grab a deck of our cards, pull out a random card and read the saying. Then talk for one to two minutes about what the card says. This will improve your understanding, and more importantly, your ability to communicate important concepts. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

John Moss is the CEO of Flintfox International, a pricing software company with world class IP in the areas of pricing and revenue management. He's previously worked as the Chief Strategy Officer and also General Manager of MYOB. John is also trained to use explosive and radioactive devices. In this episode, John talks about the work they do at Flintfox. He explains why pricing models should change in line with the updates constantly happening at present on software. Additionally, Mark and he discuss the complexity of pricing, especially in these days of high inflation. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Discover why pricing models in software businesses should change from time to time Understand the current situation and complexities in pricing, especially in this time of high inflation Find out how much of a game-changer it will be to have organizations focus more on pricing and not just in cost reduction "For many organizations, pricing has been off to the side and somebody who's got a quantitative bent will do that and look into it. I think there's an increasing need to employ experts in the organization that understand pricing, that understand pricing models, how you create value, and can help you manage through the current period of uncertainty." – John Moss Topics Covered: 01:18 – How John got into pricing 02:37 – Lessons learned as they transitioned from transactional to subscription pricing 04:14 – Talking about the work Flintfox does 06:51 – What makes Flintfox different from other pricing software companies? 09:40 – Discussion about the complexity of pricing nowadays 11:20 – Avoiding channel conflict and posting things for the public to see 13:25 – The challenge of increasing prices during this period of inflation 18:02 – John, business software, and value-based pricing 22:36 – Pricing table topics: "Fixed costs never matter to pricing. Never, never, never." 25:04 – John's pricing advice Key Takeaways: "Software is no longer build something, release it, and it stays stable and constant forever. Software nowadays is constantly evolving and changing, and so the pricing model for that product had to change as well." – John Moss "It's increasingly important, I think, to have a good data set and an integrated data set to be able to understand exactly how your product portfolio is performing and what margins you're making." – John Moss "We're seeing more people have the confidence to put through a higher increase in the expectation that they do it once and maybe it lasts for 9-12 months, as opposed to putting through 3% now and then come back in two or three months' time for another 3%, which that sort of attritional increase is probably less well received by customers than a big bang." – John Moss "It's a consequence of software. What young people and you and I now expect is that software gets better all the time. I mean, we all see it every day. Every app we have on our phone gets updated all the time incrementally. But some of these applications do improve functionality quite significantly over a number of years. And so that's what you're paying for, effectively – the fact that the developers are still working on this product." – John Moss People / Resources Mentioned: Flintfox International: https://www.flintfox.com/ MYOB: https://www.myob.com/ Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/ Connect with John Moss: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnrmoss/ Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on July 13, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/ballet-football-pricing-and-sales/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Possibly my single favorite KPI in the world of pricing is average selling price. Are we managing average selling price per product, average selling price overall across the portfolio. If you have a single product that has a price on it and you can monitor that average selling price, that gives you a great indication of what's going on in your marketplace, how well we're selling value. If you can monitor average selling price by salesperson, now we're getting a great indicator of which salespeople do a good job at selling value and which ones don't. If you can't manage average selling price, maybe you're going to have an average deal size. How big are the opportunities that we're facing, that we're being able to bid on? And which ones of those are we winning or not? But my recommendation, find some KPI, maybe two or three, that are a great indicator of how well our customers are perceiving our value, which means their willingness to pay and how well our salespeople are selling value. Track them over time. Watch for the anomalies. Watch for the changes. And use those as indicators to see if you can figure out what's going on in your marketplace. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This impactful insight came from the book, Selling Value, which I wrote to help salespeople win more deals at higher prices. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel is the Founder and CEO of SalesDeck, an online sales communication tool. He is also the Founder and CEO of 1min30, a French inbound marketing agency. He is an entrepreneur, speaker, and author of eight marketing and sales methodologies books. Gab hosts the Virtual Selling podcast. In this episode, Gabriel talks about service packaging as he shares how they do it in his marketing company, 1min30. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Find out how to get your product packaging and pricing right Learn good, better, best service packaging through the way a marketing company does it Understand why pricing is at the heart of entrepreneurship "If you are in service, the idea of packaging what you sell is very important." – Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel Topics Covered: 01:29 – Growing up with French fonctionnaire parents while wanting to become an entrepreneur 02:19 – How Gabriel got into pricing; Gabriel realizes how important pricing is 04:36 – Talking about service packaging in line with his marketing company, 1min30 08:34 – The difference between the three price points 09:54 – Where he got the idea of his good, better, best strategy 10:36 – Did Gab learn how to have value conversations with clients? 12:06 – Gabriel's pricing advice 14:51 – Pricing table topics: "Be strategic. Focus on lifetime value." Key Takeaways: "I think pricing is really at the heart of entrepreneurship, because at one time, you need to price what you do, what you sell, what you create, and it's really a marketing aspect that is very interesting, because with pricing, you can make your revenue even bigger without working too much." – Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel "It's really important to find the right price and to be sure that the price you choose is really the closest to what a customer is ready to pay and the ones that make you the more value and the more money in your pocket." – Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel "Really thinking about lifetime value is really thinking about what is the price being acceptable by your customer and the value you bring him, and also the fact that you keep bringing value and keep in loyal to your product." – Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel People / Resources Mentioned: SalesDeck: https://salesdeck.io/ 1min30: https://www.1min30.com/ Acquisition Strategy Design: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/2377740324/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2 Blair Enns' The Win Without Pitching Manifesto: https://www.winwithoutpitching.com/the-manifesto/ Connect with Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrields/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriel-dabi-schwebel/ Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on July 6, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/a-good-case-for-cost-plus-pricing/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Pricing decisions can always help us achieve our goals. We need to make sure we understand what those goals are. I would start with understanding what the corporate objectives are. Oftentimes those are things like we need to raise our average selling price. We need to gain more market share. We need to have more margin. Typically, these goals, these corporate goals, are established by our CEO and our executive team, and they're there to drive increased market capitalization. However, your product may have a different set of goals than what your corporate goal is. So, what is the goal of your product? The goal of your product may be to bring more people into the platform so that we then have more people we can sell upgrades to. That's a great goal. We need to understand that as we're setting our pricing. Your goal may be we need to generate more revenue, more profit, so that we can fund other projects. That's a great goal. We just need to know what our goals are. As we're making these pricing decisions. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This impactful insight came from the book, Selling Value, which I wrote to help salespeople win more deals at higher prices. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

John Chisholm was a US lawyer. For 15 years, he's been in law firms, using value-based pricing, and now subscription pricing. John swims in the ocean every morning with his Speedo around his neck. Pricing for law firms or even major consultancy firms is not easy. Price your final client contracts too high, and you'll lose some of your most high-value clients. Price them too low, and you'll be forced to work too few staff to the bone to cut costs. In this episode, John shares how law firm should approach their pricing strategy. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Discover how to create a pricing revenue model that funds a thriving firm while generating real value for clients Learn how to make your law firm and consultancy clients understand the value of your service and the risks they are avoiding by hiring you compared to your competitors by communicating the value you provide Discover why a pricing expert is essential to the profitability of any law firm "Just don't price your own work." – John Chisholm Topics Covered: 01:06 – How John got into pricing: His late father's story in relation to legal service fees 03:06 – Doing timesheet free billing as a law firm in the 1970s to '80s 05:25 – The old law business model of billing by the hour 06:38 – How things led him to his aha moment in relation to the practice of pricing 10:37 – Changing the mindset around pricing: Possible or not? 15:48 – "The true indication of a really good professional is not so much the answers they give; it's the questions they ask" 19:24 – Having a value conversation around $500 vs. $270's worth 22:15 – John's pricing advice 23:31 – Pricing table topics: "Sunk costs don't matter to pricing or any business decision" Key Takeaways: "Now it's very, very ingrained – the whole profession, I'm afraid. There has been a lot of movement, but they've been mainly in smaller, innovative firms. But the large firms, despite what they say, when you peel back the onion, the measurements, their rewards, their whole internal systems still work around time, and it's hard to change, and they're very successful." – John Chisholm "I know I'll get into trouble for saying this, but lawyers buying and selling to each other is not a great recipe for innovation or change or taking risk." – John Chisholm "Those that perceive they have the most to lose will be the last to change, and that will be the big end of town worldwide." – John Chisholm "I try and get the lawyers that I work with my clients to stop thinking like lawyers, because often, the solution is not a legal solution; it really isn't, or the objectives are not a legal solution. It may be that what we're going