Podcasts about impact pricing

Join Mark Stiving for a unique dual-guest conversation with Jon Jennings, longtime Impact Pricing sponsor and successful pricing recruiter, and Ryan Walter, a pricing veteran with over 15 years of leadership experience who recently transitioned into recruiting. Together, they reveal the insider's view of private equity pricing transformations, from deal diligence to exit strategies. In this episode, they explore why private equity firms are investing heavily in pricing capabilities, how to determine the right level of pricing leadership for different situations, and the evolving landscape of pricing careers.  The conversation covers everything from pre-acquisition planning to AI's impact on pricing roles, offering valuable insights for both pricing professionals and business leaders.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Learn the critical difference between hiring a pricing person and orchestrating a pricing transformation. Understand the decision framework for determining whether you need a manager, director, or VP-level pricing leader. Explore why portfolio companies often resist pricing initiatives and how to overcome that resistance.   “In the private equity space, part of the diligence is we think there's an opportunity of pricing improvement of some dollar amount to go get. In order to get that, you're going to need to transform the way things are working, which is building out a team.” – Ryan Walter   Topics Covered: 02:05 – Ryan's journey into pricing: From MBA analytics to solving 7-Eleven's cigarette pricing crisis in Florida 03:29 – Pricing transformation strategies: Why PE's 5-year timeline perfectly aligns with pricing capability building 07:49 – Pricing as a center of excellence: The evolution from analyst roles to VP-level positions and what's next 11:05 – Private equity hiring differences: Stakeholder dynamics, investment thesis pressure, and the "shorter leash" reality 14:30 – Pricing problems in portfolio companies: When port cos don't see the problem PE firms see and how to bridge that gap 17:37 – Pricing transformation explained: Why it's all-encompassing and requires strategy, finance, data, and leadership skills 20:48 – Transformational roles in organizations: The difference between backfilling and building, and why transformation always wins 23:41 – Hiring pricing professionals for PE: Building pricing advisor roles at the firm level and sharing resources across portcos 26:17 – AI's impact on pricing: Data foundation requirements and immediate use cases like rebate design and negotiation prep 29:13 – AI in pricing strategies: Competitive data matching, SKU comparison, and the 80% solution approach 32:06 – Promoting the pricing field: Building the next generation of talent and educating people into pricing careers   Key Takeaways: "In the private equity space, part of the diligence is we think there's an opportunity of pricing improvement of some dollar amount to go get. In order to get that, you're going to need to transform the way things are working, which is building out a team." – Ryan Walter "The reason I like that word [transformation] is it's all encompassing because it's not really one thing. It's not, oh, we need to get a director of FPA in here. We need to get somebody who understands strategy, who understands finance, who understands data and IT tools, and is a leader that can influence others." – Ryan Walter "If you're going to go for a pricing transformation, you have to dive in with both feet. Halfway doesn't typically work." – Jon Jennings   Resources and People Mentioned: 7-Eleven: https://www.7-eleven.com/   Connect with Jon Jennings & Ryan Walter: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonjennings/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-walter3141/   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com  

Mark Stiving is a pricing expert and the host of the Impact Pricing podcast, where he explores the intricate relationship between pricing, value, and context. With a wealth of experience in pricing strategies, Mark is passionate about helping companies maximize their revenue through effective pricing techniques. Steven Forth is the co-founder and Managing Partner at Ibbaka, a leading pricing strategy consultancy. With deep expertise in B2B SaaS pricing and value-based pricing models, Steven has been at the forefront of pricing innovation for over two decades. He's passionate about the intersection of pricing strategy, customer value, and emerging technologies like AI agents. In this episode, Steven turns the tables on Mark to explore context-driven pricing – Mark's revolutionary framework that's changing how pricing professionals think about willingness to pay. Together, they dive deep into the four contexts that drive every pricing decision, the three-layer business framework that organizes pricing strategy, and why perfection is the enemy of progress in pricing.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Discover the concept of context-driven pricing and its significance in today's market. Learn how different contexts, such as environmental and customer factors, influence pricing decisions. Understand the importance of defining the problem to effectively implement pricing strategies.   “Willingness to pay is contextual.” – Mark Stiving   Topics Covered: 01:37 – What motivated Mark to think about Context-driven Pricing? 03:15 – The four categories of context: problem, customer, behavioral, and environmental. 04:52 – How environmental factors influence willingness to pay? 06:01 – The role of competitors in shaping pricing strategies. 08:13 – Understanding the foundational problem and its impact on pricing decisions. 14:01 – The intersection of context-driven pricing and AI. 24:58 – Key takeaways on implementing context-driven pricing effectively.   Key Takeaways: “Pricing is about understanding the context in which a buyer operates.” – Mark Stiving “Defining the problem is crucial to determining willingness to pay.” – Mark Stiving “Perfection is impossible; focus on being better every day.” – Mark Stiving   Resources and People Mentioned: Steven Forth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenforth/ Ibbaka: https://www.ibbaka.com/ Craig Zawada: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-zawada-a0a39029/ Pros: https://pros.com/ Stephan Liozu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanliozu/ Zilliant: https://zilliant.com/ Gabe Smith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabesmith/ PriceFX: https://www.pricefx.com/   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  Email: mark@impactpricing.com  

In his third appearance on The Soul of Enterprise, pricing expert Mark Stiving, Ph.D., returns to share new insights on maximizing profitability through value-based pricing strategies. As the founder and CEO of Impact Pricing, Mark guides businesses toward understanding and articulating their value, so they can stop leaving money on the table. Join Ron and Ed as they dive deep into Mark's expertise on aligning organizations around value creation, optimizing pricing structures, and tackling the nuances of customer willingness to pay.

Send us a Text Message.Optimizing Your Price Point for Maximum Profitability.Find  out how to strike the perfect balance between value and price to boost your profitability and customer satisfaction.Make sure you're not leaving money on the table! Listen to our conversation with the Chief Pricing Educator of Impact Pricing, Mark Stiving. Get ready to have several Aha moments.Mark has a Ph.D. in pricing. He has been in pricing as a practitioner, educator and advisor for almost 30 years.  He has taught pricing to thousands of people and has advised hundreds of companies while they rethink their pricing.  Mark says, "All businesspeople should understand pricing.  Although they may consider it the last thing they do before launching a product, pricing and value should inform almost all of the decisions that go into creating and communicating about products (or services). "Connect with Mark:www.impactpricing.comMark's Recommended read:Monetizing Innovation: How Smart Companies Design The Product Around The Price by Madhavan Ramanujam

How do you nail the perfect price for your product? Just ask Mark Stiving, Chief Pricing Educator of Impact Pricing, who will share insights on pricing strategies. He'll explain how understanding your business strategy and customer decision-making process can help you value your products and how to find out how much your customer is willing to pay. In this episode you'll hear:(02:05) How figuring out your business strategy will influence your pricing.(03:00) How to find out how much your customer is willing to pay. (04:52) Should you start selling your products or services at a higher price point? (06:05) The benefits of a subscription model and how to build one.(07:50) How understanding the customer decision process can help you set prices.

Today on the show we have Mark Stiving, the founder of Impact Pricing and author of "Selling Value", "Impact Pricing", and "Win Keep Grow".In this episode, Mark shares his experience in the intricacies of pricing and packaging strategies, emphasizing their impact on customer retention and expansion.We then discussed understanding customer value, overcoming internal biases, and the importance of iterative pricing strategies. We wrapped up by exploring actionable insights on leveraging pricing metrics to enhance customer engagement and reduce churn.Mentioned ResourcesImpact PricingSelling Value BookImpact PricingWin Keep GrowChurn FM is brought to you by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform and Chargebee, SaaS for effective revenue growth management.

