Zen Ore, a.k.a. “that pricing guy”, is a respected consultant who helped business across Australia, UK, USA, and Israel. Zen’s background is in procurement, negotiations, and deal structure, which gave him quite the reputation with pricing teams he opposed in negotiations. 

After years in operations management roles, he specialized in analytics and BI, leveraging his statistics-rich engineering degree. Zen constantly volunteers to support small business and young entrepreneurs. 

In this episode, Zen shares how pricing is not about how much you invested now but the value you deliver. He also highlights that pricing is not something you do at the end just before the product launch; it’s something you do even before you design a product.  He touched on Wine Pricing and what influences buyers’ purchasing decisions with spirit products. He made mention on the psychology of pricing in this regard. Other than that, he gives his thoughts on how pricing works in the petrol industry; the pricing metrics used to gauge buyers’ willingness to pay. 

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Why you have to check out today’s podcast:

• Learn about wine pricing and how its price is a strong indicator of the product’s quality and influences the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of buyers’ purchasing decisions 
• Find out how petrol pricing works where an increase or decrease in the world’s oil price movement is concerned 
• Find out why ‘pricing is a thing’ in your business 

 

“Making sure your initial pricing doesn't damage your brand and addresses more than one market segment. I think that's the most common mistake I see with small businesses.” 

- Zen Ore 

 

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Topics Covered:

01:35 - How an impactful event in his life got him started in Pricing 

03:27 - How do consumers base their purchase decision on when it comes to wine pricing 

04:39 - Why Pricing is a thing 

05:50 - How Petrol Pricing works 

09:48 - Why gas price goes up the same time oil price goes up for the day even if lead time for the oil production takes days for it to be brought to the station  

12:28 - How everyone else raises prices without collusion once world oil price goes up   

12:43 - When do oil companies make a better margin 

13:37 - Getting out of a price war 

14:25 - How Zen’s Jewish-Buddhist background made him put a pro-bono tab on his pricing website 

17:36 - Zen’s testimonial about Mark’s online courses  

19:38 - The need to understand the mental toolkit for Pricing 

 

Key Takeaways:

“They don't understand that pricing is a thing. It's not something you do at the end, occasionally, five minutes before you launch into the market. It's something you have to think about way before you even start designing your service or product.” - Zen Ore 

“There's a lot of costing involved because that's a factory, making wine is the factory, but the way pricing works, I think even without calling it by that name, it's more psychological than one might think.” - Zen Ore 

 “We started playing with the metrics [petrol pricing], and we realized that yes, sometimes you can raise the price. As long as you raise another metric or another value driver, they will keep buying and you will maintain the same volume with the higher price. And I think that's the business you want to have.” - Zen Ore 

“[On his website’s pro bono tab] It's me, showing that I believe in what I do, and I believe in what I understand about how people pay. You can pay as much as you want. And I'm not going to criticize you for this. And experience shows that's actually not a bad financial decision on my end as well.”  - Zen Ore 

“Once you get accustomed to that kind of strategic thinking, it's in your mental toolbox. And I think it's the same with your courses. So, it doesn't matter if you're pricing petrol or you're pricing fast-moving consumer goods or anything. You understand the mental toolkit for pricing. And I think that's priceless.”  - Zen Ore 

 

Connect with Zen Ore:

• pricingisathing.com 
• LinkedIn 

 

Connect with Mark Stiving:   

• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn