Impact Pricing

Ajit Ghuman is the Director of Product Management, Pricing, Packaging, and Customer Experience at Twilio. He is the author of the book Price to Scale. He’s had Director of Product Marketing title at several companies, and he added pricing to his title in 2019. Ajit is fascinated by ancient mysteries. In this episode, Ajit educates us on pricing and packaging as he shares why he’s passionate when it comes to changing the monetization stack, especially on companies being able to change pricing strategies a lot quicker than today.   Why you have to checkout today’s podcast: Learn how pricing can done through a four-step framework; Find out how to create a pricing system that can work well with all strategies; and Understand why it’s an advantage to be able to change pricing strategies quickly   “I think of pricing in a four-step framework. The four steps are packaging, pricing metric, tariff structure, and then price point.” – Ajit Ghuman   Topics Covered: 01:44 – How Ajit got into pricing 03:09 – Ajit talks a

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on January 18, 2023, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/another-ridiculous-fee/ [powerpress] If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com.  Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This one is the 8 of Spades from the Selling Value card deck.  When buyers are making a 'will I' decision, they're trying to decide, should I spend money to go solve this problem or not? Oftentimes, when they're making a 'will I' decision, they've got some problem that has boiled up, that's become an important problem, and they say, "Hey, maybe I'm gonna go consider buying a replacement, a solution, something to solve this specific problem for me."  If you are in B2B sales, what your job needs to be at this moment is, what is the basic problem your buyer is trying to solve? Once we understand that problem, we can help them figure out what's the value of solving that problem.  What this really means is, can we do an ROI calculation? At least the R part of an ROI calculation. Can we help the buyer figure out how much more profit will they make because they buy our product? This is called inherent value.  Inherent value is what's the value of solving the problem, and it has nothing to do with, what's the value o

Dan Balcauski was a program leader for Northwestern University, where he also went to school seven years prior. He is the founder and Chief Pricing Officer of Product Tranquility, a company that helps high volume B2B SaaS CEOs define pricing and packaging for new and existing products. In this episode, Dan talks about pricing and packaging and how he applies its principles in helping B2B SaaS companies.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Learn about the similarities and differences of pricing model and pricing metrics Discover the fundamental principles of how to decide which features to put on which packages Understand why there is no such thing as absolute and optimal pricing  “You don't really have a choice of whether you will have a pricing conversation with your customer. The only decision you get to make is when you're going to have that conversation. So I recommend having it as soon as possible.”  – Dan Balcauski   Topics Covered: 01:13 – How Dan got the title “Chief Pricing Officer” 02:04

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on January 11, 2023, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/what-pricing-can-teach-sales/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com.  Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This one is the 9 of Diamonds from the Selling Value card deck.  Let's start with, what is a trust journey? A trust journey is when a buyer comes to you, you're the salesperson, a buyer comes to you and asks you for help figuring out what they need to buy, and they never go look at a competitive alternative.  Your job, when they come talk to you, is to talk about, what's the value of solving the problem? What's the best solution to the problem? And importantly, you never ever mention a competitor. As far as your concerned competition doesn't even exist.  When you can recognize that a buyer is going to buy from you without having looked at competitive alternatives, let me assure you, that buyer is not price sensitive. They're looking at, "Ooh, I've got to get this problem solved." They're not out spending their time trying to figure out, where do I get the best bang for the buck? That doesn't mean that we're going to gouge them, but it surely means that we don't have to give them deep discounts.  How do you kn

Armin Kakas is an expert in analytics, having lots of education in statistics, machine learning and A.I. He has an MBA, and he was a former VP of analytics at American Tire Distributors. He is also the founder of Revology Analytics, a revenue growth analytics consulting company.  In this episode, Armin talks about data analytics and its crucial role in pricing and in businesses as a whole.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Learn the importance of gathering and understanding data both in B2B and B2C setups Find out why pricing and price adjustments must be base on data and customer feedback and should never be done internally in a company Learn how to communicate and unite insights from both the points of view of business people and statistics people   “There needs to be a much smarter, much surgical way to manage discounts and really reward those customers that have the highest lifetime value or highest volume versus other things.”  – Armin Kakas   Topics Covered: 01:55 – How Armin got into prici

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on January 4, 2023, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/pricing-trends-in-2023/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com.  Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

This one is the 9 of Clubs from the Selling Value card deck.  Let's start with, what is a relationship journey? Buyers who are on a relationship value journey realize they have a problem and then they go straight to a salesperson to learn. They didn't spend a whole bunch of time on the internet researching options or alternatives. They're the type of people who would rather learn from someone else, who would rather get the feedback.  Let's say your refrigerator just broke down, and your friend says to you, "Hey, you got to go talk to Bob at the appliance store, Bob will help you out." And you walk in and start to talk to Bob. Now, what is Bob's job? Bob should be focused on, how is buying a new refrigerator going to be better for your life? Which style of refrigerator is going to be better for your life? They're truly focusing on the problem that you have and what's the best solution to your problem. They're not focused on saying, here's why my store is better than someone else's store, they're just focused o

For the last ten years, Robert Ribciuc has been working as the Managing Partner of EBITDA Catalyst, helping clients accelerate growth in key valuation metrics. He has a BA in Math and Economics from Harvard and an MBA from Chicago Booth School of Business. In this episode, Robert shares some of his insights on how to deal with different kinds of people in the industry, be it personal or online.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Get tips on how you could recover and avoid “falls” in your life Learn how to give feedback and criticisms in a nice, positive manner Discover some lesser-known tricks/hints about how the LinkedIn algorithm works   “If enough people notice those behaviors in you, that are all about you – selfish, self-promoting, etc., most of the time, when a comment like that is posted, nobody replies or gives any acknowledgment to that kind of comment, and you can just hear in that wall of silence all the people who are mentally walking away from this person just like you described.” – R

