Berlin Pricing Conference Recap – Day 3

Thursday, December 5th,
Day Three, Keynotes & Breakout Tracks

Our keynote speakers are best way to harness the energy and momentum building on the third conference day in Berlin.

Keynote Session during Pricing Conference in Berlin 2014

In the leading keynote Enrico Trevisan, Partner at Simon-Kucher & Partners, shared his vision of ‘behavioral pricing’ and demonstrated the importance of recognizing the psychological predictability of irrational customer behavior. Always fascinating to hear about what we only sometimes acknowledge are our own human foibles.

The ever-affable Paul Hunt took the audience on a “Journey to World Class Pricing.” An icon of the pricing world, Paul shared some wit, expertise and insights from his new book, as well as his 20-plus-year vision and experience of the evolving pricing landscape.

Ernst-Jan Bouter explored archetypes of successful entrepreneurship that included “the inventor” and “the salesman.” To these types he adds “the pricer” and goes on to posit that the pricing function will never share the same self-interest of sales, marketing and finance. Therefore he concludes pricers in organizations must be held apart from these other functions to be able to remain clear, unbiased and effective. Pricing, thus, is “The Third Business Skill” which was the title of his presentation.

Last, and certainly a real treat for attendees, was Graeme Ingham, Vice President, Price Management for Schneider Electric. Graeme started by demonstrating how to increase testosterone by 20% and decrease the stress inducing hormones by 25% by "power posing" or standing in a posture of confidence; quite an interesting way to start his keynote titled “Pricing and the Overall Marketing Mix: More Opportunities Than Challenges?”

Julie Martin and Kevin Mitchell from PPS and
Sophie Marion from BD the winner of a 2014 PPS Conference Pass.

He explained how digitization (now called the third industrial revolution) is empowering consumers anywhere and everywhere in the world, allowing them to compare prices and demand high levels of service, these new scenarios bring opportunities and challenges to pricing.

Then he described how Curiosity, Agility and Discipline are the 3 core elements needed to capitalize on the opportunities and overcome the challenges faced by pricers when it comes to digitalization. 

The afternoon rolled out smoothly with three concurrent tracks with a total of 12 sessions. This format allows attendees to select the subjects that will cover their interests or challenges they are facing.

We thank all our speakers for sharing such incredible and valuable pricing knowledge during this 3-day event.

We have had a fantastic time in Berlin. It truly was a meeting of minds – a time of energized learning and opportunity, delivering the type skills and knowledge that increase salaries, validate promotions and increases profitability for corporations.

2014 looks like another amazing year in the expanding world of pricing. During the first half of the year we will host conferences in Singapore and Chicago in the Spring, and Brazil in the Summer, we at the Pricing Society have plenty to look forward to and much to be thankful for.

As we move into the New Year we remain amazed, grateful and indebted to our members, speakers, sponsors and staff for making our conferences the successes they are.

Gute Reise! And here’s to our meeting again in 2014!

Berlin Pricing Conference Recap – Day 2

Wednesday, December 4th, Day Two:
CPP Workshops and Executive Summit

Day two went extremely well, the 2-day workshop participants finished their second day of advanced pricing effectiveness skills. We then welcomed a large group of practitioners that were eager to show their leadership by delivering great questions to their peers and instructors.

During his workshop “Advanced Quantitative Methods in Discount Management” Tim J. Smith, Ph.D., CPP, made the difficult subject of applying quantitative approaches to monitoring discounts, more accessible though his own brand of humor and by working with a series of powerful techniques enabled by the power of the modern spreadsheet.

Around the holiday gifting season, Leigh Caldwell conducted a timely and relevant session

The crowd is beggining to gather at the Post-Workshop
Reception Sponsored by PROS

on a subject of brand value and behavioral economics called “Pricing the Intangible.” In this workshop Leigh illustrated how the powerful psychological weapon of pricing works to support the customer perceptions about leading products. Interestingly for some products and brands price increases are actually the best way to confirm the product’s value to customers most inclined to buy.

This year, our Global Pricing for Executives Summit reached new heights with the largest attendance in its 4 year history and a superb level of speakers and participants. It is such a pleasure seeing scores of pricing executives gather together and share industry knowledge and lessons learned. At today’s Summit participants walked away with practical, practitioner-proven examples of improved pricing strategies, like: 

• What are the common barriers to implementing Value Based Pricing
• How to include pricing in organizational structure and management setup
• When do brands, products and costs impact pricing in new geographical markets
• Why most companies that start to focus on pricing excellence fail at the execution stage, and how to avoid the common mistakes

Our sponsors are ready to interact with participants, anyone looking for expert advice or technology solutions will have many options to choose from.

And after all the hard work, the end of the day looks very promising with a Post-Workshop Reception sponsored by PROS, good food and some drinks always go well with networking and meeting new friends in the world of pricing.

Check back with us tomorrow to read about the four great keynotes we have lined up for Day Three of our Conference. It’s going to be a great day!

 

Berlin Pricing Conference Recap – Day 1

Tuesday, December 3rd, Day One: Workshops

We began the first day of our Berlin Conference with four information-packed workshops led by senior pricing experts. Hailing from Germany, Spain, the United States and United Kingdom, this grouping of world-class talent demonstrates the best way to open our 9th Annual Global Conference.

The full-day sessions covered both the broad fundamentals of pricing strategies, and provided an in-depth study of more advanced topics. Workshops were full of eager-to-learn professionals; and our presenter’s expertise engaged participants with real life examples and actionable knowledge.  

Fernando Ventureira and Christian Winter opened with the two-day advanced interactive workshop on how to ‘Measure & Manage Pricing Effectiveness.’ The benchmarking methods and focus presented in this workshop delivered attendees the tools and techniques to enhance their crucial pricing skills.

At that same time, Dimitris Hiotis and Bjoern Dahmen walked pricers through a full-day Core Pricing Skills workshop. Always a preferred program for those just being exposed to pricing or others taking a back-to-basics to approach to new pricing challenges, the two experts informed and energized a full class of pricing learners.

Marc Abels and Ernst Hoffmann from Deloitte shared their knowledge on how a holistic approach to revenue is essential for successful implementation of the levers that drive and fund profitable growth for businesses.

Florian Bauer, Ph.D., conducted a workshop titled “Applying Behavioural Economics to B2B and B2C Pricing.” In this workshop participants learned how to identify the different buyer behaviors to develop more efficient pricing structures applicable to each group’s specific characteristics.

We’re looking forward to Day Two including the continuation of the 2-day workshop, the new 1-day workshops and especially the presentations that will be shared during our Pricing for Executives Summit.

Stay tuned!

Berlin Breakouts: A Wealth of Knowledge for You!

The Breakouts rounding out the 9th Annual European & Global Conference and Workshops in Berlin offer a more intimate setting for attendees to learn important skills.  Take advantage of these pricing experts’ knowledge on a variety of top of mind topics! 

On Thursday 5th of December, attendees will have the following options at these times :

14:00 Breakouts

Emotional Intelligence is Part of Pricing Science
Speaker: Jennifer Brown, CPP, Pricing Manager, Medtronic

Successful Pricing Implementation – Realising Pricing Power in Your OrganisationSpeaker: Mark-Daniel Rentschler, Director, Simon-Kucher & Partners

Measuring Pricing Performance in Your Organisation
Speaker: Mrinal Gurbaxani, Strategic Pricing Services Lead, EMEA, PROS

14:45 Breakouts

Simple Pricing: From Textbooks to Real-World Tactical ExecutionSpeaker: Daniel Golik, Vice President of Pricing, DHL Express of Europe
Customer Life Time Value and Yield Management: Execution and Best Practices
Speaker: Frederico Zornig, Managing Partner, Quantiz Pricing Solutions  
Pricing at Your Service: Avoiding the Commodity Price Trap by Introducing Value Adding Services
Speaker: Thomas Donck, Director, Deloitte Belgium

16:00 Breakouts

A Strategic Approach to Annual Price Increments for the Information Services IndustrySpeaker: Nupur Sharma, Manager, Strategic Pricing, Thomson Reuters’ Legal Business Unit

Getting Sales into the Pricing Game Speaker: Björn Willemsens, Director, Deloitte Belgium

Commercial Policy and Pricing Excellence
Speaker: Andreas von der Gathen, Ph.D., Executive Vice President, Simon-Kucher & Partners

16:45 Breakouts

Pricing Process: The Next Step to Sustain Pricing Initiatives
Speaker: Roberto Bedotto, Pricing Director, Honeywell Process Solutions

Pricing and Selling is Like Surfing
Speaker: Olaf Lange, Managing Partner, Team Steffenhagen Consulting

Pricing and Big Data: Managing Millions of Prices and Discounts
Speaker: Finn Hansen, CEO, Stratinis


There's still time to register! We hope to se yout here...

http://www.pricingsociety.com/2013berlin


http://www.pricingsociety.com/2013berlin

In the Driver’s Seat: Getting Pricing to Fire On All Cylinders.

Who should be in control of pricing?  Sales, Marketing, or Finance?

Ernst-Jan Bouter
CEO, FirstPrice

If you ask professional pricers this question, you should expect a wide difference of opinion!

 

Many believe that effective pricing cannot be achieved within these departments because they lack focus, and don’t make pricing a priority. Pricing often takes the backseat to other issues, when it should be the driving force of a company.

Ernst-Jan Bouter makes the case for an independent pricing function that puts companies back in the driver’s seat.  In his keynote speech Pricing: The Third Business Skill, Bouter argues that there’s a need for an independent pricing team who will remain neutral and objective.  

