Product Chats Podcast

How do you know how the willingness to pay in the U.S. compares to the bereitschaft zu zahlen in Germany, and what else do you need to consider when pricing your product for new international markets? Find out in this edition of Pragmatic Live with Mark Stiving, pricing expert and Pragmatic Marketing instructor. Listen now!

How can you use data to make pricing decisions and understand demand patterns? Pragmatic Marketing instructor and pricing expert Mark Stiving tackles this topic with Neil Biehn, senior director of business analytics at Siemens Healthcare, a statistician with more than a decade of experience in analytics, segmentation, sales effectiveness and pricing optimization. You can connect with Neil Biehn on LinkedIn. If you have an idea or topic for a future podcast, contact us at [email protected].

Through a 25+ year career in technology marketing, Mark Yeager has performed over 500 buyer persona interviews. In this podcast, he shares his top 9 hints for performing successful persona interviews, quick, easy changes that you can make today to start getting more value from your market interactions. Listen now! Want more tips for successful interviews? Download this cheat sheet from Yeager Marketing.

Imagine this: you are arrested by the police for robbing a bank. You, of course, are innocent. They also arrest another person for the same crime. In the interrogation room, the police say, “We’ve caught your accomplice. You guys are in trouble. You should confess now to make your sentence easier.” Then they explain the possible sentences: • If both you and the other person confess, you each get three years in prison • If neither of you confesses, you each get one year in prison • If you confess and the other person doesn’t, you go free and he spends five years in prison • If the other person confesses and you don’t, he goes free and you spend five years in prison What should you do? And what can this scenario teach you about pricing in a competitive landscape? Find out as pricing expert and Pragmatic Marketing instructor Mark Stiving walks you through the scenarios and provides real world examples of this pricing concept in the market today.

Pragmatic Marketing instructor Mark Stiving is joined by world-renowned pricing expert Ron Baker. The founder of VeraSage Institute, a think-tank for professional-knowledge firms, Ron has been helping professionals learn how to create and capture more value. Mark and Ron discuss a range of pricing topics, including how to price professional services (hint: it's NOT by the hour). Connect with Ron Baker on LinkedIn. If you have a topic you’d like us to tackle in an episode of Pragmatic Live, send us a note at [email protected].

So how does the company that taught the world what it means to be market-driven put it to work in their own company? In this podcast, Pragmatic Marketing instructor Mark Stiving interviews our own VP of Marketing, Rebecca Kalogeris, on how they’ve implemented the Pragmatic Marketing concepts over the years and what they’ve learned from their successes (and failures) along the way. Listen now. Find this interesting and want to hear more about how we practice what we preach at Pragmatic Marketing? Or maybe you want to share your implementation story—the good and the bad—with Mark and Rebecca? Contact us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.

In this week’s podcast, Rod Griffith, president of B2B marketing firm Market Reach, shares his tips, tools (and personal war stories) for reaching and resonating with c-suite buyers. Learn how he got Steve Jobs attention and what you can do to reach the true decision makers for your products. Listen now! Got an idea or a topic for a future podcast? Send your ideas to [email protected].

The pace of change in the technology industry has never been faster. Those behaviors long talked about as the secret to good leadership are simply not enough anymore. So what else do today’s leaders need to succeed in a world of rapid change? To shed some light on the topic, we invited Art Petty, world-renowned thought leader, speaker and author, and longtime friend of Pragmatic Marketing, to this episode of Pragmatic Live. Listen now as he talks about the seven critical skills required of leaders today and shares the story of how one senior product manager he knows put them to work for her and her company. And after you’re done listening, be sure to check out Art’s article in the most recent edition of Pragmatic Marketer and visit his blog at artpetty.com.

Want to know what it’s really like implementing a marketing automation solution? Or, maybe you’re years into your implementation and just want to relive those first few months of chaos. Either way, listen in as Pragmatic Marketing instructor Mark Stiving interviews our own VP of Marketing, Rebecca Kalogeris, on her recent marketing automation software implementation—what made them make the move, what the experience has been like and what they’ve learned along the way. And if you are new to marketing automation and you have a question or if you’re an old hat who has some great advice, continue the conversation at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.

So how closely aligned are buyers and vendors in the world of B2B technology sales? That’s the question that TrustRadius’ director of research, Megan Headley, explored in her recent landmark study. Listen now as she shares her findings on: Which information sources buyers use, find most helpful, and consider most trustworthy, versus the resources vendors focus on providing buyers Which selection criteria buyers care about, versus what vendors think is important to buyers How buyers view the role of vendors, and how vendors try to engage their buyers And, based on these disconnects, what can vendors do differently To download the full study, visit TrustRadius and also check out one of our Market courses near you to learn how you can align your marketing and sales processes to how your market buys.

