Grow Sales & Profit Through Pricing

Even in a difficult economy, there is plenty of opportunity for more profitable pricing. 

Challenging economic times make it essential for companies to get more skillful in making and implementing pricing decisions and increasing customers’ willingness to pay.

How do you build a strong business case for price improvement initiatives?

What are the risks associated with a pricing initiative?

A new pricing initiatives’ success relies on properly identifying areas of opportunities, analyzing risks and challenges, and mapping the time to value.

Strengthen your company’s approach to pricing.

Using the framework from his book Daring Caution: The Executive’s Guide to Pricing Improvement, Bob Sherlock will show workshop attendees how to balance daring and caution in a sustainable effort to improve margins and profits.  Workshop attendees will learn how to plan and carry out an initiative that gets customers to recognize and pay for the value they receive.

During the PPS 25th Annual Pricing Workshops and Conference in Chicago workshop Sales & Profit Growth through a Pricing Improvement Initiative, Sherlock will review how to find opportunities for improved pricing and terms of sale, how to increase your company’s pricing power and how to improve your company’s process for making pricing decisions.

Price New Products with Value in Mind

Value pricing, unlike cost plus pricing, considers that customers care how much value they receive at a particular price not how much it costs companies to make it. 

Every year companies spend billions developing and launching new products from ‘revolutionary’ to ‘incremental innovation’ to catch up with competition.

When should pricing teams get involved with new product development? 

How can value pricing help minimize conflict between finance, marketing, and sales?

If pricing is an afterthought, there’s a higher risk of failure on new product launches. The failure can manifest in either lower than forecasted unit sales, lower than expected margin percentage, or lower than expected revenue.

Use a robust price setting process!

Companies with high pricing power share certain traits: a culture dedicated to pricing, sophisticated tools to quantify customer willingness to pay and customer price elasticities, and robust pricing processes.



Krishna Vankayala, CPP
Director Global Pricing
Schneider Electric, Singapore.

During the PPS 2nd Annual Asia-Pacific Pricing Workshops and Conference in Singapore keynote session New Product Pricing: Intersection of Sales, Marketing & Finance: Value Pricing, Krishna Vankayala, CPP will describe how Schneider Electric’s product refresh in the Japan market led their team to implement Value Based Pricing in its new product development process.

We hope to see you there!

Become a Pricing Change Leader!

The difference between change management and change leadership is managing risk and riding the wave of change versus being the driving force leading an organization through risk with vision and process.

What are the key drivers for a successful pricing change?

How can your pricing team become change leaders within the company?

Understanding the basic concepts and theories of change management are vital for pricing practitioners whether you are leading a small project or embarking on a transformational pricing journey.  Change in value and pricing management is challenging and often takes time to become adopted and implemented.

Lead the transformation with an emerging change management framework

Armed with the latest science in change management and change leadership, Stephan M. Liozu, Ph.D., CPP will lead workshop attendees through real-life-in-class exercises.  Workshop attendees are encouraged to identify real-life pricing projects for which they can apply change management tools and develop a practical roadmap.

During the PPS 25th Annual Pricing Workshops and Conference in Chicago 2-day workshop Change Management in Pricing: Theories, Best Practices and A Transformational Framework, Dr. Liozu will review the ten dimensions of change in pricing that are important for the pricing journey and identify potential roadblocks to change and how to handle them.

Increase Your Pricing Influence within the Company

Price cuts are often a quick win for management during recessions. When time is compressed and tactical decisions take on new importance and urgency, price cuts seem easier than improving service levels or introducing new products. As a pricing expert, you see the potential of increased price realization and the executive team may agree.
 
How do you create pricing strategies that allow management to make quick pricing decisions without reverting to price cutting? 

Where should your company invest to make short-term pricing progress?  Technology? Strategic development?

Pricing must strike a balance between short term goals and the long term health of the business.  While the pricing team within your company understands pricing strategies, tools and best practices; influencing top executives may present a challenge.

Increase your pricing organization’s value to the company

Perceived value is a pricing fundamental. And so it is with influence as well.  Become a valued influencer through creating a standardized and transparent approach within your pricing organization.  Confirm value and create credibility by communicating progress.