to do has legal input, and that's the skills that the lawyers have that someone else doesn't have. But it's turning the conversation on its head. It's asking the right questions. And I think the true indication of a really good professional is not so much the answers they give; it's the questions they ask." – John Chisholm "I work more with my client lawyers focusing on what additional benefits can you give to clients, many of which don't cost anything to the law firm but add value to the client; the price just follows. I think also, if you can focus on increasing the client's profit, our profit will follow as a profession." – John Chisholm "I think even though it might be for short term profitability, there's just so many good lawyers that just do underestimate the value that they're providing to their clients, and that's their fault, not their client's fault." – John Chisholm People / Resources Mentioned: Ron Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronbaker1/ VeraSage Institute: https://www.verasage.com/ John Chisholm Consulting: https://www.chisconsult.com/ Connect with John Chisholm: Email: [email protected] Website: https://www.chisconsult.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisholmjohn/ Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 29, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/how-i-think-about-pricing/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This one's really targeted at marketing people, product management. It turns out that we make fun of salespeople a lot because they offer discounts, they don't know how to sell value. But the question that I would ask is, what have you given them in terms of tools and knowledge and confidence that they can win deals at the prices that we think they should be winning at? We may have gone out and done a ton of analysis in the marketplace, we understand the value of our product, we understand how we compare to the competition, but have we shared that well with our salespeople? In my newest book, Selling Value, I describe something called a value table. And if you've created a value table, it simply documents where the value of your product really comes from. And if you can share that information with your salespeople, it gives them the ability to go look for places where there really is value in the marketplace. And it gives them the ability to have value conversations with their customers and potentially close more deals at the prices that we think they should be winning at. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This impactful insight came from the book, Selling Value, which I wrote to help salespeople win more deals at higher prices. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Colin Jasper has a Bachelor of Science in Statistics. He's been in consulting since 1997 and is currently a Principal at Positive Pricing in Melbourne, Australia. Colin is a competitive bridge player, and was a speaker at the Professional Pricing Society (PPS) this year. In this episode, Colin debunks three pricing myths and explains why these are the complete opposite of what people should be doing in pricing. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Discover three common myths people practice when doing pricing Understand why these false myths and are the complete opposites of what people should be doing in pricing Find out why we shouldn't compete on price and not behave like a commodity "Let's not behave like a commodity. Let's avoid competing on price." – Colin Jasper Topics Covered: 01:29 – How Colin got into pricing 02:31 – Creating huge impact on companies through pricing 03:31 – Billable hours in professional services firms: Perspectives of clients and firms 07:32 – Fixed $500/month vs. hourly fee for bookkeeping 09:31 – Good, better, best in fixed fee vs. hourly + the ultimate purpose of hourly rates 13:02 – Dealing with the uncertainty of projects 14:37 – Competitor pricing as a pricing myth 16:17 – "Aspire to be the most expensive and not be scared of that" 18:04 – Myth: Losing on price means their pricing strategy is wrong 20:26 – Colin's pricing advice 23:13 – Pricing table topics: "Value-based pricing is never perfect. You can't read your customers' mind." Key Takeaways: "From a client perspective, if a client doesn't want hourly rates, that's fine. They've got that. However, from a firm perspective, I think if the firm is going to be client-oriented, they should give the client the fee structure that they want." – Colin Jasper "If your firm is going to put their interests ahead of yours, then you're probably working with the wrong firm in the first place. Because again, if the firm is putting their interests ahead of yours, they don't particularly care. I think the client ultimately chooses fee structure. It's our job to give them the fee structure they want, provided the fee level is high enough." – Colin Jasper "Ultimately, when I come to what I think is we're trying to achieve with pricing, it's coming up with a price that we regard as fair to the firm but is also fair to the client. And I think there are times where the best way to achieve that is through hourly rates." – Colin Jasper "If you honestly aim to be the best firm in the market, your price has to send that message. You should aspire to be the most expensive and not be scared of that. You should own it." – Colin Jasper "If you never lose work based on price, your pricing strategy is flawed. If you never lose work based on price, you're leaving money on the table." – Colin Jasper People / Resources Mentioned: Positive Pricing: https://positivepricing.com/ Ron Baker: https://www.verasage.com/ronald-j-baker/ Connect with Colin Jasper: Website: https://positivepricing.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colin-jasper-7a401213/ Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 22, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/adopt-price-segmentation/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