In this episode, we’re doing something a little different. We’re going to listen in on a conversation between Neil Baron of Barron Strategic Partners and Bob Moesta co-creator of the jobs-to-be-done theory. They chat about what “jobs-to-be-done” means and how it relates to “market problems” that we talk so much about here at Pragmatic Marketing. And since together they’ve literally worked on thousands of products, they are going to share some tips and best practices along the way. Listen in. And as always, if you have a topic you’d like to hear us tackle in an episode of Pragmatic Live, send us a note at [email protected].

The tables are turned in this podcast as our host Rebecca Kalogeris becomes the guest and answers all kinds of questions about this year’s survey from Mark Stiving, Pragmatic Marketing instructor and data geek. Take a listen now and be sure to download the full survey report at pragmaticmarketing.com/survey

At Pragmatic Marketing, we teach the Pragmatic Marketing framework, those 37 key activities needed to build and market winning products. But in this episode, Kirsten Butzow, Pragmatic Marketing instructor extraordinaire, is going to talk through how you can use those same activities and strategies to improve a product closer to home, yourself. So, to find out how to use product management and marketing strategies on your own personal brand and change the trajectory of your career, listen now!

In December, Jim Semick, founder and chief strategist at ProductPlan, was our guest for a webinar on 5 Ways to Nail Your Strategic Product Roadmap. In this follow up discussion, Jim tackles questions from the over 700 attendees of that webinar on topics ranging from hot to prioritize, share and update your roadmap, to the relationship between your roadmap and your backlog. Listen now and be sure to download their free book on planning and selling your strategy through roadmaps. Have an idea for a future episode? Send us an email at [email protected].

At the core of the Pragmatic Marketing philosophy is the importance of market data, of spending time to understand the people in your market and the problems they face. But once you do that, how do you use those facts to create real change in your organization’s culture? That’s the topic of this week’s podcast with instructor extraordinaire, Stacey Weber. Listen now!

Good product marketing people are hard to find. Great ones are rarer still. So what traits separate the good from the great? In this podcast, Andy Reid, product marketing specialist and thought leader, shares the five key skills shared by awesome product marketers. Listen now! Got an idea for a future episode? Email us at [email protected].

Despite our titles, many of us don’t actually manage any people. But we need to influence a lot. And how well we speak directly affects how well we can influence people. In this podcast, Mark Stiving, proud toastmaster and Pragmatic Marketing instructor, offers some really good, simple tips you can implement to improve your speaking and ultimately your ability to influence the rest of your organization to make the right strategic decisions when it comes to your product. Listen now. Got a topic you’d like to see covered in one of our podcasts? Send it to [email protected]

The alignment between sales and marketing is one of the most critical components of successful revenue growth. But far too often, the relationship more closely resembles Athens and Sparta than a happy marriage. In this podcast, Bertrand Hazard, vice president of marketing for TrustRadius, shares his insights into why alignment is critical, how to tell if you’re out of synch and what you can do to get the relationship back on track and delivering more revenue. Along the way he shares some great tips and case studies. Listen now! Got an idea for an upcoming podcast? Email us at: [email protected].

Our Pragmatic Marketing training courses are chock full of tips, tools and best practices you can start to implement immediately. It’s actionable and it’s inspiring, but it can also be a little overwhelming deciding where to start. But not anymore. In this podcast, our very own Stacey Weber⎯long time Pragmatic Marketing instructor and practitioner⎯is going to breakdown what you should do first into three simple steps and walk you through how to master each. Don’t wait, listen today and find out how you can jump start your market-driven journey and start having an immediate impact on your product, your company and your career.

Knowing what your market is willing to pay is only part of the equation; you also have to know how they want to pay (annual fee, subscription, based on usage, etc.) so you can determine how best to package your product. Join Mark Stiving, Pragmatic Marketing instructor and pricing expert, and David Rowley, Chief Revenue Officer from Nalpeiron as they dig into this topic and more on this edition of Pragmatic Live. Got a topic you want to hear covered in a future episode of Pragmatic Live? Shoot us a note at [email protected].

Prices and pricing strategies are everywhere. And sometimes we can learn the most valuable pricing lessons in some of the most interesting places. In this podcast, Mark Stiving, Pragmatic Marketing instructor and pricing expert, tells us some of the strangest examples of pricing he's seen in his travels and how you can apply these same techniques to your own products and companies. If you've got an example of a strange but true pricing strategy that you've seen, we'd love to hear it. Email us and we may feature it on a future episode of Pragmatic Live. And don't forget to check out Mark's blog for more great pricing tips and information.