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on December 21, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/a-nespresso-price-increase/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

This one is the 9 of Hearts from the Selling Value card deck. It is true that buyers on an analytical journey are very price sensitive. Buyers on an analytical journey are probably the way you and I shop most of the time, and so it's the most common type of buyer's journey. These buyers are the ones who realize they have a problem, let's say, their refrigerator broke down. Then what do they do? They do a bunch of research to figure out what's the best refrigerator to replace the one that just broke. They know they need to go buy one, but they're on the internet looking at a whole bunch of different brands, maybe different technologies, styles, sizes, colors, and by the time they walk into a store, or two, or three, they've got a great feel and they're comparing, “Hey, how is this one better than that one?” These are really price sensitive buyers because they've identified what are all the different possibilities and they can trade off, “Oh, do I want water in the door, or ice in the door,” and, “What's that e

Bryan Belanger is the senior director of Technology Business Research. He's also the senior director at XaaS Pricing, a subsidiary of TBR that helps SaaS companies price on a data-driven approach. In this episode, Bryan talks about the work that XaaS Pricing does and who their target customers are. He also shares his insights on other business and pricing models and how you could choose which one works best for your business.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Find out who XaaS Pricing are and how they might be able to help with your business Learn how to create a simple yet effective business framework by talking to your customers Get insights on the current trends such as usage-based pricing and product-led growth   “Create a simple framework that works for you. For me, it's probably talk to ten customers; and that, I think, can help you. I think the hardest part is often knowing where to start or what you're even trying to solve for is. So, find a framework that works for you, that focuses on t

This one is the 9 of Spades from the Selling Value card deck. Buyers need different information depending on where they are in their own buying process. There's a map in the Selling Value book that talks about these different waypoints, but let's simplify it for the sake of this table topics and say, look, there's really two key phases in a buyer's decision process. First, they make a 'will I' decision. Then they make a 'which one' decision. When they're making a 'will I' decision, they're trying to ask, am I going to buy something in this product category or not? What they're really saying is, is the value of solving the problem worth the resources it's going to cost me to go solve that problem? What we want to give them at this point in time is information that says, here's the value of solving the problem. Here's the inherent value of our solution. Once they go on to make a 'which one' decision, they're now asking, is your product the right decision relative to your competitive alternatives? And now what t

Ayon Bhattacharyya is the Founder of Biz Growth Spurt, a consulting firm based out of New Zealand. He has experienced pricing in half a dozen companies, and he's a passionate animal welfare advocate. In this episode, Ayon talks about the ins and outs of monetization. He also tells us a bit about his company, Biz Growth Spurt, and why you might be in need of their services.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Learn about the three pillars of monetization and why you can’t only focus on one of them Know the difference between price metric and value metric and why it matters in getting more sales Understand why articulating value is essential in keeping and growing your customers   “Understand your customers intimately and take the time to quantify your buyer personas so that you understand the use case of the value proposition, the willingness to pay the lifetime value, and the customer acquisition costs; so that you can better position and package to them and ultimately capture a fair portion of the

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on December 14, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/a-price-negotiation-example/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

This is the 10 of Diamonds from the Selling Value card deck. You should reveal the price only after the value is communicated. What happens is, when our buyers hear the price, at that moment, they're making a decision. Is the price too high or too low? Is it worth it? What decision am I going to make? Am I going to spend more time with this? Now, what typically happens is, imagine you're going to buy a pair of Levi's at the retail store, and you walk into the store and you see the price is $60. Well, no one communicated the value to you, but you probably already had a pretty good feeling for what the value of Levi's really is to you. And so, you know if that price is high or low, and if it's worth it to you. But now, imagine you're a B2B salesperson and you walk in the door and you say, 'Our product is a hundred thousand dollars.' And the buyer instantly says, 'Don't have the budget. That's too expensive. Not going to buy it.' And they don't pay attention anymore. You are done working with that buyer. But if

Steven Forth is a Partner in Ibbaka, a strategic pricing advisory firm. He was CEO of LeveragePoint Innovations Inc., a SaaS business designed to help companies create and capture value. Steven is what I consider one of the great pricing thinkers in our industry. In this episode, Steven talks about AI and how it is impacting the world of pricing. He also shares some of the improvements we could expect from AI infrastructures in the near future.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Find out how the emergence of AI improves and disrupts the pricing profession and the trade as a whole Learn how to extract the best and most comprehensive solutions from AI tools Get an idea on how the “big 3” of cloud services might price for their AI services in considering their current pricing models   “Many billions of dollars being invested in AI last year, next year, this year. The overall investment is going to be probably in the neighborhood of $300 billion in 2023. So, if we were investing that much money, we be

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on December 7, 2022, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/black-friday-and-price-elasticity/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact. Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

This one is the 10 of Clubs from the Selling Value card deck. Yes, a value conversation is a great way to build a relationship with your customers, with your buyers. Face it, your buyer probably hasn't put together a business case for what it is they're trying to buy. And yet, it makes a lot of sense for them to have one. It gives them more confidence, they're making the right decision. It gives them the ability to sell up in the organization in case they have to convince someone else to give them the resources. It provides the justification inside the company that they're doing a good thing for the company. And so, they really want to create a business case. But they probably haven't done it because they didn't think about it. They don't really know how. If you can help your buyer write that business case, and that's exactly what selling value means, then you are truly helping the buyer. You're adding a lot of value to that buyer's decision process, to their career, to their prestige inside the organization.