The Pricing Guys

Disney doesn't sell rides. They sell an ecosystem designed to keep you spending as long as possible.

Michael sat down with CJ Gustafson of Mostly Metrics to unpack the surprisingly sophisticated pricing strategy behind the Disney experience. From loss leader ticket pricing and frictionless wristband payments to dynamic lightning lane offers and segmented Florida resident discounts. Sharp observations, real-world parallels to SaaS, and a lot of lessons hiding inside a family vacation.

In this special episode of The Pricing Guys, Avy and Michael welcome Kevin Mitchell, President of the Professional Pricing Society (PPS), for a candid conversation about the past, present, and future of pricing.

Kevin traces the roots of PPS back to his father Eric Mitchell, who did pricing work for Ford, Xerox, and Intel before launching the society out of a newsletter Kevin used to print and mail as a kid. Nearly 20 years after rejoining the family business, Kevin now leads the world's largest community of pricing professionals and has a front-row seat to how the discipline is evolving.

The conversation covers the classic 1% pricing rule and why most executives still underestimate it, how BOGO promotions in consumer goods erode long-term price integrity, and where AI fits into the pricing toolkit today. Kevin shares memorable examples of algorithmic pricing spiraling out of control and makes a strong case for keeping humans in the loop on decisions that matter.

He also draws an unexpected parallel between the music industry and pricing strategy, and closes with a straightforward challenge to anyone looking to grow as a pricing leader: get out of the silo, learn the language of every department, and be a generalist with specialist knowledge.

A thoughtful and energizing episode for anyone in pricing, revenue management, or commercial strategy.

What can a New York City dollar slice teach you about pricing strategy? Quite a bit, it turns out.

In this episode, Michael and Avy use pizza as a lens to explore real-world pricing dynamics: the volume game behind the dollar slice, how atmosphere and customer segments justify price gaps, and why brands have to commit to a single pricing identity. They also make the case that Dave Portnoy's One Bite Reviews are missing a critical data point.

If you think about price, value, and what customers are really paying for, this episode will give you a few new ways to think about it. Plus, a future episode rating pizza on a price-adjusted scale may be coming.

What does ketchup have to do with brand value? More than you'd think.

Michael and Avy dig into one of the most underrated questions in pricing: when you strip away the logo, the mascot, and the packaging redesign, what is your brand actually worth? The Heinz story out of Turkey is the jumping off point, but this episode goes much deeper into why so many companies are spending millions to justify their existence instead of their value.

In this episode, Michael and Avy get into how Heinz drove a 23% sales increase without a price hike or a new product, why brands confuse logo refreshes and flavor adds with actual value creation, the slotting fee trap that CPG companies keep falling into and why the payback math almost never works, what base velocity actually tells you about whether your marketing spend did anything, why the brand is the product and not the color of your label, and how Coca-Cola quietly gets this right while everyone else chases shiny objects.

Also, keep your eyes open for the new RML website dropping in early May. Drop your thoughts in the comments.

What brands do you think have done the best job justifying their premium? Subscribe for Season 3, new episodes dropping regularly. #PricingStrategy #BrandValue #CPGPricing #ThePricingGuys #PricingPodcast #MarketingROI #FMCG #BrandEquity #RevenueStrategy #PricingTrends ‪@heinz‬

Is your grocery app charging you more than your neighbor? Welcome to surveillance pricing.

Learn more - revenueml.com

What does "price" even mean in a world run by AI?

In this episode, Michael and Avy skip the near-term AI hype and fast-forward 10 to 15 years to ask the big questions. Are promotions obsolete? Will brands live or die by their ability to communicate value to an algorithm? And is B2B pricing about to go completely underground?

From shopper bots that buy your toilet paper at the optimal moment, to the NVIDIA CEO's take on the true cost of an AI-powered engineer, this is a wide-ranging and thought-provoking look at the long game of pricing in an AI-saturated world. Come for the predictions, stay for the debate, and check back in Season 15 to see how right they were.

