This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 9, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go.

Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/when-should-you-lower-your-price/ 

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

We know that we have to subscription companies have to win customers, keep customers, grow customers.

This is really about keeping customers and we should have a customer success department that is watching usage. Watching are people really getting value from our product.

Those who are using our product a lot are getting a lot of value and hence are very unlikely to churn.

"Subscription businesses need you to use and like their product to keep you buying it. Customer success creates value." - Mark Stiving

Those that stop using decrease using aren't using the right features, the people who aren't getting as much value from our product, they're much more likely to churn.

Our customer success departments should be watching who's using what and how much, and then helping those who aren't using the product enough to see the value.

To be able to use the product more because the more they use it, the more value they get, the less likely they are to get.

We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected]. 

Now go make an impact.

Connect with Mark Stiving: 

• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn

Jared Smith is a Business Consultant at Vendavo, a world-class commercial excellence software firm that enjoys seeing clients evolve into leaders in their industry. ​He is a Ph.D. candidate at Oklahoma State University researching how companies execute strategies, pricing, and sales dynamics.

In this episode, Jared talks about salespeople's insufficiency where business acumen is concerned. He is encouraging companies to put some training where salespeople can do value statements, challenger selling, and using whatever pricing methodologies they can have.

Why you have to check out today's podcast:

• Find out how to motivate salespeople to understand the target price and capture a product's value
• Learn how salespeople can deviate from the target price and still earn from it
• Find out how salespeople can defend pricing from a product's economic value and not just on discounting

"Have the courage to experiment, have the courage to look at different things and approach pricing in a different way. The statement that we're going to raise prices and our customers are going to leave us, and we live in that fear all the time, that's not a really rational way of looking at things."

- Jared Smith

Topics Covered:

01:18 - Relating his first exposure to pricing

02:55 - Pricing for B2C versus B2B

04:43 - Taking a look at the whole value statements between B2C and B2B

06:45 - The disconnect between sales and pricing

08:26 - Shortfall in business acumen of most salespeople

10:06 - How to make value conversation happen

12:56 - Talking about sales discount and escalation processes

15:03 - He believes giving salespeople autonomy

16:50 - Setting compensation structures in a way that motivates salespeople not to discount but sell on value

18:24 - The compensation style that motivates most salespeople

20:35 - The challenge of getting salespeople sell above the target price

21:34 - Higher commission rate when hitting the price ceiling

22:20 - Understanding the value that customers get from the product

23:17 - Jared’s best pricing advice that greatly impacts a business

Key Takeaways:

"The key thing that I see is, when you start to talk about price, it gets into that whole thing of the sales operations, ‘Do I go there and do I lead with that ceiling price and discount down to the target?’" - Jared Smith

“What about if we set our compensation structures in such a way that motivates them not to discount, to always sell that value, but also maybe even motivates them to go higher than that as well?” - Jared Smith

“In the psychology of salespeople, that's what really drives a lot of the behavior and how you put your compensation system to move with those three numbers right there - the list price, ceiling, and target price.” - Jared Smith

"Have the courage to develop the capability of pricing in your company. Invest in good people, invest in good technologies, things that can support this as a discipline, much like you've been doing in the supply chain and all these other ones for years. So have the courage to change, have the courage to have the critical conversations." - Jared Smith

Resources/People Mentioned:

• Prime Source Building Products: https://www.primesourcebp.com/
• Frito Lay: https://www.fritolay.com/

Connect with Jared Smith:

• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredpaulsmith/

Connect with Mark Stiving: 

• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 2, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go.

Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/can-your-pricing-be-your-advantage/ 

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

When we asked salespeople why we lost the deal, almost always, we got the answer, it was the price.

Maybe they tell us it was a feature that we didn't have, but the price was a big deal.

And the price is always a big deal. It turns out that yes, you can probably lower your price low enough that you could convince any buyer to buy your product. 

But that's really not the point of sales. What we want to be able to do is make sure that.

Our buyers understand the value of our product, what it is that we're offering. And if our buyers understand that we offer so much more value than the price we're asking for, they're willing to buy. 

So the problem may be that we're not doing a good enough job at communicating value. Or the problem could be the product just doesn't have enough value.

