JD Dillon is the Chief Marketing Officer, Communications Leader, and Pricing Professional at Tigo Energy.

In this episode, JD shares his 8D problem-solving technique that helps create a solid pricing strategy in place.

Why you have to check out today's podcast:

• Understand what the 8D technique of problem solving is and where you can specifically apply it to
• Learn how to figure things out and find solutions logically rather than emotionally
• Discover about the 'Five Why' in verifying the root causes of a problem

"If you are in a situation where there's a price reduction, try to do two or three other things first." - JD Dillon

Topics Covered:

01:15 - How JD's Pricing journey started

02:21 - Updates about T.J. Rodgers

03:23 - Overview of what the Eight-D problem-solving technique is all about

04:12 - How does a quality program relate to pricing?

05:32 - What goes on in D-Zero?

07:32 - Where do we ideally apply Eight-D to? [Showing a case study]

08:51 - D-One: What happens here?

10:24 - How do you go about D-Two?

12:36 - Action steps you need to do in D-Three

14:49 - Finding the root causes with D-Four and using the 'Five Why' technique

17:36 - How do you verify permanent corrective action in D-Five?

18:49 - Getting everything executed in D-Six

20:05 - Digging deeper into D-Five and [culture and internal processes]

20:58 - Preventing recurrence in D-Seven

22:48 - D-Eight: Congratulating the team

24:23 - How often do you perform the Eight-D process?

26:55 - JD's best pricing advice

28:25 - Connect with JD

Key Takeaways:

"Pricing is the quality metric for revenue." - JD Dillon

"If you do it right [Eight-D process], it builds into the DNA of the company. And after a few years you've improved your DNA continuously and quite a bit." - JD Dillon

"What I described is a thought process, that's all. You can do it in a meeting with people that know what they're doing. I can do it with somebody who's worked for me in the past and we can quickly go through the process in 10 minutes about one small little issue and then move on." - JD Dillon

People/Resources Mentioned:

• Ted Levitt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Levitt
• T.J. Rodgers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._J._Rodgers

Connect with JD Dillon:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jd-dillon/

Connect with Mark Stiving:

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