What if a secret sauce for winning more business was available? Would you use it? It turns out there is one: win/loss analysis. Ellen Naylor, a pioneer in competitive intelligence and win/loss analysis, and the author of Win/Loss Analysis: How to Capture and Keep the Business You Want, shares her tips and tricks for increasing your company’s positive outcomes using win/loss success. For more on win/loss analysis, be sure to read Competitive Intelligence Gathering Through Win/Loss and visit Ellen Naylor’s website. And check out when our courses will be in your area.

We welcome back Emily Hossellman, director of marketing at Centercode, to answer questions posed by participants in September’s popular webinar How Beta Testing Can Give Your Product a Competitive Edge. If you’d like to learn how to dramatically increase participation in your company’s beta tests, read Emily’s eBook Reaching 90% Beta Test Participation. And be sure to check out when our courses are coming to your area.

Personas are more than personality profiles filled with statistics and demographics. By capturing their problems, aspirations, goals and emotions, great market-driven personas tell an engaging story that rallies your business behind your product’s market. They help sales have the right conversations, encourage marketing to craft the best messaging, and product to have features that influence the buying decision. In this week’s podcast, taken from Johnathan Lucky’s webinar, we’re going to dig into how to build and implement personas within your organization. Watch the webinar and/or get the slides here.

Today’s multi-generational workplace presents unique challenges for leaders, especially since work style and expectations often differ by gender and generation. In this week’s podcast, Tracey Wilen, Ph.D., discusses her research on how gender and generation factor into perspectives on work, leadership and the use of technology and how we can all work together to create productive and healthy work environments. You can learn more about Tracey’s work at TraceyWilen.com. And be sure to check out when our courses are coming to your area.

Think of all the things that impact your topline: pricing, discounts, incentives, etc. When was the last time you looked at these parts collectively to ensure you were optimizing overall revenue management? In this podcast, Chanan Greenberg, vice president and general manager at Model N, a Silicon Valley-based software company that delivers revenue management solutions for high-tech and life-science companies, shows you how to holistically examine the processes that impact revenue so that you don’t leave money on the table.

What can an entrepreneur teach product managers about pricing and selling their products? Turns out quite a bit. In this podcast, Pragmatic Marketing instructor Mark Stiving interviews Sean Murphy of SKMurphy, a consultancy that has worked with hundreds of technology startups in Silicon Valley on product planning and introduction. They discuss the art of pricing new products--how you move from beta to early adopter to sustainable pricing models--as well as how to get your salesforce onboard with selling your new products. Got a question for us? A topic you’d like to hear discussed? Feedback? Email us at [email protected].

In football, when a play is called, everyone immediately knows their role and how they contribute to the team’s success. Neil Baron, lifelong New England Patriots fan and founder of Baron Strategic Partners, discusses how you can pick and execute winning product plays so your product team will make an impact on senior- level customers. Neil explains how the concept of a play can also apply to selling business outcomes to the C-suite. To request a copy of Neil’s original PPT presentation, email him at [email protected]. And for even more on the topic, be sure to check out Neil’s article Delivering Differentiated Customer Value.

In this week’s podcast, Mark Stiving, Pragmatic Marketing instructor extraordinaire and world-renowned pricing expert, tells us how we can effectively price ourselves using the same techniques and tools we use to price our products. That’s right, you can take the concepts such as, “will I” or “which one,” “value-based pricing” and “willingness to pay” to maximize how much you earn in your career. Listen now. Curious how your price compares to that of your peers? Check our Annual Product Management and Marketing Survey.

Organizations are only as good as the talent they employ, yet finding that talent can be a massive challenge. And although there may be plenty of qualified candidates, what if they don’t have that indescribable quality you’re looking for? What if instead you find it somewhere unexpected? Greg Adams-Woodford and Kaili Barone have worked together at two companies over a span of eight years, first at Pearson, and more recently at the New York Stock Exchange. Greg and Kaili discuss how they met, and the challenges they faced once Greg identified Kaili—the girl in procurement who had no product management experience—as someone he wanted to add to his product team. For more on the topic, check out Diamonds in the Rough. And be sure to check out when our courses are coming to your area.

Join Pragmatic Marketing instructor Kirsten Butzow as she explores the three main traps that keep companies from delivering truly innovative products: culture, focus and discipline. Find out what many of today’s companies are doing wrong, and what you can do to enable innovation within your organization. Got an idea for another podcast? Have some feedback on what we could be doing better with our podcasts? We’d love to hear it! Please take a moment to complete our survey.

