The Science and Art of Pricing

Megan Peitz is a successful entrepreneur in the world of pricing analytics and conjoint analytics. Driven by the love of numbers, Megan empowers her clients to find powerful pricing insights and make critical decisions. Megan started Numerious, a very successful consultancy that today employs some of the brightest minds in pricing analytics. Megan is one of the leading minds in conjoint-based pricing research and regularly presents papers at the at the Analytics & Insights Summit.  In this episode, Megan discusses how conjoint analysis is typically used in pricing research. She goes into the details of some of the key outputs of conjoint analysis, particularly calculating willingness-to-pay for product or service features so producers can optimally price them. Anyone interested in using data-based, scientific approach to pricing will learn from Megan's wealth of expertise in this field. Those interested in learning more about Megan's world-class team, Numerious, please visit www.numerious.com

My guest on this episode is Ryan Moser who most recently was the VP of Revenue Strategy at ThredUp, the world's largest fashion resale website. ThredUp has created the largest marketplace for second-hand buying and selling for fashion brands. Ryan was one of the early members at ThredUp, and he oversaw the management and forecasting of pricing, acceptance, and markdowns, a role that required partnering with nearly every other part of the business. Pricing tens of millions of unique SKUs presents a very unique set of problems, and Ryan developed the theories and concepts that guided the work and have driven significant improvement in this space.Our discussion focuses on the unique challenges Single SKU pricing represents and how Ryan approached this challenge with science and a great deal of ingenious creativity. 

Danilo Zatta visits the podcast again to discuss his best seller book called The 10 Rules of Highly Effective Pricing. Dan discusses why pricing should be a CEO priority at every organization. He then details how to disseminate a culture of profit and how pricing plays a critical role in it. Dan also talks about value and the three key types of value products and services typically have. And finally Dan discusses the typical pricing landscape post-Covid and why the pricing function is one of the fastest growing and most sought after disciplines in today's business. I hope you'll enjoy it. Dan's best seller book, The 10 Rules of Highly Effective Pricing is a five-star book on Amazon and can be purchased here: https://a.co/d/axJj2a7

World-renowned pricing expert Ulrik Lehrkov-Schimdt discusses his fascinating Saas pricing guide-book, The Pricing Roadmap with uniquely insightful tips and tricks about pricing software products. Ulrik, who holds a Master's degree from Harvard and who has consulted over 150 clients on pricing over the past seven years, is known for his pragmatic approach to pricing software products. In this podcast Ulrik discusses the difference between fencing vs. laddering products; what the Value Metric Chain is and how it can be used to determine the product's pricing structure and why pricing does not need to be simple, it just needs to be simple to sell. Anyone involved with structuring software product packages and setting up pricing for them cannot afford to miss our listening to the experienced wisdom of Mr. Lehrskov-Schmidt. And those interested in reading The Pricing Roadmap, you can find it Here: https://a.co/d/cq37RXmThe Pricing Roadmap teaches you how to design pricing models that both your customers and your sales team will love. Learn how to:Create packaging that makes your chief of sales high-five your chief of productPick pricing metrics that drive demand and expansionTap into every part of your customers' budgetValidate new pricing before launch and migrate old customersWritten in the trenches of helping hundreds of B2B SaaS businesses, The Pricing Roadmap will help you pour gasoline on the fire of your pricing. Ditch the guesswork with this step-by-step guide to designing SaaS pricing that grows your business—whether you're a startup, pre-revenue venture, or an established market leader.About our sponsor:Sawtooth Software has brought to market two fantastic tools for pricing analytics. One is the most capable pricing research tool, called Lighthouse Studio, which is the gold standard for pricing analytics at Simon Kucher and Associates, the largest pricing consulting firm globally. In addition top companies such as Google, Microsoft, use Lighthouse Studio for pricing research on their various products. The other product is a cloud-based, super easy-to-use survey tool called Discover, which also has powerful advance capabilities, such as MaxDiff and conjoint analysis. If you're interested in learning more about these research tools, please reach out to me at miklos@pricingintelligence.org. Those interested in participating in the podcast, please email me at miklos@pricingintelligence.org (note, the dot org!)

SaaS pricing is one of the most challenging pricing tasks for pricing managers. Dozens of moving parts, frequent updates, add-ons and legacy customers on legacy systems. How do you approach it? What are some best practices? Tatjana Mitchell is a SaaS pricing veteran and a thought leader in SaaS pricing - having worked with Adobe, Marketo and now with Iterable. In this podcast, Tatjana shares her framework of approaching SaaS pricing: from how to conceptualize a Good-Better-Best model to the pros and cons of using a flat rate vs. pay-for-what-you-use model. Tatjana explains the importance of pricing orchestration to ensure that disparate pricing in the organization does not get in the way of the ability to easily monetize value to the customer. In addition, Tatjana discusses how to organizationally implement a pricing function within a corporation.  I hope you'll enjoy listening to Tatjana's extensive knowledge in the challenging world of pricing Saas products.  About our sponsor:Sawtooth Software has brought to market two fantastic tools for pricing analytics. One is the most capable pricing research tool, called Lighthouse Studio, which is the gold standard for pricing analytics at Simon Kucher and Associates, the largest pricing consulting firm globally. In addition top companies such as Google, Microsoft, use Lighthouse Studio for pricing research on their various products. The other product is a cloud-based, super easy-to-use survey tool called Discover, which also has powerful advance capabilities, such as MaxDiff and conjoint analysis. If you're interested in learning more about these research tools, please reach out to me at miklos@pricingintelligence.org. Those interested in participating in the podcast, please email me at miklos@pricingintelligence.org (note, the dot org!)