Only by creating the ability to formulate sound pricing will a company be able to fire on all cylinders!  He will be sharing tips to achieve this and best practice strategies, and attendees can expect to hear:

• What it takes to set-up a pricing function
• The key elements of a successful change approach towards a strong pricing function
• What a realistic and feasible path for change is

Ernst-Jan Bouter will be speaking at the 9th Annual European & Global Pricing Conference and Workshops on December 5th in Berlin, Germany. 
 

On the Hunt for World Class Pricing - Berlin 2013

Paul Hunt
President, Pricing Solutions

Navigating through the world of pricing in a complex global environment can be tricky for anyone, but Paul Hunt is ready to guide you through these troubled waters.

Drawing on his 20 years of pricing strategy, Paul will give examples of proven success tactics from his book World Class Pricing: The Journey (2013). His emphasis on helping companies with cultural changes in pricing is seemingly ubiquitous, but is unique to his own experiences. 

Ultimately, he will help you to consider where you are, where you want to get to, and how you are going to get there? 

Attendees can expect to hear:

• What the journey looks like and what roadblocks to expect at each stage.
• The dynamic between the art and science of pricing and how they are both critical elements of the journey.
• How to keep the gains made and why some companies slip backwards, and the payoffs and pitfalls to expect along the way.

Paul Hunt will be leading the keynote The Journey to World Class Pricing on December 5 at the PPS 9th Annual European & Global Conference and Workshop in Berlin, Germany. 

 

 

Our Gift of Pricing Experience to You: Enjoy the Peak of Knowledge in a One Day Summit!

If you had the opportunity to peek into the minds of your mentors, would you take it?
 
What if you could spend the day acquiring best practices and tips for the present, and the future? 

The Global Pricing for Executives Summit on December 4th in Berlin is our gift to you, tied up with a bow. To be given the gift of accumulating so much knowledge in one day is a rarity, to find it so readily available is another.

All attendees will explore:

• Barriers to Implementing Value Based Pricing-overcoming pricing barriers with specific strategies from DuPont’s Victoria Mascaray Marti.
• Running Successful Pricing Projects: Lesson’s Learned-how to include pricing in an organizational setup and management structure in fast growing business by Marten Hedberg of Assa Abloy Entrance Systems. 
• Unlocking the Power of Pack Price: An Occasion Centric Approach-utilizing pack price at ideation stage with Ricardo Cuellar of Pepsico MEA. 
• The Rules Behind Pricing Effectiveness-identifying the 3 Pricing Rules: Set+Connect+Learn with Manu Carricano of EADA Pricing Center
• The Application of Pricing Within a Global Matrix Environment-how your brand, product, and costs impact pricing into new markets with Anthony Mak of Telstra Global. 

This exciting day will complete with a Q & A opportunity at the Executive Summit Presenters Panel. 

It’s not too late to register! 

http://www.pricingsociety.com/Berlin2013

 

 

On the Cutting Edge: Pricing 3.0 and the Effects of Behavioral Psychology

If pricing is the science of numbers, then Behavioral Pricing certainly illustrates the humanistic element of unpredictability in the equation. 

The future of pricing has evolved past the 1.0 and 2.0 stages, Enrico Trevisan of Simon-Kucher & Partners will share some cutting edge thinking from Pricing 3.0.  Drawing on Nobel-prize winning research, attendees will learn:

Enrico Trevisan, Ph.D., Partner,
Simon-Kucher & Partners

• Behavioral pricing theory builds on many ways of predictably irrational consumer behavior, but what does this mean for practitioners who create products and services, make pricing decisions, and define marketing plans?
• How can we leverage customer psychology through the anchoring effect, the endowment effect, product framing, value plus vs. value minus, risk aversion, and decoy tactics?
• How a framework around brand identity, positioning, and related pricing tactics can help to identify the best behavioral tactics. 

Enrico Trevisan will be leading the keynote sessions with Behavioral Pricing-Practical Implications of Pricing 3.0 on December 5, 2013 at the PPS 9th Annual European & Global Conference and Workshops in Berlin, Germany. 

Making Sense Of and Assigning Value to Intangible Goods

Today, Apple’s stock is $520 per share, and Google’s is $1,018 per share; two similar companies that have similar services and products.  Yet, they are worth drastically different amounts. 
 
How do you put a price on something that you can’t see or touch? 

What is the psychological implication of assigning value to an intangible product or service? 

The answers to these questions will be revealed in Leigh Caldwell’s workshop Pricing the Intangible, focusing on behavioral economics and consumer decision making. 
 
In this workshop, Leigh will help attendees to determine how to calculate the right pricing for intangible goods across all industries, and in both B2B and B2C scenarios. Participants can expect to discuss:

• The principles of behavioral economics and psychological pricing, and how to apply them at an advanced level, to create intangible products,
• The twelve sources of intangible value and the formula for calculating the right price,
• How to add invisible benefits to your existing products and services to create demand and increase willingness to pay,
• The secret of how intangible products give meaning to your customers’ lives.

