Craig Zawada is the Co-Author of The Price Advantage, one of the seminal books in pricing, and he is the Chief Visionary Officer at Pros. He was at McKinsey for 13 years, ended up leading their North American pricing practice. 

In this episode, Craig explains volatility and how it is present in businesses. He also shares how having the right or market-relevant price for your business is important and can have a huge impact on your business and in sales.

 

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:

• Learn how to know if your price is a market-relevant price 
• Know more about how businesses are slowly moving towards digital, self-serving pricing instead of negotiation 
• Find out how customer experience can affect your pricing

 

“View pricing as less of a management control issue and more of a customer experience issue.” 

- Craig Zawada

 

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Topics Covered:

01:50 - Craig explains what is volatility and where does it come from 

04:26 - How companies are leaning towards prices being delivered digitally instead of negotiated 

08:01 - Craig shares the challenges of moving towards a no-touch, digital self-serving pricing 

10:44 - Craig defines no-touch and low-touch 

12:01 - When does it make sense to put prices no-touch or low-touch? 

14:22 - Craig explains the history of pricing and the changes in the buyers 

17:30 - As a buyer, when do you negotiate or trust the price on the web? 

20:02 - Your perception as a buyer in the market 

22:06 - The trend across B2B companies moving towards the self-serve model 

23:19 - Craig explains the movement in distribution and negotiation of prices 

25:21 - How to find a market-relevant price? 

28:11 - His pricing advice that would have a big impact on your business 

29:21 - Pros’ Annual Outperform Conference that could help you

 

Key Takeaways:

“If you put a market-relevant price out there, that's easy to get, immediately available, they'll actually pay a little bit of premium for that, versus going through this long-negotiated process, because that takes time and money.” - Craig Zawada 

“You have to be collecting these signals, and then be able to interpret and build those into your actual prices in a much quicker way than, in this environment in the past that has been more static and you can take time.” - Craig Zawada 

“15 to 20% maximum should be a protracted negotiation process, where these are big deals multi-year, you know, it's meaningful to the supplier and super meaningful to the buyer, on that transaction.” - Craig Zawada 

“You have to have the ability to put that market-based price to make that decision quickly because if someone else is out there, and they can give that and it's, you know fair, seems fair, the evidence shows that they're increasingly going to move towards those channels.” - Craig Zawada 

“The future is moving towards where most businesses for most of their transactions are going to have the ability to go through the self-serve.” - Craig Zawada 

“A lot of companies are going through digital transformations, but they're not focusing on the pricing issue and relying too much on this, you know, "high list" price umbrella that's out there. So, think of your role from a customer experience standpoint, your role of how you deliver price, and that, I think is my one piece of advice going forward.” - Craig Zawada

 

Connect with Craig Zawada:

• Email: mailto:[email protected] 

 

Connect with Mark Stiving:   

• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn