Impact Pricing

Jennifer Kerr is a results-driven professional with a proven track record of delivering top and bottom-line profitability. She is a strategic thinker with the ability to create a strategy, vision, and execute to promote business growth. With a focus on capturing customer value, she consistently delivered projects on time and on budget. 

 

In this episode, Jennifer talks about designing your sales compensation plan and structure to drive behavior and incentivize salespeople appropriately.  

 

 

Why you have to check out today's podcast: 

 

• Discover how to use sales compensation to motivate salespeople to bring in more revenue for your company    
• Learn how to use KPIs to motivate your sales team to close deals at higher prices by incorporating them into your compensation structure  
• Find out how salespeople can sell value rather than price 

 

 

 

"Value-based pricing has to meet value-based selling in order to be effective."  

- Jennifer Kerr 

 

 

Topics Covered: 

 

01:25 - What led to a pricing role for Jennifer 

02:24 - How the pricing tool she created impacted the company 

04:34 - A general overview of sales compensation   

08:26 - Strategic initiative that is a win-win for both the company and the salesperson 

08:50 - How to drive better performance from salespeople 

13:27 - The importance of sales compensation base salary to incentivize salespeople 

17:23 - What you can do when salespeople don't close any deal after taking the necessary steps  

18:38 - Framing an incentive plan side-by-side with value-based selling 

20:21 - What is selling value all about 

21:40 - Why do salespeople not able to articulate value selling naturally? 

25:08 - Leveraging behavioral economics and behavioral insights on salespeople 

25:27 - Sharing a tip on how she's using behavioral economics  

28:46 - Salespeople wanting a path of least resistance and why they do and how not to let them lead with price 

 

 

Key Takeaways: 

 

"When you think about more program-based selling, if you're a company or an organization that are on a more mature level, then I think you might want to stop considering widget-based pay, which, in and of itself, could be the lever to pull to get salespeople to sell deals at higher prices and get more margin." - Jennifer Kerr 

 

"If you have four or five steps, and you're not aware, then the design might be off. I go back then to, is the plan design right? I mean, plan design harder." - Jennifer Kerr 

 

"Sales are hard. And that's where I think as pricers, we can certainly help frame up that value base, that value pitch, and flip it into value-based selling. And I think organizations that really focus on that end up winning more than they end up losing." - Jennifer Kerr 

 

"When I say selling value, I think it's how does my product, how does my service impact the P&L of the person I'm selling that to whether it's B2B or how does it impact the household that I'm selling this to. To me, that's value selling because you're not starting with price. And if you start with price, you've already lost in the war of price." - Jennifer Kerr 

 

"Price the product based on its value and the value to the customer. And then go value-base sell it. That's transformational for any organization." - Jennifer Kerr 

 

 

Connect with Jennifer Kerr:   

  

• Email: [email protected] 
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-kerr63/ 

 

 

Connect with Mark Stiving:   

  

• Email: [email protected] 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ 

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on October 6, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go.

Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/dont-sell-credits/

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

Simon Kucher & Partners did a study that found that a huge percentage of people thought that they were in a price war. But when you ask the people who thought they were in a price war, who started it. It was like 80% said the other guy started it.

Remember that last deal that came in and the sales person said, ‘Hey, we really have to do a deep discount. Otherwise, we're going to lose this.’ And so we did a deep discount. 

What is your competitor just seeing? They just saw you competing on price.

"Don't compete on price, compete on value." - Mark Stiving

We often think our competitors are competing on price, wherein truth, they're thinking the exact same things we are.

How can we win more deals at higher prices? How can we change the conversation to value instead of price? So my recommendation is to focus much, much more on value than on price. 

See, if we can win deals that way your competitors are trying to do the same.

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

 

Wendy Johnson started out as an M&A consultant at Accenture, and she got to IBM ten years ago. Now, she is the Vice President at PagerDuty.

In this episode, Wendy talks about the reasons you work with a consultant and not just with someone internally. She emphasize the idea of looking at pricing not as a project but as a process that needs tweaking as you go along and not overhauling.

 

Why you have to check out today's podcast:

• Discover the reasons how companies benefit from hiring external consultants
• Find out the advantages and disadvantages of hiring external vs. internal consultants.
• Find out how to hire and work with an excellent consultant to avoid wasting money, time, and effort.