Leigh Caldwell will be leading the workshop Pricing the Intangible at the PPS 9th Annual European & Global Conference and Workshops in Berlin, Germany in December. 

 
 

Friend or Foe? Making Discount Management Profitable for You

Tim J. Smith, Ph.D., CPP,
Managing Principal of Wiglaf Pricing
Adjunct Professor of Marketing
at DePaul University

“Discount.”  It seems like such a dirty word, like something you would find at a Walmart near you.  Most executives would like to eliminate all discounts from pricing, but if used correctly, discounting in pricing can actually improve profitability. 

By not allowing discounting to wreak havoc and consume resources in an organization, it becomes a useful form of price segmentation.

Tim J. Smith will help you use the discount method differently, by applying quantitative approaches to the datasets of your own company. 

Attendees will need to bring a laptop with Microsoft Excel, and will look at three tools for firm-specific discounting practices, and four commonly used tools executives use to restrain them. 

Attendees will also study:

• How discounting can simultaneously lower market entrance prices, increase volumes and improve profitability,
• Quantitative methods for measuring and monitoring discounting policy,
• Quantitative and managerial tools for restraining discounts,
• Implications of Prospect Theory and the Nash Equilibrium on discounting policy.

Dr. Tim J. Smith will be leading the workshop Advanced Quantitative Methods in Discount Management at the PPS 9th Annual European & Global Conference and Workshops in Berlin, Germany in December. 

  

Human Behavior and The Art of Psychological Pricing: Looking Into the Mind of the Buyer

Peering into the depths of the human psyche can be an enlightening or disturbing path, depending on how you approach it. 

Everyone is trying to crack into the “mind  of the buyer,” to establish habits and decision making processes to enhance bottom line growth.  Dr. Florian Bauer may be closest to figuring it out. 

In his workshop The Art of Psychological Pricing: Applying Behavioral Economics in B2B and B2C Pricing, Dr. Bauer will take you through the science of pricing research and strategy from a psychological standpoint, drawing on a validated and award-winning framework of his design. 

He will move beyond the classical assumptions and educate attendees on real life decision processes, including:

Recent research insights on human decision making for deriving successful pricing strategies,
A conceptual framework that will better leverage behavioral economics in a pricing strategy,
The pros and cons of pricing tools such as Price Sensitivity Meter or Conjoint Analysis and how to modify and complement these methods to avoid risks and pitfalls,
How to convert insights into optimizing price level, structure, dynamics, and communication. 

Dr. Florian Bauer will be teaching the workshop The Art of Psychological Pricing: Applying Behavioral Economics in B2B and B2C Pricing at the PPS 9th Annual European & Global Conference and Workshops in Berlin, Germany in December. 

 

Hitting the Big 3: An Analytical Approach to Revenue Management

Marc Abels, Partner

Deloitte Belgium

 

Revenue management is much like playing the slot machines in Vegas.  You’ve got to hit three of the same: (1) selling the right capacity to (2) The right customer (3) at the right price…to hit the jackpot. 

What’s the big payout?  Driving and funding profitable growth for your business. 

Marc Abels and Ernst Hoffmann will help you take the odds out of the equation at their workshop The Analytical Approach to Revenue Management: From Cost-to-Serve to Price Optimization. 

Learn how applying analytics and taking Price-Volume trade-offs and price elasticity will help to shape price setting decisions, successful implementations, and further overall profitability. 


Ernst Hoffmann, Partner
Deloitte Germany

This workshop offers a holistic approach to Revenue Management, and attendees will study:

• The fundamentals of Revenue Management and how to set your price using the difference in customers’ value of your products
• The importance of cost-to-serve for customer profitability management
• How to create the necessary price gaps when setting the price and to optimize your discounts and rebates

Marc Abels and Ernst Hoffman will be attending the PPS 9th Annual European & Global Conference and Workshops in Berlin, Germany in December.

 

 

Well done! Conference Success!

Friday, October 25th, 18 session in 4 tracks, Conference Closing

We have had a fantastic time at our 24th Annual Fall Pricing Workshops and Conference. I know from all the pleased faces that our attendees learned a lot but also had a good time.
Many are surely eager to get to work and implement all the pricing insights, tools and methodologies learned during these 4 days. We are sure most of you are going back with a higher level of energy and purpose for your jobs and what that means for your corresponding companies.

We certainly hope you take advantage of Georgia’s beautiful fall colors and enjoy all our great city has to offer.

Thank you for attending, and a shout of gratitude and good feelings to all our attendees, speakers, sponsors and staff.

It truly was a meeting of minds – a time of energized learning and opportunity, delivering the skills and knowledge that will take you to the next level.

For those of you reading along from distant countries, perhaps we shall see you soon in Berlin on December 3rd at our 9th Annual European & Global Pricing Conference and Workshops.

