Let's Talk Pricing Podcast

Adnan Akbari, Senior Director of Pricing at Holden Advisors, is responsible for helping clients grow by realizing the full potential of their offerings. Prior to joining Holden Advisors, he spent the last 12 years of his career focused on growth initiatives within Fortune 500 companies including building pricing organizations, service offering development and sales strategy.

Curiosity allows us to look beyond our current situation and ask "What else could or should we be doing?" Too often we get stuck in routines or become so myopically focused on tomorrow's deliverables that we don't take the time to question our strategies or if they're still accomplishing what we set out to do as a company or department. So how do we break out of our assumptions and get curious about what could, or should be?

“Hillary Gretton is Associate Director, Access & Contract Analytics with Jazz Pharmaceuticals. She has extensive experience with both the “hows” and “whys” of best pricing practices, and values the importance of managing both the data/technology as well as the people and communication aspects. Hillary is a proud CPP alumna and earned her MBA from the University of Redlands.”

Artificial intelligence is making an impact on many industries and pricing is one among them. While a completely automated pricing solution for B2B is still far away there are many innovations that have already been built specifically for B2B pricing professionals. These innovations can be leveraged today and our workshop will cover on how to do this.

Kiran is the CEO and founder at Rapid Pricer, an Artificial Intelligence based company in Amsterdam that specializes in reducing food waste through real time pricing for retailers. Previously, he had founded CustoLogix in the year 2008 to help retailers leverage analytics and mathematical capabilities for pricing and promotions. Recently, Kiran has also founded Global Launch Base, an internationalization consulting firm in 2021 which helps European companies with international go-to-market strategies and market launches. Biography He has over 16 years of experience launching innovative technologies around the world.

He has consulted on behalf of large consulting companies such as PwC, IBM and Kurt Salmon at some of the largest retailers in the world. His entrepreneurial experiences include successful ventures in the Silicon Valley, Mexico City, Bangalore, Amsterdam and New Delhi. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering with honors from the Bangalore Institute of Technology and an MBA from the Pepperdine University on a full merit scholarship.

With inflation, costs are going up, margins are being squeezed, companies need to raise prices, but many are scared.  They may have already had a price increase and are afraid of another.  What should they do?

Mark Stiving is an educator at heart and a pricing enthusiast by education and experience. He has led, coached, and taught businesses about value-based pricing for 30 years.

Mark has driven company-wide pricing initiatives worth hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental profit. He started and sold three companies and has written three books on pricing and value:  Impact Pricing; Win Keep Grow; and Selling Value.

As the economic outlook continues to be murky, plenty of companies are making cuts. But you can’t cut your way to prosperity. There are often-overlooked opportunities to grow the top line — a lot and fast, even in the face of a down market.

Jason McDannold and Yale Kwon lead the private equity commercial transformation practice at AlixPartners and would like to discuss several key tactical opportunities on how to sustain growth in a downturn economy.

AlixPartners is a results-driven global consulting firm that specializes in helping businesses respond quickly and decisively to their most critical challenges—from urgent performance improvement to complex restructuring, from risk mitigation to accelerated transformation.

Beating Inflation explores how inflation affects all aspects of a business. This is not a pricing book, but it dives into all areas of the operations of a business and how they need to respond differently to inflation.

Adam Echter is a Partner and Head of the Silicon Valley office at Simon-Kucher. For 17 years, Adam’s career has focused on value-based sales. He gained 12 months of focused sales training at The Timken Company and then worked in outside industrial sales for the next five years.

During his time in industry, Adam developed his sales skills from outside sales to restructuring, engaging, and empowering sales teams for industrial companies of various sizes, ranging from 100 million dollars to several billion. He has helped design pricing and sales organizations on three continents, installed enterprise-level pricing software for several Fortune 100 companies, and supported sales engagement for thousands of sales professionals around the World.

Adam joined Simon-Kucher in 2012 and his consulting activities have focused on sales excellence, value definition and communication, business model transformation, and pricing. He is a regular speaker at the Professional Pricing Society, industry-specific events and lectures at several universities on the topic of pricing.

A native of Upstate New York, Adam earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University at Buffalo and his MBA in finance from the University of Rochester’s Simon School of Business.

SaaS companies have historically overlooked pricing as a lever for growth, focusing instead on customer acquisition. But with many customers tightening their belts and investment capital harder to access, the fundamentals are more important than before. New pricing strategies such as Usage Based Pricing are coming into the spotlight.

Experimenting with and implementing metering and hybrid pricing strategies in 2023 can not only help SaaS companies retain customers and survive, but an innovative new strategy could even unlock previously untapped avenues for growth.

Per is a thought-leader in all things pricing with a specialization in teaching companies how they can use pricing to drive higher growth, sales volume, and profits. He is a sought-after speaker for major conferences, appears regularly on podcasts and business radio shows, and is regularly quoted in the financial and business press. His new book, “The Price Whisperer - A Holistic Approach to Pricing Power” is available at booksellers nationwide and online.

This episode will be geared towards introducing the audience to the best practices in pricing processes from around the world which can be implemented immediately.  We will conclude this episode with a look ahead on how some of the latest  technologies can be implemented into the pricing frameworks of the future. 

We will answer questions like:

-Can I use any best practices for quick wins with pricing? 

-How does pricing work differently in times of high inflation?  

-What is the difference between pricing infrastructure for B2B and B2C? 

-What aspects of pricing should be handled in house vs outsourced? 

-What aspects of pricing should be handled by personnel vs automated? 

And much more!

Speaker Info:

Kiran Gange is the CEO and founder at RapidPricer, an Artificial Intelligence based  company in Amsterdam that specializes in reducing food waste through real time  pricing for retailers. Previously, he had founded CustoLogix in the year 2008 to help  retailers leverage analytics and mathematical capabilities for pricing and promotions.  Kiran has also founded Global Launch Base, an internationalization consulting firm in  2021 which helps European companies with international go-to-market strategies and  market launches.  He has over 16 years of experience launching innovative technologies around  the world. He has consulted on behalf of large consulting companies such as PwC, IBM  and Kurt Salmon at some of the largest retailers in the world. His entrepreneurial  experiences include successful ventures in the Silicon Valley, Mexico City, Bangalore,  Amsterdam and New Delhi. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering  with honors from the Bangalore Institute of Technology and an MBA from the  Pepperdine University on a full merit scholarship.

Business-to-Business companies are facing an unprecedented number of challenges now including pressure from customers’ purchasing departments, uncertain supply chains, raw materials cost changes, turbulent times, and more.

This podcast will discuss best practices that you and your company can use to capitalize on your opportunities. Instead of academic theories, we will review real-life examples where companies used business acumen and the value they provided to the marketplace to thrive despite the obstacles that they faced.