 

“Structure your data and your dashboards in a way to inform all your decisions and such that all of the decisions you make in pricing could be data-driven.” - Wendy Johnson

 

Topics Covered:

01:39 - Why is it relevant to talk now about a topic on consultants

02:15 - Getting consultants versus hiring them

04:52 - Making the most of a consultant’s engagement with the company

06:04 - Engaging consultants and the value they contribute to the company

07:25 - Driving force behind onboarding a consultant

08:11 - Observation on how consultants work

09:03 - Consultants hiring their own excellent talents

11:00 - Why hire a pricing leader in your company before hiring a consultant

12:34 - What you can do to get other executives involved in getting a consultant

13:12 - One good thing to think about getting data analysts to get involved with consultants

13:58 - Way of knowing for a successful engagement

15:32 - Disagreeable actions consultants do and how to avoid them

17:18 - Thoughts on hiring second consultants and pricing

19:21 - Her pricing advice that could greatly impact one’s business

20:28 - Important KPIs she looks at in her dashboard

 

Key Takeaways:

“I found that the best way to use consultants and the best way to enter into those relationships is to have a structured engagement with a very finite piece of work or finite task. I think a lot of times the project is too broad. And you end up when that engagement ends, not being left with enough to actually use the work they've done.” - Wendy Johnson

“I think we have to be thoughtful when we engage the consultant not only thinking about the piece of work that they want us to deliver but including what it's going to look like after they leave, like what tools are they leaving for us to use, to reassess.” - Wendy Johnson

“There's been a scenario where we knew we just did not have enough feet on the ground doing a huge transformation. You don't necessarily want to hire a lot of talent, because that capacity need is temporary. So, then you figure out how to fill that temporarily, with consultants, or there's a specific skill set that you know and that's temporary as well.” - Wendy Johnson

“I think if we have an answer to our question at the end of the engagement, and then if we have a way to continue doing that work, we're not stuck with that, that’s success.” - Wendy Johnson

“Pricing shouldn't always be project work. You should build a framework, and there should be some consistent cadence and how you measure performance and you should be tweaking more than overhauling.” - Wendy Johnson

 

Connect with Wendy Johnson:  

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

 

Connect with Mark Stiving: 

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

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on Sept 29, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go.

Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/usage-based-pricing-is-not-new/

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

I don't really want you to just sit around and think about lifetime value. What I want you to do is think about lifetime value and how that influences your business, how that influences your pricing and your product development and your.

If you're in a subscription-type business, this becomes so obvious. 

Because we need to win a new customer. We want to keep that customer. 

"Think about the lifetime value of a customer. Think about it and then do something about it." - Mark Stiving

We want to grow that customer and we can start to think about if I could win a customer over their entire lifetime, how much revenue.

How much profit do I think I'm going to end up getting from that customer?

And SaaS companies or subscription companies actually do a pretty good job at this, but if you're not a subscription company, you should be thinking the exact same thing.

You put out a lot of energy and money in order to win a new customer. You have a high customer acquisition cost. You obviously want the sale that you got. But can you think about that lifetime value? 

Can you get that person to buy more things from you to buy over and over again? And this has everything to do with how well we treat the customer, what our customer service looks like.

Do we have follow-on products? Are we staying in touch with them? There are lots of reasons and things, decisions that we can make once we start focusing on the lifetime value of a customer. 

Think about it and then do something about it.

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

 

Frederico Zornig is the CEO of Quantiz Pricing Solutions – a pricing consultancy that aims to increase the profitability of their clients through strategies implementing improvements in the Pricing, Revenue Management and Commercial Excellence processes. He earned a PhD in Pricing from the International School of Management, and he was a professor for 11 years.

Frederico initially fell in love with pricing while he was pursuing his MBA at the University of Illinois. It was 15 years ago when he decided to start his own consulting firm.

In this episode, Frederico discusses insights you should take note of in terms of price implementation and inflation. He shares stories that illustrate how the price of your goods can totally make a difference to your business.

 

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:

• Discover how strategic pricing is critical to defining winners and losers in today's increasingly competitive environment
• Learn about price implementation and how to go about getting people to adopt new strategies
• Learn how you can handle pricing when inflation occurs

 

“Give price the importance it deserves. I have seen some companies not paying too much attention to the area, and I have seen companies that really believe that price can be a game changer.”

– Frederico Zornig

 

Topics Covered:

01:34 – How did Frederico get into pricing and what is it that attracts him to keep going?

04:51 – The advantages of being a pricing person who got to lead sales and marketing as well

08:11 – The do’s on making people adopt new strategies and have them implemented in their company – the incentives and the importance of having a strategic commercial policy

14:43 – Companies focusing on revenue and not on profitability; measuring margin dollars instead of margin percentage

19:22 – In having sales compensation plans, how do we convince people to hold or negotiate price?

22:20 – Tips on how to handle pricing in the middle of inflation

25:53 – Having information about your competitors or none at all – not being afraid to raise in relation to volume

27:59 – What is Frederico’s advice that could be helpful to the listeners’ business?