Surely, next year looks exciting for the world of pricing, with conferences in Chicago in the spring, Singapore in April and Brazil in the summer, we have plenty to look forward to and much to learn to expand our pricing knowledge and skills.

Safe travels everyone!

Atlanta Pricing Conference Recap - Day 3

Thursday, October 24th, Day Three, Keynotes

Our keynote speakers were the perfect way to continue our four pricing-filled days in Atlanta.  The leading keynote, by Mark Burton, Co-Founder and Vice President of Holden Advisors, shared his vision of the ‘Embedded Pricing Organization’ demonstrating the importance of evolving the way pricing departments integrate within enterprises.

Stephan A. Butscher took the audience to a new level with his keynote “Behavioral Pricing — Practical Implications of Pricing 3.0” a true orientation on how to advance the practice we all share.

Tim Smith, Ph.D. and CPP explored the ups and downs of managing prices across borders, and shared tips on how to frame the challenges and avoid the headaches.

Leigh Caldwell’s session was excellent in content and delivery, he illustrated how to use the powerful psychological weapon of pricing to make your customers feel inclined to buy your most profitable products and feel like they got a great deal.

Georg Müller, Ph.D. impressed the audience with his remarkable experience, detailing his participation in historical pricing moments with some of the largest companies in the world.

And what can we say, Thomas J. Winninger wasn’t only relevant, engaging, entertaining and fun, he left the audience with the challenge of creating purpose for their careers, for the value they bring to their companies, and  he insisted that pricers redefine themselves to elevate their position and importance for the enterprise. 

Thomas dared pricers to ask bigger questions, questions that the C-Suite doesn’t have answers for. Thom demanded from pricers “Emphasize on the problem you solve not on the process you do it with”. This was a remarkable hour with one of the most dynamic and compelling speakers in the world.

We thank all our speakers for sharing such incredible and valuable pricing knowledge on this Keynote Day.

Now, we all celebrate together during a pleasant reception sponsored by our friends from PROS.

You will hear from us tomorrow when we will tell you more about another day in pricing land!

Getting Back to the Basics: Core Pricing Skills 101

Dimitris Hiotis, Director
Simon-Kucher & Partners

Whether you’re new to pricing, and or a seasoned professional, getting back to the basics to refresh your skills is always a good idea.  It is often the fundamentals that we first learn that are frequently overlooked and underutilized.

In Core Pricing Skills, Dimitris Hiotis and Bjoern Dahmen are bringing back the basics, and will help you master the essentials of pricing performance.  

Sharpen your pencils and take note: this ‘full interactivity’ workshop will be emphasizing dozens of cases and industries for studious minds.  Questions and participation is highly encouraged, and attendees will focus on the key areas of pricing 101, value pricing, differentiation, and implementation.  You will also learn:

 

Bjoern Dahmen, Director
Simon-Kucher & Partner

1- Why pricing is the key profit lever

2- The fundamentals of value pricing, and the key tools and methodologies to quantify product value

3- Effective segmentation to drive price differentiation
Making pricing changes stick through better price implementation
 Dimitris Hiotis and Bjoern Dahmen will be leading the workshop Core Pricing Skills  at the PPS 9th Annual European & Global Conference and Workshops in December in Berlin, Germany. 

 

Atlanta Pricing Conference Recap - Day 2

Wednesday, October 23rd, Day Two: CPP Workshops and Executive Summit

Day two went extremely well, all 2-day workshop participants finished their second day of hands-on pricing training. We then welcome a larger group of attendees that were eager to learn and benchmark with fellow pricers.

Andreas Hinterhuber, Ph.D. made this very complicated subject seem easy with his many real-life examples and practical instruction during his workshop Quantifying and Documenting Value in Business Markets.

Chris Provines conducted a timely and particularly relevant session on a subject that affects a powerful industry and potentially all of us. The workshop was entitled The Perfect Storm: Selling and Pricing in the Age of Healthcare Reform, and participants from the largest Healthcare, Pharmaceutical and Medical Device companies were captivated with the many subjects discussed.

Nelson Hyde covered all the aspects of successful negotiations, with emphasis on how to pause during the process and gain some insights about the game of the customer.

The workshop Making Pricing Work in B2B Industries was well received; expert presenters Deepak Sharma and Adam Echter delivered a well-orchestrated process on how to accomplish this evasive task.

All professional pricers are good with numbers, but this workshop is one notch above when it comes to that. During this workshop Pricing Research: Advanced Quantitative Techniques for Big Data and Surveys, Walter Paczkowski, Ph.D. handles complicated equations and makes look easy for the rest of us.

Value Pricing is a big subject during this conference, Robert Marvin and Anton Malygin delivered a captivating workshop entitled Effective Transaction Price Management:  Unlocking Pricing Value for Your Organization.