Steven Forth is Ibbaka's Co-Founder, CEO, and Partner. Ibbaka is a strategic pricing advisory firm. He was CEO of LeveragePoint Innovations Inc., a SaaS business. In this episode, Steven delves into the dynamic world of pricing strategies as revealed through the lens of the Professional Pricing Society event. He talks about the latest developments, innovative practices, and thought-provoking discussions emerging from these events of pricing professionals. From uncovering cutting-edge pricing technologies to dissecting evolving pricing trends that offer valuable insights to help you in navigating the ever-changing landscape of pricing strategies especially where AI is concerned.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Discover what's in store for this year's Professional Pricing Society conferences Find out the significant and engaging topics discussed in the PPS event Look forward to Steven's valuable insights and key points on pricing trends and innovations, particularly in relation to AI   "The other problem or challenge, I think, that one can have with AI-based approaches to pricing is the sort of black box nature. And generative AI, gives something of a path forward for that." - Steven Forth   Topics Covered: 01:46 - Steven highlighting how the Professional Pricing Society [PPS] listens to Impact Pricing podcast 03:29 - Professional Pricing Society's calendar of events this year 04:39 - What's coming up for this year's event: Return of the book store 06:25 - Featured and notable books available at the event 09:54 - Other interesting things coming up for PPS' event 11:28 - Steven's important thoughts on pricing sustainability and some examples on point 15:41 - What differentiates a value model from a sustainability model as far as Ibbaka's concerned 17:26 - What he thinks of these big pricing vendors approach to AI 18:46 - Talking about pricing industry frustration and the black box nature of AI and the shift to generative AI 21:19 - Discussing the application of generative AI in a dynamically configuring software and its implications on the pricing strategies 24:56 - Sharing about the scale and complexity of traditional value model as well as the potential of generative AI to quickly adapt to different pricing and value configurations 28:39 - Watch out for an upcoming webinar on May 23rd  29:08 - What he thinks of people's reception to his presentation at the Professional Pricing Society's conference   Key Takeaways: "Feel good metrics or social responsibility, none of those things are really going to get people to buy and pay for sustainable solutions. It has to be tied to value, and you have to be able to show that your green solution provides more value than the competing solutions." - Steven Forth "I think the secret here, at least from a pricing and modeling approach, is to find those variables that get used across the different models. And by having the same variable used in different models you can pull sustainability together with value together with pricing." - Steven Forth   People/Resources Mentioned: Arnab Sinha Impact Pricing Episode 564: https://impactpricing.com/podcast/564-exploring-game-changing-pricing-dynamics-for-different-industries-with-arnab-sinha/ Game Changer: How Strategic Pricing Shapes Businesses, Markets, and Society by Jean-Manuel Izaret and Arnab Sinha: https://www.amazon.com/Game-Changer-Strategic-Pricing-Business/dp/1394190581 Stephan Liozu Impact Pricing Episode 582: https://impactpricing.com/?s=stephan+liozu Nick Nalepa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-nalepa/ Stop Racing In A Blindfold!: Big Data + Pricing Science Drive Bigger Profits by Jim Vaughn: https://www.amazon.com/Stop-Racing-Blindfold-Pricing-Science/dp/099068380X Michelin: https://www.michelinman.com Hydropoint: https://www.hydropoint.com Vendavo: https://www.vendavo.com Pros: https://pros.com PriceFX: https://www.pricefx.com Totogi: https://www.totogi.com/ Resilience: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2023/resilient-pricing-for-uncertain-world   Connect with Steven Forth: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenforth/ Email: steven@ibbaka.com   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com  

In this episode of The Faces of Business, we welcome Mark Stiving, Ph.D., the mastermind behind Impact Pricing, to share his insights that can help B2B companies get more revenue for their products and services.   Few voices resonate with the clarity, insight, and expertise of Mark Stiving, the mastermind behind Impact Pricing. With over a quarter-century dedicated to demystifying the complexities of pricing, Mark helps organizations navigate the turbulent waters of market dynamics. His profound understanding of buyer behavior, combined with a unique ability to distill pricing strategies into actionable insights, has cemented his reputation as a sound advisor in the realms of pricing and value maximization.   Check out the Blog post here: How to Raise Prices without Losing Customers   Thanks for taking the time to listen today.   Find Damon Pistulka on LinkedIn talking about life & building businesses you can sell or succeed.    On Twitter as @dpistulka with inspiration and sharing thoughts.    Find out more about Damon when he's not working.  @damonpistulka on Instagram, or Damon Pistulka on Facebook.      More information on building businesses you can sell or succeed and the Exit Your Way method on our website   View our blog page for this episode here.   Email us for more information info@exityourway.com

Guest: Mark Stiving   Guest Bio: Mark Stiving has driven business initiatives worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He is sought after for his superpower of finding invincible profits in every company he works with. He is an award-winning international speaker known for helping audiences find hidden value and more profit, immediately. Mark started and successfully sold three powerful companies in the tech sector. His legendary “Value Acceleration Bootcamp: How to use customer value to price, package, and sell products” helps PE firms and innovative companies master their buyers' purchasing decisions to win more business at higher prices. You have probably heard of Mark's many popular books. He is a prolific and highly rated author of “Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits”, “Win Keep Grow: How to price and package to accelerate your subscription business”, and “Selling Value: How to Win More Deals at Higher Prices” His forthcoming book is “Invincible Profits: How to Lead a Value Revolution and Dominate Your Market”   Guest Links: impactpricing.com/Salesology mark@impactpricing.com     About Salesology®: Conversations with Sales Leaders Download your free gift, The Salesology® Vault. The vault is packed full of free gifts from sales leaders, sales experts, marketing gurus and revenue generation experts.  Download your free gift, 81 Tools to Grow Your Sales & Your Business Faster, More Easily & More Profitably. Save hours of work tracking down the right prospecting and sales resources and/or digital tools that every business owner and salesperson needs. Watch the demo of the Salesology® Prospecting Method, A Simple, 3-Step Method That, On Average, Increases Qualified Appointments & Sales By 73%. If you are a business owner or sales manager with an underperforming sales team, let's talk. Click here to schedule a time. Please, subscribe to Salesology®: Conversations with Sales Leaders so that you don't miss a single episode, and while you're at it, won't you take a moment to write a short review and rate our show? It would be greatly appreciated! To learn more about our previous guests, listen to past episodes, and get to know your host, go to https://podcast.gosalesology.com/ and connect on LinkedIn and follow us on Facebook and Twitter and check out our website at  http://www.gosalesology.com

The power of value-based pricing in sales…w/ Mark Stiving Ph.D. Listen in as Mark H. and Mark S. dissect why many salespeople struggle to hit their target prices. It's not about the product itself, but the value it represents to customers. Discover the psychological intricacies behind product pricing and how it shapes consumer perception of value. Understand why customers often gravitate towards mid-tier priced items and how sales and marketing teams must convey the value proposition to guide informed purchasing decisions. ❓Key Questions Answered❓   What are some ideas we could use as salespeople to help us understand what that problem is? If I see a price and it's cheap, do I automatically perceive that the value is cheap? If I see a different product with a more expensive price, do I automatically associate more value? Do people use price comparison to figure out what they want to buy?  “I'm going to discount the initial sale and then I'll make it up later.” Does that hold water? If you had one piece of advice, you would tell the companies right now, in terms of maximizing price? ◩ About the Guest ◩ Mark Stiving, Phd. is a pricing expert, speaker, author, and founder of Impact Pricing. Mark holds his Ph.D in Marketing from Univ. of California, Berkeley. His most recent book is Selling Value: How to Win More Deals at Higher Prices. ▣ Invest in a new sales skill today at The Sales Hunter University and watch your 2024 results improve drastically. Click to learn more!  