I like to run the following thought experiment. Imagine that I'm auctioning off a coffee mug. Auction it off in a classroom, or a keynote room, and maybe I can get people to bid say $15 for my coffee mug. And then when I hand the coffee mug over, I intentionally pull out a $50 bill and show them, hey, this $50 bill was in the coffee mug. Well, why didn't I get paid for that? Because the buyers didn't know that it was there. Their perception was, it was a coffee mug. Now imagine I reach back and I grab a second coffee mug and I auction that one off. Now I might get $40. But what if there is an no $50 bill in this coffee mug? The real point, is that what our buyers believe has everything to do with their willingness to pay. It actually has nothing to do with what's true. Hopefully as marketers, as business people, we try to help clients believe the truth. But if we've built products that are better than our competitors, if we have $50 bills tucked into our coffee mugs and our buyers don't know it, we can't win the deals. We don't get paid for it. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This impactful insight came from the book, Selling Value, which I wrote to help salespeople win more deals at higher prices. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Sagar Thakur is the Business Planning & Pricing Strategy guy at Outreach. He worked in SaaS Monetization Strategy at VMware, and he plays way too many instruments. In this episode, Sagar talks about the challenges and opportunities of a pricing role as he explains why costs don't drive pricing. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Discover the challenges and opportunities of being a pricing person, and why it's challenging but beneficial to have pricing departments as internal consultants Find out what the three-step process is on how to tie value creation and value capture process together Understand why prices aren't based on costs but on value/the customers' willingness to pay "Don't start with pricing. Start with assessing value, quantifying it, understanding it, getting your handle on what value is with a specific feature or product, how it scales, how customers perceive it, where they start, where they end." – Sagar Thakur Topics Covered: 01:07 – How Sagar got into pricing 02:28 – The SaaS monetization strategy work he did in VMware 03:48 – The tradeoff: Organizing product portfolio and applying different price metrics 06:42 – What Sagar thinks are the challenges and opportunities of a pricing job 13:11 – How do we build a pricing culture inside an organization? Is it really a pricing culture or is it a culture of value? 16:00 – Pricing departments as internal consultants 17:59 – Having the perception that price is based on costs 21:09 – Sagar's pricing advice 21:57 – Pricing table topics game: "Costs don't drive pricing. Willingness to pay drives pricing." Key Takeaways: "In general, simplicity is better until you can make sense, but then if the tradeoffs become too steep, now you need to add the complexity as a color from that perspective." – Sagar Thakur "The ability to narrate a story or why is it that we're doing what we're doing and being able to support that, it's completely sort of a social / creative / engagement kind of job versus what most people think as an engineering sort of like analyze and say this is the perfect price. Dirty little secret in pricing is that there is no mathematically correct answer. It's a range of solutions which is possible." – Sagar Thakur "It sort of starts from education, moves to empowering. You can come up with everything on your own. It has to be a collaborative process. And then it's the energized piece, which is like show the organization that this is helping so that we can further attach our pricing perspective to the growth plans of the company and how that helps." – Sagar Thakur "I think rightfully so that pricing is a central piece to the puzzle of any company's sort of growth strategy, like how they do business and what not." – Sagar Thakur People / Resources Mentioned: Outreach: https://www.outreach.io/ VMware: https://www.vmware.com/ Dharmesh Shah: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dharmesh/ Selling Value: https://www.amazon.com/Selling-Value-Deals-Higher-Prices/dp/1737655217 Connect with Sagar Thakur: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sagar-thakur/ Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 15, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/buyers-value-journey-map/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

We all want our salespeople to sell more value. What does that actually mean though? If we think about it, our customers, whether they be consumers or businesses, they buy value. They exchange money for the value they perceive that they're going to get from our product, however they want to measure that value. Our job as a salesperson needs to be to make sure our customers, our buyers, understand how much value our product might be able to give them because the more value they perceive the more we can charge, the more likely we are to win the deal. Our job as a salesperson selling value then is to increase how much value our customers perceive from our products. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This impactful insight came from the book, Selling Value, which I wrote to help salespeople win more deals at higher prices. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Christine Carragee has been working as Carragee Consulting's Business Consultant for more than six years now. She's done two different stints at the Vendavo – first as their Senior Pricing Consultant then as a Principal Consultant – so she certainly understands pricing. Christine was a Senior Pricing Analyst at Capella University. She lived on three continents before she was four years old. In this episode, Christine explains why it's a must that you consider the segmentation of individuals when doing pricing in higher ed as she shares her pricing journey with Capella University. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Find out how Capella University sets their price to students; Discover how financial aids such as scholarships and loans help you create good quality for the university; and Understand why it's a must that think about the segmentation of individuals when doing pricing in higher ed "A huge portion of higher ed pricing is through the grants and scholarships and loans. And so, what you're initially paying at the time that you're doing your coursework is very different from what the total cost of a program is for you." – Christine Carragee Topics Covered: 01:47 – How Christine got into pricing 03:02 – Learning about airlines from her roommate and the book Hard Landing 05:01 – Trying to put economic value to a university; Segmentation of individuals in higher ed pricing 08:48 – Capella University's two tuition structures; Grants, scholarships, and loans in higher ed pricing 12:54 – What Mark loves about the way they do pricing in higher ed 14:48 – Looking at how competitors do pricing + accepting high achievers and issuing financial aid 17:04 – Christine's pricing advice for the listeners 18:15 – Table topics: "Pricing champions drive pricing change" Key Takeaways: "There's a huge portion of pricing in higher ed that you have to think about the segmentation of the individuals, where they are in their life and then what their personal and professional goals are. There's a big pressure on colleges and universities to provide educations that have a financial ROI. But if you think about the history of university, especially in the U.S., many, many of the universities started as seminary schools or they started as state institutions with land grants, and they were more about having an educated population for a general purpose, involvement in society, and they were not the career track programs that we think of them as today." – Christine Carragee "You can admit people who couldn't afford to come but have very high grades and have those personal statistics that make your institution look better on average by issuing financial aid." – Christine Carragee "That's a self-reinforcing cycle, where once you become established or you have a reputation around having very good quality students, then it's going to attract more people who want to go to school with high achievers." – Christine Carragee People / Resources Mentioned: Vendavo:https://www.vendavo.com/ Hard Landing book:https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Landing-Contest-Profits-Airlines/dp/0812928350 Connect with Christine Carragee: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/christine-carragee-83642b226/ Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 8, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/to-fee-or-not-to-fee/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Last week, we talked about economic value and how businesses are able to calculate how much money are they going to make or save based on buying and using your product or solution. Sadly, consumers can't do that in almost all situations. I love this one blue shirt I get from Brooks Brothers but there's no way to calculate how much money that shirt makes me or saves me. Instead, it's a feeling I get. It's the fact that I've gotten compliments when I've worn that shirt. So, I have a willingness to pay for that shirt over other shirts. I value it more than I value other shirts. The only way I can think of to measure the amount of value is based on my willingness to pay. And this is true with our clients as well. When we start thinking about how much does a customer or a consumer value our products, we probably need to be thinking in terms of willingness to pay. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This impactful insight came from the book, Selling Value, which I wrote to help salespeople win more deals at higher prices. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Dale Harrison has been consulting in life sciences for seven years now, but he's been an executive in biotech for 16 years. Dale started his career as a physicist. In this episode, Dale shares how he's able to not make biotech products a commodity as he tells us the stories on how he gets inside the minds of both their customers and competitors. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Understand the importance of stepping outside the product and the company when it comes to making a product stand out in the market; Discover why it's a must that you get inside the head of both your buyers and competitors, especially with seeing where your competitors are blind in their framework; Find out how to get inside the mindset of your buyers and competitors through stories of tricks that worked "Pricing has little to do with analysis. Analysis is a supporting role, but only supporting. The real issue with pricing is getting inside the head of the customer, and equally importantly, inside the head of your competitor." – Dale Harrison Topics Covered: 01:02 – Dale's work around commercial development and its relation to pricing 01:45 – Why Mark despises the word commodity + selling products in the synthetic DNA business back in the 2000s 04:28 – Not making the products a commodity by trying to get into the mindset of the buyer 09:25 – More about the story; The "Got Probes" T-shirt 13:01 – Merging the company with a larger partner and becoming the VP of Sales and Marketing 14:10 – Telling the story about getting inside the heads of the competitors 17:08 – Were they able to charge a higher price because of the red cap? 21:14 – The challenge of keeping customers continuing to reorder and focus on you and not be looking elsewhere 24:05 – Dale's pricing advice for the listeners Key Takeaways: "Commodity is a mindset. It's not about the product. It's about a failure of imagination around the product. But there are products that are much more commoditized than others." – Dale Harrison "Again, these are very boring products, so if you talk about the product, no one's going to be interested because everyone already knows it. Nothing's changed and there's literally nothing to talk about. So, you have to talk about something different than the product and then tie it back to the product." – Dale Harrison "The deal is whatever market you're in, every competitor imagines that they have some highly rational pricing process, and the fact is they don't. What they have is a framework – a mental framework – and their framework is their blindness. And if you can understand what their framework is, you understand where they're blind. When you know where they're blind, you know how to work around them without them even seeing you." – Dale Harrison Connect with Dale Harrison: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalewharrison/ Email: [email protected] Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 1, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/the-power-of-economic-value/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