During the PPS 2nd Annual Asia-Pacific Pricing Workshops and Conference in Singapore keynote session Lift Where You Stand – Know Where to Begin, Nitesh Chadha will describe how NCR’s Pricing team educated executives, sales and others to gain support for their strategic pricing plan. 

Nitesh Chadha is Pricing Director APAC at NCR.

The Two Sides of Human Economic Behavior - Mr. Spock and Homer Simpson

In the past brand names such as Ford and Kraft had an inherent value because as a consumer, you assumed anything they made was pretty good.  Some new company advertising a new product was risky, so you stuck with what you knew.  A recent Pricewaterhouse Coopers study found that 80% of consumers look at online reviews before making major purchases.  Proof that in today’s digital world our buying decisions are strongly influenced by access to research, consumer reports, J.D. Power’s quality rankings, and our social network’s collective opinion.

Who wins when the value of a product is subjective and pricing contextual?  The consumer who can make better choices?  The big boys who make brand association integral to the experience of the product? Or new-to-the-market brands building better, cheaper products and spreading the word through today’s digital channels?

Economists have developed models for how pricing works. What’s needed now is to base our strategies on how people work.  Ronald J. Baker will walk workshop attendees through The Two Sides of Human Economic  Behavior by exploring the principles of Austrian economic ideas and recent research on behavioral economics will also be presented in the context of consumer decision making and pricing.

Baker will lead the workshop Mr. Spock and Homer Simpson: The Two Sides of Human Economic Behavior at the PPS 25th Annual Spring Pricing Workshops and Conference in Chicago this April.

Move Your Pricing Strategy to the Digital Age

Sony’s music business had a 32.5% increase in its operating profit and a 14.4% revenue increase in 2013 fiscal Q3 which they attribute to continued digital revenue growth. Sony Corp. posted a 23.9% sales increase in the fiscal quarter attributed to the games division’s launch of PlayStation 4 and smartphone sales.

How do companies such as Sony manage to stay a few steps ahead of their competition despite the changing pace and speed of information? 

In today’s digital arena – how can your company see growth while reinventing their pricing strategy? 

Anuprita Bhomick, Global Marketing Director at Dell will discuss what pricing pitfalls to avoid in the digital marketing mix. Through her experiences in emerging markets, she’ll share how pricing can still provide a competitive advantage in the digital world through social media, big data and advanced analytics. 

Bhomick will give the keynote session Pricing in the Digital Marketing Mix at the PPS 2nd Annual Asia-Pacific Pricing Workshops and Conference in Singapore this April.

Is price a major indicator of quality? Can a price increase lead to growth in demand?

Consumer perception of luxury brands is heavily influenced by price. Commonly characterized by their quality, craftsmanship, and exclusivity; luxury brands thrive on consumers’ thirst for status.

Ultra-luxury products sell, even in a market downturn, compared to midrange items.   Discerning consumers expect luxury brands to justify their price by adding value with gifts or loyalty programs rather than discounting.  To increase market share without damaging brand perception - some luxury brands have begun to create extensions into secondary lines with relatively lower price points.

Is price a major indicator of quality? 

Can a price increase lead to growth in demand?

Core pricing skills such as pricing for different customer segments, implementing pricing increases, and understanding and measuring price elasticity should be in every pricing professional’s playbook.   Are you a seasoned pricer who hasn’t thought about core pricing principles in a while?  Or are you new to pricing?

Learn leading pricing methodologies from dozens of case studies from a variety of industries in Professional Pricing Society’s Full-Day Core Pricing Skills Workshop.  Jan Weiser and Shenaz Bilkis from Simon-Kucher & Partners will engage workshop attendees, giving all participants the opportunity to ask questions and add from their own experience. 

Attendees will master the essentials of pricing performance by learning:

• Why pricing is the profit lever
• The fundamentals of value pricing
• Segmentation and price differentiation
• Making pricing change stick through better price implementation

Weiser and Bilkis will be leading the workshop Core Pricing Skills at the PPS 2nd Annual Asia-Pacific Pricing Workshops and Conference in Singapore this April.