This one is the 8 of Clubs from the Impact Pricing card deck.  Ban the word markup. First, can we all agree that cost-plus pricing is not optimal? We really want to do value-based pricing, charge what a customer is willing to pay. Got it, so we're all in agreement.  Now, let's talk about the word markup. Markup is defined as, tell me what my costs are, how much do I need to mark that up in order to get the margins that I want? So a markup is by definition cost-plus. Well, it's cost-times, but it's cost-plus. So when we use the word markup, as a company, we're saying we use cost-plus pricing. Now, it is okay, let's say you're running a distribution organization. You're running a grocery store. You've got hundreds of thousands of products to price. You can't do specific value-based pricing on each one of those products. And so, you have to do something. But don't do just cost-plus. When you say we use a 50 point markup or a 20 point markup, we're implying that goes across the board. What we should be saying is, how much margin do we think we can get from this product category? Because margin starts at, what's the price? And then, how much did we have to pay to acquire the product that we sold? So margin is a great term to use when we're thinking about value-based pricing. Markup almost forces us to use cost-plus pricing.  So my advice, stop using that word. Don't let anybody else use that word. Switch your mental thought process to margin, not markup. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Diamonds from the Impact Pricing card deck.  Customer perceptions always matter. And what's fascinating is every time we touch a customer, we touch a buyer, they form perceptions of our company. They could be positive perceptions. They could be negative perceptions.  And when I say every time, it's not only salespeople making sales calls. It's when they read our marketing messages. It's when they receive our invoices. It's when they call our customer support or customer service line.  Every single touch point we have with a customer either creates value in their mind, or it destroys value in their mind. The question becomes, which are we going to do?  My recommendation is obviously to create more value with every customer touch point. But how do we do that?  We do that by creating a culture of value Inside our company. A customer centric perspective that says, how is it that this decision, how is it that this action, impacts our customers? And can I do it in a way that impacts our customers in a more positive manner instead of just thinking about how do I get them off the phone? Or how do I take care of them quickly so that they go away and stop bothering me while I do my day job?  So value, a culture of value, is all about doing what's best for our customers and making sure every customer touchpoint increases value, not decreases it. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Hearts from the Impact Pricing card deck. Business acumen is a skill that salespeople really need, and product people really should have, to say, "Why is it that a customer would want to buy our product?" In B2B, value is measured in incremental profit. Your customer isn't going to buy anything from you, assuming it's a business customer, unless you are making them more money. Here's the question, how are you making them more money? Somehow, when you can communicate that, when your sales team can communicate that, you have a much better chance at winning the business. And by the way, when you understand it, you have a much better chance at delivering great marketing messages, and building the right products. We really need the skill of business acumen so we can say what is the business of our customers and how is it that we make them more money, because that is where the value is. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Impact Pricing card deck.  You've probably heard me use the words 'will I' and 'which one' in the past. 'Will I' are situations where our buyers are choosing to buy our product or not, but they're not choosing whether they buy our product or a competitor's product. When we can find ourselves in a 'will I' situation, we know that our customers are not price sensitive. So, the key here is to know the difference. Are they comparing us to competitors or not? My recommendation is assume they're not. Because if we assume they are, we start talking about who our competitors are and they say, "Oh, you have competitors, let me go look at them." Instead, we talk to them about the value of solving the problem and why our product is going to help them solve that problem and get a huge return. And we never even mentioned that a competitive alternative exists. When the customer says to us, "Oh, we're looking at X, Y, Z company." Then we know that we can shift to talking about how we're better than our competition. What are those features or capabilities that we do that our competition can't match? But up to that point, let's make the assumption there is no competition. In fact, my favorite way to find out the answer, is there competition, is to ask the following question, "If you don't buy this, what will you do?" Notice that that question implies there is no competition. It doesn't say that go look at the competition. So my recommendation, always assume there is no competition. Talk about the value of solving the problems, and then you can shift your sales technique after you realize competition is in the deal. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Impact Pricing card deck.  We often hear the word 'strategic' as in, "Hey, I'm making a decision today so that it grows my business someday in the future." Well, that's exactly what we want to do when we think about the lifetime value of a customer. I'm not so worried about, "Can I get the three year contract signed today?" Many companies do. But when you try to get the three year contract signed right away, you make it harder to win the customer.  But what if you took a one year contract? Or what if you took a one month contract? Or even had a free trial period. And you let people get into your product, and you deliver so much value that they never leave. What we just did was get them into our ecosystem. And then over time we can get them to buy more from us, to stay with us. And that's because we know we're delivering a ton of value.  This is what it means to focus on lifetime value. I'm okay taking a smaller number today because I know that over time this customer is going to grow with me and give me a whole lot more money that I'm trying to capture today. Whereas if we focus on the value of the three year contract, it's oftentimes hard to win that customer today. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Impact Pricing card deck.  When we think about subscriptions, and I've talked to several companies who are trying to move from more of a transactional business to a subscription business, they think it's 'just pricing'. "Oh, we want to set our price this way." But it turns out it changes so much in your business, not just the way you set pricing. One of my favorite things about the subscription business model is that buyers pay us for a continuous stream of benefits, meaning we're delivering benefits month after month after month. The question in your business is, are you truly delivering benefits month after month after month? In which case, maybe you have a good business for starting a subscription business model. Then we want to think about, not only how are we delivering it, but then, how much value do they get each month? How do we start to capture that? And so, we can certainly price it, but we really need to structure our company around winning these customers.  And then we have to figure out, how do we keep them? How do we minimize churn? And over time, we figure out how to grow these customers. How to get them to upgrade or buy more from us? So, subscription isn't as simple as, 'let's change the way we do pricing'. It really is an entire business model. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

EPISODE SUMMARYUnderstanding the intricacies of pricing and value proposition is crucial to successfully growing a SaaS business. In this new episode of Scale Your SaaS, host and B2B SaaS Sales Coach Matt Wolach sat down with Mark Stiving, the founder of Impact Pricing, who shared his valuable insights on how software leaders can revolutionize their value proposition and dominate the market. Read on to learn more about the pricing mistakes that cost you lost revenue.PODCAST-AT-A-GLANCEPodcast: Scale Your SaaS with Matt WolachEpisode: Episode No. 304, “Pricing Mistakes that Cost You Lost Revenue - with Mark Stiving”Guest: Mark Stiving, Founder at Impact PricingHost: Matt Wolach, a B2B SaaS Sales Coach, Entrepreneur, and InvestorSponsored by: LeadfeederTOP TIPS FROM THIS EPISODEUnlock the Power of ValueIn pricing SaaS products, Stiving emphasized the importance of recognizing the true value a product brings to the customer. He stressed that understanding customer value and harnessing it through effective pricing strategies is the key to generating invincible profits.Identify and Quantify ValueStiving introduced the concept of a "value table," encouraging businesses to identify their most marketable product features. The challenge is to then determine the specific problems these features solve for customers. Through a systematic approach to understanding customer problems, software businesses can quantify the results and ultimately assign a dollar value to the solution.Leverage Customer GrowthStiving highlighted that while many software companies focus extensively on acquiring new customers, the real potential lies in growing existing ones. By adopting a mindset of 'win, keep, grow,' businesses can explore four avenues for customer growth: raising prices, upselling, cross-selling, and usage-based pricing.EPISODE HIGHLIGHTSStrategic Pricing for Sustainable GrowthAddressing the perennial concern of raising prices without causing customer churn, Stiving offered a practical strategy. By incrementally raising prices for the top tier of customers who derive the most value, businesses can carefully monitor the impact on churn. This approach ensures that the value delivered justifies the price increase, creating a win-win situation for both the business and its customers.Build a Value-Based CultureThe key takeaway for software leaders is to cultivate a value-based culture within their organizations. Stiving advocated for a continuous focus on understanding customer needs and integrating this perspective into every decision. By placing the customer at the center of business considerations, companies can foster long-term success.Take ActionFor software leaders seeking to refine their pricing strategies and value propositions, Mark recommends exploring the framework of the valuable features available on Impact Pricing's website. Additionally, leaders can gain further insights by connecting with Stiving through a consultation or discoveryGet even more tips by following Matt elsewhere: Sales Tips LinkedIn Twitter Instagram