It's true, every time we buy something, we buy it because we think we get more value than the price it's going to cost us. It's kind of hard for us as consumers to say how much is that value, and we think of that in terms of dollars. But in a corporate setting, how much they value something can almost always be decided by how much money do they think they're going to make or save because they're buying our product or our solution. That amount of money they're going to make or save is called economic value. If we learn how to interpret our features and our benefits into our clients' economic value, and especially if we can learn to help them turn it into economic value, it will become much, much easier for us to close deals and understand why our customers are buying or not buying in the first place. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This impactful insight came from the book, Selling Value, which I wrote to help salespeople win more deals at higher prices. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Christopher Uthe is the Director of Product Management at Ocelot, where he champions scalable day-to-day organizational changes to transform it to a product-driven company. He's been working in the education market since 2006, both for an educational institution and for companies that sell education. Chris started his first business at the age of 16. In this episode, Chris explains how pricing works in institutions of higher education as he discusses the factors that make pricing difficult in that field. Why you have to check out today's podcast: Find out how to find value if you can't get a good and apt pricing metric Understand how pricing in higher educational institutions work, as well as the thing that makes it difficult Discover why higher education should be more focused on B2C pricing than on B2B "It's so hard to bundle and discount correctly, that most of the time, that's not being done right." – Chris Uthe Topics Covered: 01:28 – The story behind Chris' interest in pricing 02:15 – Pricing and purchasing decisions in higher education 04:37 – What institutions of higher education value: The thing that makes pricing in higher education difficult 08:18 – U.S. News and World Report as a metric: The intrinsic value of one's degree and/or university 11:15 – In B2C vs. in B2B pricing: Where should institutions of higher education be? 14:17 – Talking about RFPs: How it leads us to lose sight of the possibility of a better and smarter solution 19:42 – Chris' pricing advice for the listeners 21:45 – Connect with Chris Uthe Key Takeaways: "It's so difficult to come at these purchasing decisions, saying, 'Okay, we have to do only what's best for the student here,' because you've got so many competing priorities that are sort of odd for the market." – Chris Uthe "Some would tell you that they don't care. There are a sad few that would tell you they might care a little bit about profit because they do have to pay the bills, still. Not all of them are living on generous endowments, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it. They care about, hopefully, students' success at the end of the day. They want to talk to you about placement rate. They want to talk to you about probably job acceptance rate. They want to talk to you about average salary coming out of school." – Chris Uthe "Some of the value – the unspoken value – of your degree or just going to an institution comes from all the doors that it opens for having it on your resume." – Chris Uthe "It almost always starts with a very altruistic need, which I think is amazing in higher ed, because our students aren't getting the help they need at the right time, for instance, or these students aren't able to log into the learning management system and do something meaningful at the right time or they don't know how to do it, they can't get it done. It starts very altruistic, which is one of my favorite parts of higher education, because it does usually come back to making the student more successful." – Chris Uthe People / Resources Mentioned: Ocelot: https://www.ocelotbot.com/ CARES Act: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/748 Connect with Chris Uthe: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisuthe/ Email: [email protected] Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on May 25, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/are-iphone-users-not-price-sensitive/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Oftentimes, salespeople are selling to a committee of people who have to make a big decision. Once they've made the decision, they typically say, hey, we want to go with this vendor, and then they submit it to purchasing or procurement. At that point in time, procurement pretends to be price sensitive, pretends that there's multiple different competitors involved. But if we can recognize that we've already been chosen, then we don't have to compete hard on price. This happens often, especially if we're going to be selling to a committee who has to make a decision. We hope you enjoyed this memecast. This impactful insight came from the book, Selling Value, which I wrote to help salespeople win more deals at higher prices. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me [email protected]. Now go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/