Have we built products that people really value? And can we communicate that to individual buyers? 

So they're willing to part with their hard-earned money in order to gain those benefits.

"There are two reasons for every loss sale. One, price was too high to the buyer. Two didn't expect to get enough benefit. Don't just blame price." - Mark Stiving

So the problem may be that we're not doing a good enough job at communicating value. Or the problem could be the product just doesn't have enough value.

Have we built products that people really value? And can we communicate that to individual buyers? 

So they're willing to part with their hard-earned money in order to gain those benefits.

We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected]. 

Now go make an impact.

Connect with Mark Stiving: 

• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn

Michael Farber has 16+ Years in Enterprise Software and Technology Sales with Xactly Corporation, Concur Technologies, ERP solutions such as Baan, Deltek, ABAS-USA. He has expertise in solution selling and delivering exceptional revenue results and customer satisfaction. He has an excellent ability to qualify, professionally present, differentiate, negotiate, close, and connect the dots at the "C" level within organizations. He is the founder of The ROI Shop.

In this episode, Michael shares how the ROI calculator provides value conversation letting the buyer think of a financial number rather than just an admin tool.

Why you have to check out today's podcast:

• Find out how ROI calculators provide value conversation between the buyer and seller
• Learn how ROI calculators allow a step-by-step process of building credibility and confidence to you, thereby holding firm on your pricing
• Discover how you can provide a collaborative approach between buyer and seller so they find, understand, and see the value and not ask for a discount

"Quantifying that value upfront. I mean, if you go in and they agree to the value you can bring them in the main areas where they're looking, it is going to be impossible for them to come back and say, ‘Oh, yeah, we need a 40% reduction,’ especially if the return is ten times the investment."

- Michael Farber

Topics Covered:

01:41 - How the ROI calculator changed the way he sold

04:20 - His thoughts on replacing the word ROI calculator with the word business case

05:51 - What's the use of the ROI calculator?

07:15 - Using an ROI calculator template based on the vertical you're working with

07:51 - What the process looks like for a salesperson letting the buyer fill out the ROI calculator

10:55 - A collaborative approach to using ROI calculator

12:30 - What it means to have the step-by-step process of using ROI calculator

17:16 - 'Will I' type questions can be built inside ROI calculator

18:17 - Building a security value calculator

20:05 - Michael's best pricing advice that greatly impacts a business

Key Takeaways:

"Rationally, companies buy for two reasons: you're going to make some money, you're saving money, that's really it at the end of the day. So, it's even more important to do it. When a company sits down, or the rep sits down and does a good job of walking their prospect through it, it separates them from the other sellers, the other sellers aren't doing it." - Michael Farber

"You think about our interactive value calculator. It's like its own website portal. So, we stir emotion with visuals, and videos and stories." - Michael Farber

"Understanding the 'Will I' type questions, we could build those into the calculator. As I said, what we build is more than just how many employees do you have? What is their average salary? How many hours does it take, type thing? We build interactive discovery questions in it. So based on a certain answer or a drop-down, we can drive another discovery question. And then based on that discovery question, we can start to quantify a different area." - Michael Farber

"I will tell you; I have not discounted our price in our last seven deals, not one penny, and we more than doubled our price since a year ago. So, it really does; they got to see the value. And then it's hard for them to ask for a discount." - Michael Farber

Resources/People Mentioned:

• Concur Technologies: https://www.concur.com/
• Bacardi: https://www.bacardi.com/

Connect with Michael Farber:

• Website: https://www.theroishop.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-farber-9946281/

Connect with Mark Stiving: 

• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on July 21, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go.

Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/acquisition-pricing-for-retention/ 

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

Yes, we might have a really complicated pricing scheme pricing process that we have internal, although there are lots of reasons why we may not want that because it's complex for us to manage. 

But that's better than making a complex for our buyers. In the world of what we are showing to our buyers, we need pricing to look simple, we need it easy for buyers to make decisions, because confused buyers don't buy. 

And if we can't simplify the way we present pricing to our buyers, we're hurting our marketplace. My favorite company for how they do this is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is defined in four different market segments. 

Those are recruiters, jobseeker sales people and professionals, which means everybody else. Inside each one of those four segments, they have good, better, best offerings. 