Mark Stiving, Founder of Impact Pricing, joins Dustin on this week's episode to deep dive into the art of pricing. They start by exploring the concept of value and how it can be understood and communicated to customers, delve into the challenges of pricing in different scenarios, and also discuss the importance of communicating pricing on the website. The conversation covers topics like price increases, providing value in non-software subscriptions, and selling solutions instead of platforms. The key takeaway is the significance of understanding and delivering value to customers in order to set effective pricing strategies. If you have any questions or thoughts, you can reach out to Mark through LinkedIn. Also, check out Impact Pricing's website to learn more about their work.

This one is the 9 of Hearts from the Impact Pricing card deck. I found it fascinating when I studied subscriptions coming from a more traditional or transactional type of business where people would buy something from you, and then you have to get them to buy again. In a subscription, people buy something from you and then they pay you month after month, or year after year. And in that business model, there are several things that are unique. But one of them is that you suddenly have to focus on how do we keep a customer? We always have to win customers, but how do we keep that customer? And we've heard the word churn, and we know the churn is bad, and companies focus on how do I minimize churn. And there's also a third revenue bucket and that's called grow. Once I have a customer who's paying me and getting value for my product, how do I get them to pay me more money next year than they paid me this year? And we can typically do that with things like raising prices, or getting them to upgrade, or using more of our product. There are several of these techniques.  What's interesting though is that the tactics that we use inside our company to win customers is different than what we need to keep customers. And different again than what we need to grow customers. We suddenly have complicated our business model because we really and truly do need to manage all three of those revenue buckets separately. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Spades from the Impact Pricing card deck.  There are two major rules in pricing that are hugely valuable to your organization. The first one is value-based pricing, which simply means charge what your customers are willing to pay. The second one is to adopt price segmentation.  Think about this for just a second. No two buyers actually are willing to pay the same price. Which means every buyer has a different willingness to pay. If we really want to adopt value-based pricing, at its best, then what we're doing is trying to figure out, how do we get individual people to pay us what they're willing to pay?  Of course, this is impossible to do perfectly, but it's not impossible to say, hey, this type of person, this type of customer, gets more value from our product. They're willing to pay more because they get more value. We see this all the time.  For example, it could be that when we sell to Asia, they're more price sensitive so they end up with a better price. And when we sell in the US or Europe, we end up charging higher prices. This is price segmentation and that's where the value is. There are several ways to do price segmentation. Those include understanding the characteristics of your customer. What information can you collect at the time of the transaction? And then, are there behaviors or hurdles you could put in their way so that those who are price sensitive are willing to jump that hurdle in order to get a better price?  So, my advice, think very hard about, how do you do price segmentation? How can you charge different customers different amounts based on their willingness to pay? We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Impact Pricing card deck. Face it, when you talk to a customer, what you really want to ask them is, "how much would you pay for them?" The problem is they won't answer that question. First, they probably don't know the answer to that question. But more importantly, in the back of their mind, they're thinking, Hey, I can't tell them the truth because if I tell them it's really valuable to me, they'll end up charging me a higher price. So, I'm going to come up with a number much lower. I'm going to game the system, or play a negotiation game without them even knowing I'm playing. Of course, that hurts us because we're trying to gather real information, how much would they pay? One question I found that works relatively well, I wouldn't call it scientific, but it's a great way to get just a perception of people's pricing. And that is, "how much do you think other people like you would pay for this?" It takes enough indirection in the question that they tend not to think about gaming the system. And instead they think, "Oh, well, that person over there is probably like me, so therefore they would probably pay this much." When you ask that question, what the buyer's thinking in their mind is, how much would I really pay, and that's how much I think other people would really pay. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Diamonds from the Impact Pricing card deck.  Different buyers value our products differently, hence, what that should mean to us is we get to do price segmentation, we could be charging different prices. But from a sales perspective, once we've got a price set and we need to go out and do prospecting and find which customers we want to go sell to, guess which ones are the easiest ones to win? The ones where they perceive the most value from our product.  If somebody is going to use our product and make a million dollars, they care a lot more than someone who's going to use our product and make $10. Can we articulate where's the value of our product, who's going to get the value, and then find those people who really get a ton of value and focus on them. That's where we should be doing our prospecting. That's where we should be doing our marketing. And if we have a list of prospects to go deal with, those are the ones we should be spending our sales effort and energy on. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