Our Executive Summit is always energizing, and this year was no exception. Such a pleasure seeing scores of pricing executives gather together and share industry knowledge and lessons learned. At today’s Summit participants walked away with practical, practitioner-proven examples of improved pricing strategies, like:

What is a ‘Pricing Paradox’ and how to deal with one when you have it
How to turn issue resolution into significant revenue opportunities
Why changing the pricing conversation with customers improves value propositions

Check back with us later on today to read about the five great keynotes we have lined up for Day Three of our conference.

Atlanta Pricing Conference Recap – Day 1

Tuesday, October 22nd, Day one, first day of conference, workshops

We kicked off the first day of our Atlanta conference with five information-packed workshops led by senior pricing experts from across the nation – a terrific way to celebrate the opening of the Pricing Society’s 24th Annual Fall Conference.

The full-day workshops were well attended and our expert presenters are all very good at getting the group engaged, participating in real life exercises that bring the theory into practice, and answering the key questions that come from the large variety of industries represented in the sessions.

Dr. Kent B. Monroe and Lilian Cheng walked new pricers through the first day of Core Pricing Skills, always a preferred program for those getting into pricing or trying to organize their ideas and approach to new challenges.

Paul Hunt and Greg Thomas led a highly interactive workshop on how to Measure & Manage Pricing Effectiveness, the tools and methods alone are worth the time and investment!

Vernon Lennon and Alain Meloche from Pricing Cloud shared their knowledge on how companies of all information asset sizes use the same concepts, ideas, approaches, and models to price more efficiently in smaller data environments.

Jeff Collins, Ph.D. and Doug Fuehne with PROS Pricing conducted a workshop titled “Measuring Value and Reporting Performance” where participants learned to communicate performance in a way that instills confidence in the results of their pricing actions.

Deloitte’s senior managers, Manish Prabhu and Omar Hoda, shared tips employed by effective pricers assisting their sales teams’ negotiations.  In this ‘Practitioner’s Guide’ session these pricing pros shared important defensive pricing and revenue management strategies for communicating value over price.

We’re looking forward to Day Two; the continuation of the 2-day workshops, the new 1-day workshops being presented and especially the presentations that will be shared during our Pricing for Executives Summit.

Guiding Your Way Through the Haze Around Pricing Effectiveness

Fernando Ventureira,
Partner – VP Europe
Pricing Solutions

Do you ever wonder how your pricing methods measure up against the competition’s methods? 

What if you had the opportunity to find out, in real-time? 

Clear away the haze and find clarity at Measuring & Managing Pricing Effectiveness.

Fernando Ventureira and Christian Winter will be your guides to benchmarking your methods by six critical areas: Process Effectiveness, Infrastructure, Strategy, Value and Elasticity, Key Performance Indicators, and Pricing Guidelines. 



Christian Winter
Director Germany
Pricing Solutions

Attendees will be enlightened with the ability to apply their new skills immediately, including:

1- Whether their pricing strategy is appropriate, and how it stacks up against others,

2- If their sales people are executing the pricing strategy, and if they are leaving money on the table, and

3- Whether they captured what they expected.

Ventureira and Winter have adapted this workshop to the specifics of the European Market, and will be at the PPS 9th Annual European & Global Conference and Workshops in December in Berlin, Germany. 

Under the Magnifying Glass: The Power of Transaction Price Management

Anton Malygin, Director, PwC

How many companies can truly say they analyze their day-to-day operations?  How much yield is regularly lost every day in revenue leakage, unjustified discounts, and underpriced transactions?

That’s not just numbers, that’s leaking profit. Robert Marvin and Anton Malygin are getting out the magnifying glass and giving you the “single source of truth view” in their workshop Effective Transaction Price Management: Unlocking Pricing Value for Your Organization. 





Robert Marvin, Director, PwC

Come prepared to learn the analysis of transactions and their revealing nature, including:

1. The value of transaction price management, key benefits and opportunity areas for transaction price management initiatives,
2. How analytics can be leveraged to provide transparency and generate one consistent “single source of truth” view, using information about customers and products at the transaction level,
3. Requirements to effectively execute transaction price management and make it sustainable. 

Marvin and Malygin will also be identifying areas of up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, ultimately helping attendees to boost their bottom line.  They will be at the PPS Conference in Next Week in Atlanta. 

Hit the Pause Button While Navigating Through Procurement

Learning how to hit the pause button while navigating through the procurement department is one of the best ways to building bridges with procurement. Today, more and more customers are setting the rules of this new social economy.  What once was the wind at our back has become the wind in our faces.  It is necessary to revisit how we do business. 

Nelson Hyde, Director
Holden Advisors

Assessing the game of the customer is important; no one likes the ladder kicked out from under them.  Nelson Hyde will revolutionize the way you negotiate and price in the same way penicillin transformed medicine.  It’s going to ensure your survival. 