Pricing conversations often occur far too late in the product development process. But if you want to create more profitable products and product portfolios, it’s important to incorporate pricing concepts from the outset. Pragmatic Marketing instructor Mark Stiving discusses why pricing conversations should be more than an afterthought when you launch a new product. He also discusses the role pricing plays when customers decide between your product and a competitor’s and why the question “is it worth it” is all about product differentiation. If you’d like to learn more about practical strategies for optimizing revenue, check out our Price course. Thank you for listing to Pragmatic Live! We want to provide you with the content you need in a convenient format to help you create and market products that drive revenue. If you complete our short survey, and provide your honest, unfiltered feedback, it will help us do just that. Take survey »

A good content marketing strategy should reinforce what your company does. And when your company sells its thoughts and expertise, content marketing becomes even more critical. Join Rebecca Kalogeris, vice president of marketing at Pragmatic Marketing, as she discusses how to get the most out of each piece of content, reach the largest audience and why the best content marketing is often the least obvious. Our goal is to provide the content you need in the format you want to help you create and market products that drive revenue. Completing our short survey, and providing your honest, unfiltered feedback, will help us do just that. Take survey »

There are no easy answers about where you should set your pricing in relation to your competitors. But the answer could be found in how fast your market is growing, according to Pragmatic Marketing Instructor Mark Stiving. Find out more in this week’s Pragmatic Live podcast. Want to learn more about how to price your products to optimize profitability? Check out our Price course. Got a question or feedback? We’d love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected].

We welcome Gavin Nathan, senior consultant and partner of Ignite Advisory Group, to answer the top 10 follow-up questions posed by listeners of our recent webinar, Creating and Managing a Successful Customer Advisory Board Program. If you would like to learn more about customer advisory boards, read the article by Gavin’s colleague, Rob Jensen: Why Advisory Boards Matter, featured in Pragmatic Marketer. And for more information on CABs, email Ignite at [email protected]. If you have a question or feedback, we’d love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected].

As the lines between product and brand become increasingly blurred, our guests discuss why—at least in terms of the user experience—it makes sense to build your company brand into the product from the outset. Join Robert Wallace, executive vice president of marketing at Tallwave and Jesus Ramirez, vice president of product at Tallwave, as they talk through the challenges product management and marketing pros face in building an appropriate product tone that resonates with customers. Got a question or feedback? We’d love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected].

Should you set different prices depending on the cost of living in a set region? Pragmatic Marketing instructor Mark Stiving looks at the techniques you can implement to charge different prices to different people without rocking the boat. Got a question or feedback? We’d love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected].

Do you know your customers well enough to create a product they actually want to buy? Paul Schwada, author of 8 Blocks: The Critical Realities for Growing Any Business and manager partner of Locomotive Solutions, discusses key aspects of profiling your customers. You’ll discover how to objectively perceive your customers’ desires, rather than what your company may have in mind for larger market segments. You’ll also learn how to gain key insights from understanding why customers hesitate to buy your product, or why and how they use your product. Paul identifies five main facets of customer profiling that will help you set better expectations for your market segment while continuing to grow your business. Read Paul’s article, 8 Blocks: The Critical Realities for Growing Any Business featured in Pragmatic Marketer.

Centercode’s director of marketing , Emily Hossellman, is welcomed back to share even more effective strategies for beta test management. You’ll learn how data collected during beta testing can help with different elements of your product, from dev to QA to support to marketing. Emily also discusses how you can use beta testing to make data-driven decisions and integrate the voice of the customer throughout the product development lifecycle. Find detailed resources on beta testing on Centercode’s website. Got a question or feedback? We’d love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected].

So you’ve just come back from a Pragmatic Marketing training and are wondering how to create a market-driven environment and implement the Pragmatic Marketing Framework at your company. Pragmatic instructor Steve Gaylor gets us started on some ways you can get your organization thinking strategically and focus everyone on the market.

Should your prices change as your costs change? Pragmatic Marketing Instructor Mark Stiving shares the shocking truth about fixed costs and their relationship to pricing.

Find out what’s involved in running a solid beta test from Emily Hossellman, director of marketing at Centercode. You’ll learn how to recruit the right testers to ensure that they reflect your target market. You’ll also learn about the importance of thanking testers for the significant role they play in improving your product. And finally, you’ll learn about the most common mistakes people make when they set up their first beta test, and how to avoid them. Discover what your market really wants and start improving your products today. Find detailed resources on beta testing on Centercode’s website.