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This one is the 10 of Hearts from the Impact Pricing card deck. Besides the alliteration of that meme, the two concepts are crucial. Pricing is possibly the most powerful marketing mix variable you have access to. You must have seen the reports that say, hey, if you could increase price by 1%, that likely increases your profitability by 10% for most companies or an average company. Well, the only reason somebody is ever going to buy something from you is because they perceive that there's more value to them than it costs them in your price. And so, that means we need to be focused on what's the value to the customer. We need to know, how are they perceiving that value? What is the value that they're willing to exchange or they're thinking about as they exchange their hard earned money to buy your product? When we think about these two concepts, then pricing and value, they go really hand in hand, very closely related. I know many companies ignore pricing, that you set it and forget it, and they need to think about that more. But even more companies are clueless about value. How is it that your customers perceive value? You really should be spending more time, more energy, thinking about both of those concepts, pricing and value. And they go really, really well together. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script, obviously. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Spades from the Impact Pricing card deck. When we think about what a buyer's decision process is, think about the two decisions they have to make, 'will I' and 'which one'. And it's really important for us to understand which of those decisions were pricing for. The 'will I' decision simply asks, the buyers asking the question, should I buy something in this product category? That's a budgetary decision. They're really saying, is this problem valuable enough for me to spend money to go solve? When we're thinking about pricing and someone's only making that 'will I' decision, we need to be thinking about, what's the value of solving the problem?  The other decision the buyer might be making is the 'which one' decision. 'Which one' is, okay, I've decided I want to solve this problem. Now, am I going to buy your product or a competitor's product? How am I going to go solve this problem? They're deciding which one. And here, the pricing decision you have to make is what's the price of your product relative to the price of the competitive products. Relative to the price of the alternatives. And of course you must take into account the value of your advantages compared to your competitors.  So, as you're thinking about your pricing decisions, think really hard what's the decision our buyers are making. Are they deciding 'will I'? Will I buy something in this product category? Or are they deciding 'which one'? Which product will I buy? We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Jack of Clubs from the Impact Pricing card deck.  There's almost never a good reason to lower prices. We've seen that a 1% price increase can lead to a 10% improvement in profitability. Well, the opposite is true too. A 1% price decrease could lead to a 10% decrease in profitability. And that's painful.   As a general rule, I would never ever lead a price decrease. I'm not lowering my prices. And the only thing that would ever prompt me to, is if my competitors lowered their price first and I had to keep up with them. I had to match whatever price decrease they put out because they were taking too much of my share. But even if my competitors lowered their price, I wouldn't do an across the board price decrease. Instead, I would look at where is it that my competitors are taking my business. And can I do a price decrease just on that piece of business? Let's start thinking about price segmentation and market segmentation, understanding where that competitor is powerful, is available, and only lower prices in those places where we have to in order to keep our market share. But a great rule is just never lower your prices, unless you have to. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our playing cards, pick a card, read the saying, talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. Oh, and you can play games with these cards. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Jack of Diamonds from the Impact Pricing card deck. It's true. If you're winning them all, you're not charging enough. First, you have to believe that every buyer is different. Every buyer has a different willingness to pay. If every time you go bid on someone and you know that they have a different willingness to pay, and yet you always win, that means that most of your buyers, if not all of your buyers, were willing to pay you more. In fact, it's probably a fair assumption that every time you win a deal, you left money on the table. The buyer was probably willing to pay you a little bit more, or a lot more, than what the price was you finally settled on.  What that says to me is that if we never ever lose, we're nowhere near that price point that says, Hey, we're losing the right number.  So, once again, if you were to raise your price by 1% that has a 10% impact on profitability, potentially, and probably zero impact on sales because you're winning everything already. And even if you lost a couple deals, you're not going to lose 10% of your deals. And so, that's a really smart thing for you to be doing if you're after more profit, which I hope you are.  And so, look at your win ratios. Are you winning every deal you go after? And if you are, raise prices. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our playing cards, pick a card, read the saying, then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. And, you can play games. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Jack of Hearts from the Impact Pricing card deck.  If you have the ability to raise your prices and you can still sell the same or just slightly fewer products, you are almost guaranteed to make much more profit. There are many studies out there that show a 1% increase in pricing can yield a 10% improvement in profitability. Now, how does that make sense? It makes sense because if you assume for a second that you have 10% gross margin on your product. So, I'm going to throw some numbers at you here. Assume that it costs, you're going to sell something for $100. It costs you $90 to make it. So, you have 10% gross margin  and you're making $10 in profit on that product, or on that sale. If you can raise your price 1%, so we go from a 100 to 101, we just raised our profit from 10 to 11. And that's because raising price has zero impact on our costs. Every dollar we make from the price increase goes directly to the bottom line. So, if we went from 100 to 101, we increased price by 1%. We took our profit from 10 to 11. We increased our profit by 10%. Obviously, that 10% number has everything to do with what's the gross margin of your product at the moment, and that's how you could determine. But price increases go straight to the bottom line without impacting or being affected by our costs. And so, therefore, it's often the single most profitable, most powerful, marketing mix variable any company has. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our cards, pick a card, read the saying, then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. And, you can play games. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Jack of Spades from the Impact Pricing card deck. Many companies use cost-plus pricing and that's understandable because it's easy. It guarantees they're going to make a profit for every sale they make. I get it. When we shift to value-based pricing, we start thinking about what's a buyer willing to pay us. And now, think about what a buyer is willing to pay and that value that they place on our product actually has nothing to do with the cost of us manufacturing it.  In fact, if you're used to buying something, whatever it happens to be. Let's say you're buying your favorite shirt and you buy five of these shirts every single year, and you just love it. And one year the cost of materials goes up. And the manufacturer says, okay, we're going to double our price because our costs went up. You don't really care that the costs went up. What you care about is, do I still want to pay that much? Or do I want to pay twice as much to get the shirt that I really like or not? So you're not thinking, what's the cost?  Now, oftentimes companies use costs to justify price increases. And we do that because our customers often think price is related to costs and it makes them feel a little bit better. It makes it feel like we're not just trying to raise prices and gouge them. But in truth, the value they get, the decision they're making, am I going to buy this product or not, has nothing to do with your costs. And everything to do with how they perceive the value of your product. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our playing cards, pick a card, read the saying, then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Queen of Clubs from the Impact Pricing card deck. Value-based pricing is truly a goal or an attitude, but it's never finished because we can't be perfect. We can't read a customer's mind. I define value-based pricing as charge what a customer is willing to pay, but if you can't read a customer's mind, you don't know what that customer is willing to pay. And in fact, all customers are different. And so, we constantly tweak and test new techniques. We add new price segmentations. We think about different market segments. We test our pricing and price increases with certain customers. So, we're never done with our value-based pricing.  We always want to be thinking about how is it that our customers are getting value from our products? How might they be using it differently? What was the value of the feature capability we just added to them? Value-based pricing is an ongoing process so I truly think of it as an attitude or a goal. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our playing cards, pick a card, read the saying, then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. Oh, and you can play card games. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Queen of Diamonds from the Impact Pricing card deck.  We often talk about how we want products that are different from our competitors. And if we think about what we want to build, we want to build products that are better, that are somehow differentiated. And when we do that, we've truly built value for our customers because our products are better than our competitor's products. However, sometimes our customers don't know that our products are better. And if they don't know our products are better and they've never used our product before, then we're not going to get paid more because our products are better. And so, that's a customer's perception. We need to make sure that our customers perceive our products to be better. In the ideal world, we build products that are better. We communicate that ideal differentiation to our customers. And our customers then choose to buy our product because they've perceived that value.   Now, it's possible that we can communicate value that may not be true, or we could communicate value that may not be differentiated.  One of my favorite papers I read when I was a doctoral student was titled something like, Meaningful Differentiation from Irrelevant Attributes.   The example they like to use was Folgers Mountain Grown Coffee. I mean, it turns out all coffee is grown in mountains, so Folgers isn't differentiated with that. But the fact that they tout it, the fact that they talk about it and communicate it, almost makes it feel like they're differentiated. So, you could think of that as perceived value, even if it isn't real value.   So, our job really should be, let's create products that are better than our competitors and let's communicate that to our customers. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our playing cards, pick a card, read the saying, then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. And, you can play card games. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

In this replay episode, join our host, Rowan Noronha, as he discusses how to price with confidence with Jason Oakley (Founder, Productive PMM), Mark Stiving (Founder, Impact Pricing), and Kyle Poyar (Operating Partner, OpenView).Your pricing structure is your top profit lever. It can boost profits much more than increasing sales or cutting costs can. But most companies leave money on the table because they don't charge the right price.Why is pricing underdeveloped in most companies? And how can companies do better?In this episode, pricing gurus Mark and Kyle explain which function should own pricing (cough, product marketing) and how to choose the right pricing strategy.