Ajit Ghuman is a Saas product marketing veteran and pricing and monetization expert. He is currently an instructor for The Art of Saas Monetization and he is the Founder of Monetizely. He is also the Pricing Chair at Pavilion. Ajit and I discussed why a solid positioning strategy is critical before embarking on setting prices; how to select the appropriate pricing metric; what the key differences are between consumption and capability pricing model and how to then pick the right price point. Ajit's book, Price to Scale is one of the most impactful and comprehensive books on pricing products in the Saas world with invaluable insights, approaches and tips and tricks. Those interested can find a copy here: https://a.co/d/6aHxZQiAbout our sponsor:Sawtooth Software has brought to market two fantastic tools for pricing analytics. One is the most capable pricing research tool, called Lighthouse Studio, which is the gold standard for pricing analytics at Simon Kucher and Associates, the largest pricing consulting firm globally. In addition top companies such as Google, Microsoft, use Lighthouse Studio for pricing research on their various products. The other product is a cloud-based, super easy-to-use survey tool called Discover, which also has powerful advance capabilities, such as MaxDiff and conjoint analysis. If you're interested in learning more about these research tools, please reach out to me at miklos@pricingintelligence.org. Those interested in participating in the podcast, please email me at miklos@pricingintelligence.org (note, the dot org!)

Bringing a product to market at the optimal price is like striking gold. Price it too low and you leave money on the table allowing competitors to gain resources at your expense. Price it too high and demand will dry up. How do you know what the price should be? My guest on this episode, Dean Tindall, General Manager at Sawtooth Software, Europe, has conducted over a hundred complex pricing research projects in the past decade. He is one of the most knowledgeable professionals when it comes to setting up research projects aimed at finding optimal prices. Dean and I discussed how to approach pricing research, what some of the techniques are and the pros and cons of the various methodologies. And with that, please enjoy this discussion with Dean. About our sponsor:Sawtooth Software has brought to market two fantastic tools for pricing analytics. One is the most capable pricing research tool, called Lighthouse Studio, which is the gold standard for pricing analytics at Simon Kucher and Associates, the largest pricing consulting firm globally. In addition top companies such as Google, Microsoft, use Lighthouse Studio for pricing research on their various products. The other product is a cloud-based, super easy-to-use survey tool called Discover, which also has powerful advance capabilities, such as MaxDiff and conjoint analysis. If you're interested in learning more about these research tools, please reach out to me at miklos@pricingintelligence.org. Those interested in participating in the podcast, please email me at miklos@pricingintelligence.org (note, the dot org!)

Special guest, Danilo Zatta, discusses how businesses can achieve a significant advantage by simply tweaking the pricing model they go to market with. Gone are the days of transactional pricing models: "I pay X, you give me Y, now, I am the owner of Y." Innovative pricing models - such as subscription-based,  pay-per-use, pay-per-result, freemium, sympathetic pricing, etc. are breaking through new barriers of corporate growth. Getting pricing right IS the new frontier and no one knows pricing models better than Danilo Zatta, one of the world's leading advisors in pricing. Mr. Zatta has been involved in over 600 price optimization projects across 40 countries over the past 20 years. He is the author of several best-selling books, including his latest: The Pricing Model Revolution - published by Wiley. Pricing guru, Philip Kotler said "[The Pricing Model Revolution] is the best read for managers wanting a review of several innovative pricing methods." In this podcast, Mr. Zatta explains why and how new pricing models is one of the most effective levers of incremental growth. About our sponsor:Sawtooth Software has brought to market two fantastic tools for pricing analytics. One is the most capable pricing research tool, called Lighthouse Studio, which is the gold standard for pricing analytics at Simon Kucher and Associates, the largest pricing consulting firm globally. In addition top companies such as Google, Microsoft, use Lighthouse Studio for pricing research on their various products. The other product is a cloud-based, super easy-to-use survey tool called Discover, which also has powerful advance capabilities, such as MaxDiff and conjoint analysis. If you're interested in learning more about these research tools, please reach out to me at miklos@pricingintelligence.org. Those interested in participating in the podcast, please email me at miklos@pricingintelligence.org (note, the dot org!)