 

He teaches you how to hammer out your differences.  You’ll learn:

• How to effectively pause during a negotiation,
• Being prepared to mend fences,
• Price matters – if you were having a pace maker put in, would you want the $2,000 model or the $6,000 model?  Clearly the latter!

 Nelson Hyde will be hosting the workshop Negotiating With Backbone at the PPS Conference in October.

New Tools for Your Pricing Toolbox

Andreas Hinterhuber, Ph.D
 Partner
Hinterhuber & Partners GmbH

Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.~William Pollard
 
If innovation is necessary for achieving competitive price levels, what tools do you have at your disposal?  Innovation in pricing tactics deals with tools to measure and increase customer willingness to pay and to communicate value to B2B and B2C customers.  Andreas Hinterhuber wants to help you to amp up your toolbox. 
Specifically, Andreas will look at value calculators, pricing ROI calculations and other tools leading B2B companies from around the world use to quantify and document customer value.  


In his workshop, Quantifying and Documenting Value in Business Markets, Andreas will be exploring these topics: 

1. Methods and tools to quantify and document customer value,
2. Best practices for aligning prices with value, not costs or competitive price levels,
3. To justify price premiums versus competitors, withstanding price pressure from professional B2B purchasers.

Andreas Hinterhuber will be speaking about innovation in pricing and driving profits at the PPS Conference in Atlanta.

 

Setting Your Sails with the Changing Tides of Healthcare Reform

Christopher Provines, CEO,
Value Vantage Partners

From a pricing standpoint, Healthcare Reform is a looming ocean of uncertainty and challenges that many in the field find daunting.   The “new normal” of healthcare will demand that suppliers and their teams change their sails and aggressively defend value and pricing. 

Those awash in this sea of changing tides can find solace in Christopher Provines’ 23 years of expertise in the healthcare marketplace. 

Christopher will be interacting with attendees on the actions and strategies of competitive pricing, marketing, and sales teams. 

Each attendee will procure a copy of his book, Strategic Pricing for Medical Technologies (2012), and will have the opportunity to discuss in depth:

1. The drivers of change including ACOs, value-based purchasing, bundled payments, hospital supply chain changes, value analysis committees, physician trends, and payer quality incentives
2. How to quantify and connect your value proposition to customers’ evolving payment models, risk profile, and quality incentives
3. Dealing with different customer buying behaviors and negotiation tactics, the importance of adapting and designing your pricing strategy, and models that consider the evolving healthcare marketplace. 

Christopher Provines will be leading the workshop, The Perfect Storm: Selling and Pricing in the Age of Healthcare Reform at the PPS Conference in Atlanta.  www.pricingsociety.com/atl2013

 

 

All the World is a Pricing Stage – Pricing for Executives Summit – October 23rd

Pricing can connect us to a purpose and improve our performance when we are not pricing in troubled waters.  Are you looking for something that is hard to obtain in the world of pricing?  Your pricing ideas finally come to fruition.
Button down the hatches and come discover:

• Successful Issue Resolution – 2 pieces of the pie include – Margin and Revenue
• Supporting and Leveraging your Pricing Team - Navigating an ever-changing landscape
• Customers’ Creating Cash Conversations – turn valuable customer insight into profitable growth
• Stepping Back to Look at the Big Picture – applying analytical imagination to develop probable scenarios
• Balancing the Pricing Paradox - providing visibility and making business decisions to balance profit and volume
• Pricing Cement – building your pricing foundation to support corporate strategy

Join us on in Atlanta on October 23rd to help you navigate across troubled waters and into calming seas. www.pricingsociety.com/atl2013  

The Tipping Point (how pricing combinations make a big difference)

Georg Müller, Ph.D.Director
Deloitte Consulting LLP

Stretch a rubber band too far and it snaps in half.  Often many businesses struggle to leverage their customer value propositions to set better prices. 

How do you reshape your thinking about value exchange to sustain competitive advantage without stretching it too far?  The answer is to critically evaluate your business model. 

Dr. Georg Muller’s expertise in pricing and strategy is like a filter that pulls out the gold nuggets from a ton of rocks.  He helps companies revolutionize their business models, using a particular set of capabilities aka gold nuggets.  This winning combination, while elusive, can be measured and includes:

• The significance of defining economic value and estimation price elasticity,
• Understanding consumer behavior and psychology, customer buying process, lifetime value, and segmentation, and
• Establishing a technology and data analytics infrastructure.

Dr. Muller finds BMI successes in healthcare, banking, telecommunication, consumer packaged goods, and industrial supplier categories.  He will be speaking at the PPS Pricing Conference in Atlanta on October 24th.  

 

  

3 Easy Ways You Can Make Customer Centricity More Imperative to Pricing

Mark Haller
Partner, Strategy
PricewaterhouseCoopers

Asking Mark Haller if “the customer comes first” is like asking him if you need air to breathe!

And when you’re consistently named one of the “World's Leading IP Strategists” by Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) magazine, people listen and take note. 

 Mark asks the question:

Is customer centricity a game changer, or a passing fad? 
Contempating customer centricity is not an easy task. 

3 Questions to Consider:

• Why is customer centricity absolutely necessary?
• What are the attributes/capabilities of the new customer centric organization?
• What new capabilities are essential for pricing to support, engage, or motivate and how

Should pricing operate in the customer centric organization?

To learn about customer centricity, Mark Haller, a sought-after speaker and author of a number of published works, be will sharing his breadth of knowledge on October 24th at the PPS Conference in Atlanta. www.pricingsociety.com/atl2013 

MarketQuake2020! What’s coming? What to Do About It?

Thomas J. WinningerFounder
Winninger Resource Companies

Thom Winninger wants opportunity to knock.  And he wants companies to answer the door, not hide behind the curtains and wait for it to leave and go next door.

Snatching these opportunities is critical, but how do you know what to look for?  By identifying trends within the marketplace, businesses can capitalize on them.

Thom has spent 30 years predicting many of the most critical trend forces facing America’s marketplace, from the proliferation of the deep discounter, as in Walmart and Home Depot, to EDLP (Every Day Low Price) and EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). 



Notable trends for 2013 include:

• Fewer names but more competition
• Response not speed will be the need
• E-commerce will be M-commerce
• Vertical and Horizontal Segments Rule

Thom states that “the message today, more than ever before, must be creating distinctive value. Target trends; become more innovative; implement trending strategies; and get closer to shifting markets. Tomorrow will bring more change, faster change, and more volatile change than ever believed possible. In fact, 72% of America’s organizations will have to reinvent the way they do business in the next 8 years!

Thom Winninger will be speaking at the PPS Fall Pricing Conference in Atlanta in October.

The Next Frontier: The B2B Pricing World

According to Forrester Research, B2B e-commerce sales are now more than twice the size of B2C e-commerce and are expected to achieve $559 billion in sales in the US by the end of 2013. Because of the size of the B2B opportunity, an increasing number of companies are exploring how technology and specifically, e-commerce platforms, will impact how buyers will purchase industrial products in the future. Recently Oracle reported some interesting findings (Oracle’s 2012 B2B E-Commerce survey):

• 28% of respondents said that over 50% of their revenues come from the online channel.
• 31% of respondents said direct sales are still driving most revenue, but online is growing in importance.
• 80% of respondents agree that customer expectations have changed due to B2C/retail practices.
• 80% of respondents said that they invested in their commerce platform in 2012.

While it may yet be a few years before B2B supply chain networks are totally disrupted, we can already see the first signs of disruptive changes. Three major players have already made some critical moves. For example, many traditional and standard industrial goods can already be purchased on the Amazon Supply platform. Google is developing a powerful marketplace for B2B companies to search for product alternatives. And Grainger has become a very large B2B sourcing platform, and is well-recognized as one of the most user-friendly B2B sites.

What are the critical implications for B2B and industrial firms?

1. Conduct a deep customer segmentation process based on user needs and what they are looking for through each potential trade channel.
2. Address the role of e-commerce platforms in their current business models. It is inevitable that e-commerce is going to be a prevalent force in the B2B world. Oracle reports that 26% of B2B respondents said that mobile web /apps influence revenue the most.
3. Be ready to solve channel conflicts quickly as B2B buyers have more choices in the market and faster ways to source standard off-the-shelf products.
4. Be equipped with price intelligence technology to be able to respond to price pressure and price matching requests, the importance of which has been underscored by recent acquisitions by The Home Depot and McKinsey (more on these in an upcoming blog post by the authors).
5. Have candid and realistic internal discussions on what might happen when Amazon Supply starts offering a large portion of your products online at a potentially lower price. How do you prepare for it? How do you react? What comes next?

The tidal wave of price transparency is coming to B2B, and it will be disruptive. A wait-and-see position for B2B and industrial companies is not acceptable. B2B companies have a unique opportunity to learn now how brick-and-mortar retail chains are responding to the price transparency challenge created by online competitors, comparison shopping engines and mobile devices. Investments in price intelligence software will not be optional. The real question is whether these firms are prepared to proactively disrupt themselves, or are waiting to be disrupted.

Stephan Liozu (www.stephanliozu.com) is the Founder of Value Innoruption Advisors and specializes in disruptive approaches in innovation, pricing and value management. He earned his PhD in Management from Case Western Reserve University and can be reached at sliozu@case.edu.

Alexander Rink is the CEO of 360pi, the leader in delivering price intelligence to help retailers right-price to increase their revenues and margins. A veteran entrepreneur, technology executive and former management consultant at Bain & Company, Alexander is an INSEAD MBA, with an Engineering degree from the University of Waterloo. He can be reached at a.rink@360pi.com.