This one is the Queen of Hearts from the Impact Pricing card deck.  Value-based pricing has many different meanings. Different people use it differently. Oftentimes, it's used to say, what's the value of each individual feature that's different between your product and your competitors, and add that to your competitors price. And by the way, that's a great way to think about value and value-based pricing.  But the easiest definition I've heard of for value-based pricing is, charge what your customers are willing to pay.  And I love this definition because sure, it takes into account the fact that we sometimes have competitors. And we want to know what's the value of our differentiation relative to our competitors' products. Absolutely, these are crucial things for us to know. But we also get to discover, what happens if they're not considering competition at the time?  Or, what happens if it's raining and we want to sell an umbrella? So, these differences in time, differences in use cases, these things all have impact in how our customers value our products.  And likewise, how much they would be willing to pay for our solutions to their problems.  So, I love this concept or this idea that says, look, we all want to charge based on how much value our customers are getting. That would be value-based pricing.  But the way to think about it is, how much is a customer willing to pay because that's how much they value your product. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our playing cards, pick a card, read the saying, then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. By the way, you can also play card games. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Queen of Spades from the Impact Pricing card deck. We really should be competing on value, not on price. We often think we're in a price war with our competition. We think our competitors are competing on price because we watch them give deep discounts to customers when we're in negotiations and we're wondering, why are they competing on price? But if you think about it, we responded with deep discounts on our products, and they look at us and they say, why are they competing on price?  What we really need to do is hold our price, try to maintain that price at a nice high level, and instead explain why our product is worth so much more money than our competitors. If our competitors are going to lower their price, it's probably because their product isn't as valuable as our product. We need to learn what does value truly mean to our customers and help them understand how much value they're going to get.  When we learn to create, communicate, value better, we'll be able to capture more of it in the way we price and the deals we close. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our playing cards, pick a card, read the saying, and talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. By the way, you can also play card games. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 King of Clubs from the Impact Pricing card deck.  Sadly, too many companies still use cost-plus pricing. We take the cost of manufacturing or creating something, we add a margin, and there's our price. It's easy. We know we're making margin, but are we maximizing our profit? Maybe we're pricing so high that we miss out on some customers, or maybe we're pricing so low that we're missing out on what some customers would be willing to pay us. Think about it this way. Imagine that it costs you $10 to build something, all in. Whatever costs you want to consider, great. And you have a buyer out there that's willing to pay you $100 for it. What's the profit-maximizing price that you could charge? Well, it's a hundred dollars. If you charge 99, you left a dollar on the table. If you charge a hundred and one, that buyer's not going to buy. And so, a hundred dollars is the best you could possibly do with that buyer.  But what if instead of costing you ten dollars, what if it cost you twenty-five dollars to make it? Same buyer. What price would be the profit maximizing price? Well, obviously it's still a hundred dollars. Mind you, we make less money because our costs are higher. But the best we can do price-wise is the $100 because that's what our customer is willing to pay.  When we think about pricing this way, we're not saying costs don't matter to business. What we are saying is costs don't really matter to us setting our price. Yes, we want to make sure our prices are above our costs. We want to make sure we're making money. So, think of it as a limit. But it isn't the thing that drives our price levels. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our cards, pick a card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 King of Diamonds from the Impact Pricing card deck.  We know that customers trade money for value. They're buying value, but what kind of value? There's lots of ways to break value up, but in this meme we want to talk about the difference between perceived value and real value. Let's imagine there is this true measurable amount of value. For example, maybe I'm selling a gold coin and that gold coin actually has a value that I could look up online and say, what's the value of this coin? Got it.  But when I'm selling a service or I'm selling a product, I can't just go look up online and say, what's the value of this? Especially to me, because I don't know how I'm going to use it. I don't know how it's going to create more profits. And so, what I'm willing to pay is based completely around how much value do I think I might be getting from that product. Now here's a great example. Imagine that you're selling a coffee cup. So what's the value of a coffee cup to somebody, right? Maybe it depends upon what the design is on the front, or who really wants it, or what the lid looks like. I mean, there's lots of different factors that might define what someone's willing to pay. And so, they say, yeah, I'd pay 10$ for that coffee mug.  But what if there was a gold coin at the bottom of the coffee mug when they bought it, and that gold coin is worth 1, 000$. They just bought 1, 000$ gold coin for 10$ because their perception was, hey, it's a coffee mug. They didn't perceive the value of the gold coin at the bottom. They're not buying the true value, they're only buying the value they know about.  How do we use this information? Well, it means to us that we have to be marketing and selling the true value of our product. Because if we're not communicating our value well to our buyers, they're not using it as they make decisions on should they buy our product or not, and how much would they be willing to pay for it. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our cards, pick a card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 King of Hearts from the Impact Pricing card deck.  We often think about, what is value? And we think of value-based pricing, it's what's a customer or buyer willing to pay. And so, their willingness to pay has everything to do with how they perceive the value of our product. So, what is that value?  Well, it turns out nobody actually wants to buy your product. What they really want to buy are solutions to their problems. And so, how do we think about that? If we want to think about value, let's start by thinking about what's the problem, or problems, our buyers are really facing.  When we deeply understand that and we can articulate that back to the buyer, oftentimes, they can't articulate it, we build great relationships. We resonate with them. And then we can start talking, hey, if you solve this problem, what kind of results might you expect?  And when they can articulate those results and we put them in numerical format, some kind of quantity, then we can usually use business acumen in a B2B space to say, great, here's how much additional profit that would generate for you. Or even better than that, ask them, how much additional profit do we think that would generate for you? And maybe we hold their hand while they do the math.  But regardless, the point of this whole meme is that value always comes back to, my buyer has a problem, they want to solve the problem, and what's the result they're trying to achieve when they solve this problem. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our cards, pick a card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 King of Spades from the Impact Pricing card deck.  Of course there's no such thing as a commodity. Well, many salespeople, many business people think they're selling a commodity. And what that really means is that they just have to charge the same price that everybody else charges. But is that really true? In my view of the world, if you're charging the exact same price, that means you're not adding any value. Why would I buy from you versus somebody else? And in truth, there are ways that you can add value to almost anything.  For example, if you were to go to two different vendors of gold coins online today, you'll find they're not identical prices. But isn't gold a commodity? Well, maybe it's approximately the same price, but there's a difference in price based on the service level of the vendor. Based on something that they're giving above and beyond. Maybe it's free shipping. Maybe it's storage. Maybe it's the niceness of the salespeople.  Regardless of what it is, there's something there that says, Hey, I get to charge a little bit more than my competition because my product, my service, something is better. And what we need to do, even if we're selling a true commodity, something that is physically identical to somebody else's, we can differentiate it through other means. So, we should always be focused on the fact that we are not selling a commodity.  In fact, my view of the world is, if you're claiming that you sell a commodity, then we don't need you as a salesperson. And we don't need you as a product manager. Because pretty much everybody has the same thing, why would we need you to help us? So, accept that fact and drive hard, what's different? Where's your differentiation? What can you do that's better so that you can charge a higher price? We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our cards, pick a card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com.  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

GTM Disrupted host Mike Smart grabs a few minutes with Mark Stiving, Ph.D., and Chief Pricing Educator of Impact Pricing. They do a dive deep into the world of B2B SaaS pricing and sales strategies. Mark shares insights on the evolving dynamics of pricing in the SaaS industry and how market segmentation, product packaging, and pricing metrics play a pivotal role. Mark sheds light on key concepts of his latest book “Selling Value: How to Win More Deals at Higher Prices.” This episode gives valuable takeaways including: 1. Segmentation power in pricing strategy 2. How to price with precision 3. SaaS companies that price with success Mike and Mark discuss how to price strategically to address growth and retention challenges in B2B SaaS companies. Mark's Bio Mark is an educator at heart and a pricing expert by education and experience. He helps companies win more business at higher prices by delivering programs to help executives and employees create, communicate, and capture more value. For 30 years, Mark has led, coached, and taught businesses to extract more of the value they create. He has driven company-wide pricing initiatives worth hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental profit and started and sold three companies. Mark writes about pricing and value. In his most recent book: Selling Value: How to Win More Deals at Higher Prices, Mark takes his years of pricing expertise and applies it to sales with some surprising insights. To learn more about Mark to go https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Or email Mark: mark@impactpricing.com.