"Pricing can be complex internally, but must look simple to the buyer. " - Mark Stiving

What we want to be able to do is emulate this because if you think about being a buyer  from LinkedIn, or you want to buy one of Linkedin's products, you say, ‘Hey, I'm a salesperson.’

 And now you can see the choices of what it is that you might want. And they make it simple for us to see, understand and choose. 

Even though behind the scenes, they've got at least 12 different packages plus a whole bunch of different options and they're managing a lot of different things. 

Their buyers see very little of that, and the choices the buyers make are much much simpler.

We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you see have any questions or feedback please email me [email protected]. 

Now go make an impact.

Connect with Mark Stiving: 

• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn

Mark Boundy is an expert in value building, selling, and marketing.

In this episode, Mark explains how to present value to your customers in a measurable, concrete, and real way where value is quantified resulting in more profitable deals and paying customers.

Why you have to check out today's podcast:

• Learn how to translate your customers' feature-and-benefit differentiation into a customer-differentiated customer outcome.
• Understand the buyer's purchasing journey so they know the value they are getting, and you become their only choice
• Discover the 13 things you need to know about your customer, so you win every time

"Right now, customers are really struggling with some different issues. And slowing down and understanding your customers' business and how their business is changing gives you an opportunity to really set yourself apart as that trusted advisor, that trusted partner who can help them co-create a solution that maybe your competitors could, but your crappy competitor salespeople don't."

 - Mark Boundy

Topics Covered:

02:47 - What is a sales funnel and the misconceptions about it

03:57 - The most shortsighted thinking when it comes to sales funnels

07:03 - Thoughts on some terms used that are seller-centric

08:46 - What the process looks like when humans decide at something

10:18 - What happens when customers are only self-informed

12:53 - The likelihood when there is no differentiating factor among sellers other than the price

14:11 - How to make customers ‘will I’ compelling that you are the only choice for the ‘which one’ decision

15:23 - Creating demand for the outcomes that come from the differentiating feature

17:10 - Importance of dollarizing outcomes

18:01 - What’s with personal outcomes

19:39 - Value versus price

26:43 - Thirteen things you need to know about your customers

Key Takeaways:

“If we tell salespeople just to find out what the customers have self-informed and what their envision is, what usually happens is the result of that self-informing is under informing and misinforming and some combination. And their vision for the future is probably pretty underwhelming. And if you actually build exactly what they envisioned, it would never have ROI in the first place.” - Mark Boundy

“We train people using methodologies and great questions and understand and uncover the pain. To uncover, get a perfect vision of the customer's imperfect vision. When we ask them to uncover the pain, the customer can only answer the pain that is the result of their self-informed vision, they can only give you what they know. They need an expert to say have you ever thought about this or other customers like you have actually found this, too.” - Mark Boundy

“You have to bring them [customers] from a 'will I' to a 'what will I'. As soon as that 'what will I' becomes compelling, then they're back to a 'will I' and it happens to be a 'will I' that you're the only available 'which one'?” - Mark Boundy

“I work with my clients to understand their differentiation. And I work with them really hard to translate their feature-and-benefit differentiation into a customer differentiated customer outcomes.” - Mark Boundy

“Value only exists in your customers’ mind, that scale, that counterbalance only exists in your customers’ mind. Your value that you articulate, it's a value proposition, you're proposing something that you hope comes into existence between your customers and yours. So, credibility is what opens their ear.” - Mark Boundy

“Value has to outweigh the price. Your differentiated value has to outweigh the price premium over the next best choice.” - Mark Boundy

Resource/People Mentioned:

• Radical Value: How to Take Your Company to the Next Level Through Radical Customer Centricity by Mark Boundy: https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Value-Company-Customer-Centricity-ebook/dp/B08527K4ZG
• The Nature of Human Intelligence by Robert J. Sternberg: https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Human-Intelligence-Robert-Sternberg/dp/1316629643
• Miller Heiman Group website: https://www.millerheimangroup.com/

Connect with Mark Boundy:

• Website: https://boundyconsulting.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markboundy/
• Email: [email protected]

Connect with Mark Stiving: 

• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on July 14, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go.

Read Full Article Here: 

https://impactpricing.com/blog/stop-sales-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