Join Pragmatic Marketing instructors Mark Stiving, Stacey Weber and Paul Young as they share their experiences and discuss the career paths they followed that led them to become instructors. Find out what makes them passionate about teaching, and the joy they experience when they have an impact on businesses and the lives of their students. Mark, Stacy and Paul also reminisce about some of their favorite travel memories and describe what it’s like to be on the road constantly. As they share their insights into the practical principles of product management and product marketing, you just may find yourself becoming interested in joining the instructor team to spread the Pragmatic Marketing ideology. For more information and to apply to our opening, visit our career page.

Discover solutions to the top challenges of creating efficient product roadmaps from Jim Semick, co-founder of ProductPlan, a cloud-based roadmap software for product and marketing teams. Jim shares tips and techniques for communicating an effective product strategy through your roadmap and the best way to plan and prioritize product features. He also discusses how to create a simple roadmap that can be easily changed and widely communicated across your organization, including how to make a convincing case to your executive team about the importance of specific roadmap features. Find out why it’s important to create strategic goals and then to align those goals with a compelling product roadmap in this episode of Pragmatic Live. Read Jim’s Pragmatic Marketer article, Howto Price Saas Products. Watch Jim’s webinar, Delight Your Customers While You Turn a Profit. Learn the 7 Strategies to Choose the Best Features for Your Product. Download ProductPlan’s guide to product roadmaps.

Do some customers still use an old product that you want to get rid of? Have you ever wondered how much money you’re losing by keeping that product around? Join Pragmatic Marketing instructor Mark Stiving and VP of product management at CDK Global, Dave Nash, as they discuss how to kill that rarely used, costly "zombie" product that slows down your business. Dave also discusses the best approaches for encouraging customers to happily migrate from the old product to the new one. You’ll learn to analyze how much time and money your organization spends on zombie products, and how to create a strategy to slowly discontinue support until that product dies. You’ll also learn how to put more focus on creating new, innovative products instead of wasting valuable resources by keeping the old ones alive. Listen now! Got a question or feedback? We’d love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected].

Pragmatic Marketing instructor and pricing expert, Mark Stiving interviews Reed Holden, the author of several pricing books and Pragmatic Marketer article, Make Salespeople the Champions of Your Pricing Strategy. Reed discusses how you can create a strategy to solve market problems by using services to differentiate your product and get the upper hand on your competition. Does your sales team have too much authority in offering discounts? Do they really know how valuable your product is and how it compares to the completion? Learn how to resolve these potential issues by giving your sales team the tools they need to be confident in the price you set, and let them drive profit over revenue. For practical strategies on optimizing revenue, check out our Price training course. We love feedback and answering questions! Send us a message to [email protected].

To do pricing well, you have to create innovative products and understand how valuable those products are to others. Join Pragmatic Marketing instructor and pricing expert, Mark Stiving, along with pricing consultant and former CEO of Ardex, Stephan Liozu, as they discuss how to establish a solid foundation for your organization to improve pricing power. You’ll learn how to properly organize pricing teams and assign roles and responsibilities to the right resources. Listen to find out how. For practical strategies on optimizing revenue, check out our Price training course. We love feedback and answering questions! Send us a message to [email protected].

Pragmatic Marketing instructor and pricing expert, Mark Stiving interviews former Adobe manager of business model strategy and pricing, Ward Dey. Learn how to identify and fix profit leaks by analyzing discount behavior and getting to know how much value your customers see in your product. Ward also discusses the importance of establishing the most profitable business model – Would your customers be willing to pay for a subscription with frequent updates to your product, or will you increase revenue with something more perpetual? Discover how to capture low hanging fruit by initiating a few simple tasks and start setting the best price for your product. Listen now! For practical strategies on optimizing revenue, check out our Price training course. We love feedback and answering questions! Send us a message to [email protected].

Pragmatic Marketing instructor and pricing expert, Mark Stiving interviews another pricing expert and founder of MightyData, Kirk Bowman. Learn how Kirk discovered the value of pricing, and how his pricing strategy led to dramatic growth in his own business as well as the businesses of others in his role as a passionate pricing consultant. Kirk also discusses the importance of ignoring the costs and focusing on what your customers see in your product to determine how much they are willing to pay. For practical strategies on optimizing revenue, check out our Price training course. Get more insight on Kirk’s vision of pricing by listening to his podcast, Art of Value. We love feedback and answering questions! Send us a message to [email protected].

It’s important to bring facts to the table to understand the performance of your product and what’s happening in your market segment. In this short segment, Pragmatic Marketing instructor Jon Gatrell shares the three questions he always asks to effectively measure product success. He also discusses some common—and highly effective—measurements to optimize product performance. Learn how to sift through a mountain of data to discover metrics that are meaningful to your business in the latest issue of Pragmatic Marketer.