 

Key Takeaways:

“Pricing is a journey. I believe in that. The company has to go into that journey if they want to be really pricing experts or go after pricing excellence. It's not going to happen in one or two years.” – Frederico Zornig

“The customers have to understand that if they behave the way we have the incentives created, they could benefit of that commercial policy.” – Frederico Zornig

“If you create really strategic commercial policies, you can really change the way the market is built.” – Frederico Zornig

“I always take inflation into consideration. If I'm not coping with inflation, I'm staying behind.” – Frederico Zornig

“Companies that really understand the value and pursue a pricing discipline – a pricing focus – they could benefit enormously in terms of results. Big, big results.”– Frederico Zornig

 

People / Resources Mentioned:

• Quantiz Pricing Solutions: http://www.quantiz.com.br

 

Connect with Frederico Zornig:

• Website: http://www.quantiz.com.br
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fzornig/
• 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 Sept 22, 2021, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go.

Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/combining-cost-plus-and-value-based-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

It seems obvious to me that we want to find the buyers that value our products the most and then sell to them. 

But once we really start to understand what value means, when we start to understand that value is really about solving buyers' problems, what problems do they have?

What results might they expect and value comes from what's the impact of those results? Once we understand that well, we start looking around and we look at many, many different potential customers or even existing customers. We can start to articulate, which are the problems that are most painful.

“Find the buyers that value your product the most. Sell to them.”

- Mark Stiving

What are the results? People who have those problems are most likely going to experience going to achieve. And then finally, how important, how valuable, how impactful is it when people get that? When we can identify that. Now it's easy for us to say, oh, these are the people. Or at least these are the problems that are most impactful and that have the most value to solve.

That's where we should be spending our time. When we try to spend our time selling products to people who don't value the solution or the results very much, we're really wasting our time putting in tons of effort.

Find the buyers, the value, your product, the most. Sell to them. 

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

 

Kyle Poyar is the Vice President for Market Strategy at OpenView since 2016.  He is responsible for helping OpenView’s portfolio companies accelerate top-line growth through deep insights.  He leads segmentation, positioning, channel/partner strategy, new market entry, and packaging/pricing initiatives, partnering closely with portfolio leadership teams. He also covers OpenView’s SaaS metrics and benchmarking research.  

Previously, he worked for Simon-Kucher & Partners as a Pricing Consultant for six years.  Kyle earned his AB Economics & Environmental Studies at Brown University.  He graduated Magna cum Laude with departmental honors in Environmental Studies.

In this episode, Kyle shares how you have to charge based on a pricing metric that has a lifetime value to your business.

 

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:

• Find out the many nuances of usage-based pricing and see where customers are seeing value and provide more of that
• Understand the nuances between consumers and businesses in terms of how they make purchase decisions so you create a long-term value and availability to expand customers over time
• Find out what forms part of your ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) and track them to see the health of your business

 

“Really do the work to figure out what are the one or two usage-based metrics that correspond with the value your customers see. You might find that, hey, these are things where the customers you keep or that spend more tend to consume more of that, as opposed to the ones who churn tend to, you know, consume less of it. And think about how you could maybe incorporate that as like a limit or a fence from one package to the next.”

- Kyle Poyar

 

Topics Covered:

01:39 - Defining usage-based pricing

02:34 - Usage-based pricing being a customer-friendly model

04:40 - Is buying a hamburger at McDonald’s a usage-based pricing?

05:17 - Pricing metrics as also usage-based pricing

06:47 - The nuances to think about in usage-based companies

08:04 - That rollover minutes that is giving folks that peace of mind

09:10 - Understanding usage-based subscription tiers

10:23 - Kyle’s interpretation of Zuora’s report where it says 25% usage and 75% subscription

11:48 - Why minutes are probably not the best value driver or value metric for phone companies

13:50 - What is part of your annual recurring revenue (ARR)

17:11 - Lifetime value of customer

20:10 - How credits can get in the way of simplifying customers’ buying experience

23:34 - Are credits related to the value the customer gets or to the usage companies are using

25:50 - Credits as used and shown in arcade games

26:48 - Piece of pricing advice that can greatly impact one’s business

 

Key Takeaways:

“You don't necessarily want to price out usage. If your usage metric is declining rather than increasing, you'd rather make a creative move and say, hey, we're going to give you unlimited usage, but we're going to charge you per gigabyte of data.” - Kyle Poyar

“While you don't want to have unprofitable customers, you really need to simplify the buying experience for them. And trying to align how you charge with how someone sees value, and how your cost structure is set up is really on you. It's not the customer's responsibility.” - Kyle Poyar

“A good way of thinking about credits is building a retainer for a customer and having an agreed upon rate schedule at which they will draw down that retainer.” - Kyle Poyar

 

People / Resources Mentioned:

• Twilio: https://www.twilio.com/
• Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/
• SendGrid: https://sendgrid.com/
• Zuora: https://www.zuora.com/

 

Connect with Kyle Poyar:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-poyar/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/poyark?lang=en

 

Connect with Mark Stiving: 

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