#PricingStrategy #AIAndPricing #FutureOfPricing #ThePricingGuys #PricingPodcast #ArtificialIntelligence #B2BPricing #PricingTrends

Are pricing teams their own worst enemy? 

In this episode of The Pricing Guys, Michael and Avy are calling out a growing trend in the pricing community: a victim mentality showing up all over LinkedIn, where pricing professionals feel undervalued, ignored, and like they're the only ones driving results in their organizations.

But here's the hot take: if no one's listening to you, that might be on you.

Michael and Avy break down why the best pricing professionals aren't just Excel wizards. They're change agents, relationship builders, and communicators who bring their stakeholders along for the journey from day one. They share real-world consulting experiences, the powerful "seven times rule," and lessons from a fireside chat at a major private equity conference on why trust-building is the real unlock for organizational change.

Whether you're a pricing veteran or just getting started, this episode will challenge your mindset and give you a fresh playbook for making real impact.

What's covered:

Have a topic you want us to cover? Send it in!

#ThePricingGuys #Pricing #PricingStrategy #RevenueManagement #ChangeManagement #B2B #CommercialExcellence #RML

Have you ever picked up a piece of clothing in a store and noticed the price tag was... blank? Target made headlines when they quietly removed price points from tags on select clothing items, and the guys are unpacking what's really going on.

In this episode, we dig into the operational reasoning Target offered (spoiler: it involves tariffs and cost volatility), and why that explanation doesn't fully add up. We explore the real cost of price tag labor, the friction this creates for shoppers, and whether removing visible pricing is actually a slippery slope toward full dynamic pricing in brick-and-mortar retail.

We also draw parallels to the world of B2B and software pricing, from "contact sales" enterprise deals to distributors who hide their list prices from the open market, and ask the bigger question: when you hide your price, what signal does that send to your customer?

Key topics covered:

Whether you're in retail, B2B, or SaaS, the core lesson is the same: before you hide your price, make sure you've weighed the operational savings against what it costs you in customer trust and lost sales.

#PricingStrategy #RetailPricing #DynamicPricing #PriceTransparency #Target #Retail #B2BPricing #SaaS #ThePricingGuys #Podcast #Ecommerce #PricingPodcast

In this episode of The Pricing Guys, Avy and Michael unpack ‬Apple's latest iPhone pricing move and why holding price flat while adding value is more strategic than it looks.

What starts as a discussion about the new iPhone and iPad turns into a broader conversation about price-volume tradeoffs, consumer caution, and what it means when a category leader decides not to take price. They explore whether Apple is responding to softer demand, a broader flight to value, or a more mature, replacement-driven market where upgrades are no longer automatic.

Subscribe to The Pricing Guys Podcast for more conversations on pricing, competition, and revenue management.

More info - revenueml.cm

Seat-based SaaS pricing helped fuel the software boom for more than a decade. But that model is starting to show cracks.

In this episode of The Pricing Guys, Michael and Avy unpack why many technology companies are moving away from traditional seat-based subscriptions and exploring usage-based or hybrid pricing models. Ironically, the same industry that popularized subscription pricing is now leading the shift away from it.

AI is a major driver. As companies automate work and reduce headcount, the number of seats they need for tools like development platforms, HR systems, and productivity software is shrinking. That creates real pressure on SaaS revenue models that were built around charging per user.

The conversation digs into what companies are doing in response. Should they move fully to usage-based pricing? Should they combine fixed and variable components? And how do they ensure the pricing metric actually grows with the customer rather than encouraging behaviors that reduce revenue?

Michael and Avy also explore one of the most overlooked issues in pricing design: expandability. The best pricing metrics encourage customers to naturally use more of the product over time. The wrong metrics can do the opposite, pushing customers to game the system or limit usage.

They also discuss why simplicity matters. Many companies introduce too many pricing metrics, which confuses both customers and their own sales teams.

Seat-based pricing may not be dead, but it is clearly evolving. The challenge for SaaS companies now is designing models that reflect real customer value while remaining simple, scalable, and aligned with how products are actually used.

Learn more - revenueml.com