This one is the Ace of Clubs from the Impact Pricing card deck.  Nobody cares about your product. Let's use an example. Let's pretend that you're in the marketplace for a new car, and you're thinking to yourself, Hey, I could go buy a Tesla or some other electric car, or I could buy a more traditional gas powered car.  And so, are you really focused on what are the features of the electricity, of the batteries? Are you really focused on, Hey, if I buy electric then I have electric. You actually don't care.  Here's what you might care about. You might care about the fact that electric cars, especially Teslas, have amazing acceleration. They come off the line super quickly. You may care about the fact that you're not burning fossil fuels and you're not polluting your city. These are things that you value.  But you know what you don't care about? You don't care about the fact that it's electricity or if it's gas. You care about the things it does for you. How it impacts your life, how it impacts your world, how it impacts your self perception. These are all things you value. And so, when we're selling a car, are we going to sell, Hey, this is an electric car. Or are we going to sell, Hey, this is really fast. Or, Hey, this really helps the environment, and don't you want to be environmentally conscious.  In the end, buyers buy value. They really don't care about your product. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our Impact Pricing playing cards, pick a card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Ace of Diamonds from the Impact Pricing card deck.  Value-based pricing truly is a never ending journey. Think about what it means. It means we're going to charge what a customer is willing to pay. But you can't read your customer's mind. You have no idea exactly how much someone's willing to pay you. And so we can make decisions inside our company to get us closer and closer to that number. We can do experiments. We can do interviews. We can, by the way, sell more value, communicate value better, increase that willingness to pay. And so everything we do should be focused on how much is that customer willing to pay. But because we can't read their mind, we can't be perfect. And if we can't be perfect, that means we can always get better. My recommendation is don't pretend that we have value-based pricing done. Consider value-based pricing as an attitude, it's the goal. It's the journey that we're on to get better and better at capturing more of the value we deliver to our customers. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our Impact Pricing cards, pick a card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, 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 Ace of Hearts from the Impact Pricing card deck.  It is true, the single most profitable pricing decision any company can make is to adopt value-based pricing. Now value-based pricing is hard to do, but it has a really simple meaning. It means charge what your customers are willing to pay.  If you had the ability to read your customer's mind and you knew exactly the most that they would pay for your product, then you could charge that and you'd win the deal. And you couldn't have won it at a higher price. And if you charged a lower price, then you left money on the table. So that's absolutely the optimal approach.  Of course, if our salespeople do a better job at communicating value, then we could increase how much our customers are willing to pay. So this isn't the whole deal, but understand the concept is, we want to be able to charge what our customers are willing to pay. And to do that, it's really an attitude inside our company.  We should be thinking instead of, hey, we charge based on our costs and we charge based on our time. We charge based on the fact that prices or costs went up. All of these things can impact how much a customer is willing to pay, but the single thing that should be driving our pricing decisions is thinking really hard about the willingness to pay of our buyers. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our cards, pick a card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com.  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

How much is my product worth - and what is my customer willing to pay? Every entrepreneur asks these questions at some point in their small business journey. Mark Stiving, Chief Pricing Educator of Impact Pricing, joins Andrea with insights on:(2:00) How to think about pricing your product or service.(02:58) How to figure out how much your customer is willing to pay.(04:46) Should you start pricing your products at a higher price?(06:04) How to grow a subscription model and why it's beneficial.(07:51) How to remain competitive while still growing.(09:21) What are valuables and how can they help your business grow?—Click HERE to leave us a message!By submitting your voicemail, you're granting us permission to use the recording in episodes of This is Small Business. Please note, voicemails will not receive direct responses. For help with other questions to Amazon unrelated to this show, you can reach out to Amazon's customer service team at amazon.com/contact-us.

This one is the Ace of Spades from the Impact Pricing card deck.  First, companies really do exist to create value for customers.  Think about what you do as a business. Everything you do is to get a customer to pay you money. And the only reason a customer would ever pay you money is if you are delivering more value to them than they're receiving. And so, our entire company needs to be focused on how do we create more value for customers? How do we deliver more value? How do we communicate the value?  But we spend all this time creating, communicating value, pricing is the one thing that we do that captures the value that we're able to create and communicate. So, when a buyer chooses to buy our product, they pay the price that we're asking, and that happens to be the transaction value. That's how we capture the value of what we deliver to our customers. We hope you enjoyed this example of Pricing Table Topics. What you just heard was done without a script. If you want to get better at speaking about pricing and value, grab a deck of our cards, pick a card, read the saying, and then talk for one to two minutes about what that card says. You'll become a better speaker and expert. If you have any questions or feedback, please email me, mark@impactpricing.com.  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

“Pricing fences are the implementation methodology around how we do price segmentation,” Mark Stiving   In this episode of Pragmatic Product Chat, host Rebecca Kalogeris and pricing expert Mark Stiving, founder of Impact Pricing, explore the multifaceted concept of pricing fences. Together, they delve into the importance, practical application, and nuances of pricing fences.   Key Takeaways: Understand the role of pricing fences in implementing price segmentation Learn how pricing fences can be applied in different scenarios Discover the underlying principles, various methodologies, and real-world applications Take Your Pricing Skills to the Next Level with Pragmatic's Pricing Course Ready to dive deeper into pricing strategies? Pragmatic's Pricing Course (PRICE) offers hands-on lessons in value-based pricing, subscription models, market differentiation, and more. In just 7.5 hours, you'll gain the skills to align pricing with your corporate strategy, optimize revenue, and outpace the competition. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from the experts.  Learn more and enroll today!

"Your customers are looking at your product and asking for discounts. The key is to demonstrate the value of your product so that they understand the price is justified."  - Mark Stiving, Chief Pricing Officer for Impact Pricing In this episode of the Pragmatic Live, host Rebecca Kalogeris, Vice President of Product at Pragmatic Institute, interviews Mark Stiving, Ph.D., Chief Pricing Officer for Impact Pricing, who shares six ways to raise product prices effectively.  They discuss pricing strategies such as focusing on products that are add-ons, using market segmentation to adjust prices, and creating a new product version by taking away some features and charging a lower price. These strategies can help companies increase revenue without causing too much disruption or risking losing customers. The conversation contains valuable insights and practical tips to help professionals elevate their products, company, and career. Tune in to this episode to learn more about effective pricing strategies and take your product management skills to the next level. Do you want to learn how to be more market-driven? Enroll in Foundations You'll learn how to understand the market and its problems, use that knowledge to build and sell products people want to buy, and master the Pragmatic Framework to bring successful products to market. Learn More

Our today's guest is James Tenser, Retail Tech Marketing Strategist, the President of VSN Media, and a Top 100 Retail Influencer for 2023 by Rethink Retail. Listen to find out the Three Key FMCG Trends That Impact Pricing explained by James Tenser.----------Get your free copy of Get Ready for the Future Of Pricing with our A-Z Guide.Explore our other interviews with retail pricing experts are here.For more information about AI pricing solutions, visit Competera.net

Mark Stiving is the Founder and Chief Pricing Educator at Impact Pricing LLC, as well as the host of the podcast Impact Pricing and author of the book Selling Value. Today, Mark talks about what value is and how it relates to both buyers and sellers. He digs into how sellers must be keen in determining if a buyer is in a will I or which one buying decision. He defines the different types of values such as inherent value, relative value, and economic value, and says that understanding each is important to sell better from your buyer's perspective. Mark also shares the 4 value-based characteristics that buyers and sellers should look for and the concept that buyers trade off price for value. HIGHLIGHT QUOTES Defining inherent and economic value for a business - Mark: "Inherent value is what's the value of solving the problem? If you're gonna go buy something, I don't care what it is, as a consumer, as a business, if you're gonna go buy something, the reason that you're buying it is that you believe it has more value than the price you have to pay for it."  "If we go back to economic value, as a company, I'm only gonna buy something for a hundred thousand if it makes me at least a hundred thousand more in profit, preferably about a million more in profit, but it better be at least a hundred thousand or I'm not gonna spend that." Relative value shows what you can do that your competitor cannot - Mark: "What is the value of my product relative to my competitor's product? What are the things I do differently? What are the problems that I can solve that they can't solve? What's the dollar, the economic value of the problems I can solve that they can't solve?" The difference between WILL I and WHICH ONE decision - Mark: "Typically, when a buyer buys something, we make two different purchase decisions. The first decision we make is, will I buy something in this category? Am I gonna buy a new car? Yes. No. Well, if the answer's no, great. I'm not shopping. As soon as I say yes, then I switch to, well, which one am I gonna go buy?"  "And now I'm shopping BMW, Porsche, Lexus, you know, whatever the brands are that I might consider and the styles inside there. So I'm now making a which one decision. When people are making a which one decision, they're very price sensitive. When people are making the will I decision, price isn't driving that decision. Something else is." Find out more about Mark in the links below: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Website: https://impactpricing.com/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/impact-pricing/id1449435549 More on Andy: Connect on LinkedIn Get Andy's new book "Sell Without Selling Out" on Amazon Learn more at AndyPaul.com Sponsored by: Revenue.io | Unlock exponential growth with an AI-powered RevOps platform | Revenue.io Scratchpad | The fastest way to update Salesforce, take sales notes, and stay on top of to-dos | Scratchpad.com Blueboard | World's leading experiential rewards & recognition platform | Blueboard.com Explore the Revenue.io Podcast Universe: Sales Enablement Podcast Selling with Purpose Podcast RevOps Podcast

Our host Bryan Whittington is joined by Mark Stiving. Bryan and Mark take a deep dive into How to Create Perceived Value Using Impact Pricing This is Part 5 of 5. Connect with Mark: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Connect with Bryan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brywhittington/ ebsGrowth Resources: Evaluate Your Sales Team's Ability to Grow: https://ebsgrowth.com/self-evaluation-form/ Blogs: https://ebsgrowth.com/category/blog-articles/ Podcasts: https://ebsgrowth.com/podcast/

Our host Bryan Whittington is joined by Mark Stiving. Bryan and Mark take a deep dive into How to Create Perceived Value Using Impact Pricing This is Part 4 of 5. Connect with Mark: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Connect with Bryan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brywhittington/ ebsGrowth Resources: Evaluate Your Sales Team's Ability to Grow: https://ebsgrowth.com/self-evaluation-form/ Blogs: https://ebsgrowth.com/category/blog-articles/ Podcasts: https://ebsgrowth.com/podcast/

Our host Bryan Whittington is joined by Mark Stiving. Bryan and Mark take a deep dive into How to Create Perceived Value Using Impact Pricing This is Part 3 of 5. Connect with Mark: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Connect with Bryan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brywhittington/ ebsGrowth Resources: Evaluate Your Sales Team's Ability to Grow: https://ebsgrowth.com/self-evaluation-form/ Blogs: https://ebsgrowth.com/category/blog-articles/ Podcasts: https://ebsgrowth.com/podcast/

Our host Bryan Whittington is joined by Mark Stiving. Bryan and Mark take a deep dive into How to Create Perceived Value Using Impact Pricing This is Part 2 of 5. Connect with Mark: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Connect with Bryan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brywhittington/ ebsGrowth Resources: Evaluate Your Sales Team's Ability to Grow: https://ebsgrowth.com/self-evaluation-form/ Blogs: https://ebsgrowth.com/category/blog-articles/ Podcasts: https://ebsgrowth.com/podcast/

Our host Bryan Whittington is joined by Mark Stiving. Bryan and Mark take a deep dive into How to Create Perceived Value Using Impact Pricing This is Part 1 of 5. Connect with Mark: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Connect with Bryan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brywhittington/ ebsGrowth Resources: Evaluate Your Sales Team's Ability to Grow: https://ebsgrowth.com/self-evaluation-form/ Blogs: https://ebsgrowth.com/category/blog-articles/ Podcasts: https://ebsgrowth.com/podcast/

Our host Bryan Whittington is joined by Mark Stiving. Bryan and Mark take a deep dive into How to Create Perceived Value Using Impact Pricing This is the Full Episode. Connect with Mark: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Connect with Bryan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brywhittington/ ebsGrowth Resources: Evaluate Your Sales Team's Ability to Grow: https://ebsgrowth.com/self-evaluation-form/ Blogs: https://ebsgrowth.com/category/blog-articles/ Podcasts: https://ebsgrowth.com/podcast/

Mark Stiving is a widely recognized pricing expert and marketing pro who teaches companies how to boost revenues and realize their true value. He is the host of the Impact Pricing podcast, helping people win more business at higher prices through value, and has authored three books which all revolve around pricing. Ron Baker is the Founder of VeraSage Institute, dedicated to helping professional knowledge firms bury the billable hour and trash timesheets. He has published seven books around the topics of business and pricing, and also is a radio talk-show host for The Soul of Enterprise. In this episode, Ron engages in a pricing metric discussion with Mark as they share their insights on cost-plus, hourly pricing, and subscriptions.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Deep dive into discussions about different pricing metrics, focusing on cost-plus, hourly, and subscriptions Find out why putting time in your service and charging by the hour isn't an ideal way to charge clients Understand why providing value is better than charging hourly or using cost-plus pricing   “There's always going to be people and businesses that use cost-plus and other inferior methods like hourly. They're going to be out there, but they're just not where my focus is. My focus is on the other end, trying to help people price and create more value so they can capture more value. I'm not interested in working for people that want to price in an inferior manner, because I think that means they're not providing enough value to you.” – Ron Baker   Topics Covered: 01:17 – Mark's five top reasons/times when cost-plus pricing makes sense 04:36 – Reacting to Mark's five reasons / doing value-based pricing along with cost-plus pricing 08:13 – Pricing in micro and macro level businesses: cost-plus vs value-based 11:37 – Why Ron refuses to pay by hourly billing + how auto mechanics price their work 16:24 – Talking about Ron and Colin's difference in perspectives 18:04 – How Mark charges clients ‘hourly' and what Ron has to say about it 23:04 – Discussion around subscription + today's topic in general: pricing metric 27:25 – Mark's tax guy + why hourly billing isn't ideal for Ron 31:17 – On announcing a price increase: Do something nice for your customers   Key Takeaways: “If I could categorize everything I just said, I'd categorize it in two categories. One is sometimes, customers demand it – so that would be Apple and government, and sometimes, it's just more efficient as a business to do cost plus than it is to do value-based pricing.” – Mark Stiving “In the world of cost plus and efficiencies, one could make the argument. I'm not saying this is true by any means, but one could make the argument. If I was in a very low margin, highly competitive business, it might be less expensive and more efficient to just do cost plus than to spend time trying to figure out what each customer's willing to pay me.” – Mark Stiving “One of my favorite sayings is customers hate price increases, but they'll hate it a little bit less if you blame increasing costs.” – Mark Stiving “The billable hour is what I'm crusading against, but on a larger perspective, the billable hour is cost-plus pricing.” – Ron Baker “At a macro level, there's no way that costs justify price or determine price. Can't be. Otherwise, no business would ever go bankrupt.” – Ron Baker “If somebody really did abuse you, then why would you ever work with that person?” – Ron Baker   People / Resources Mentioned: The Soul of Enterprise:https://www.thesoulofenterprise.com/ Colin Jasper:https://www.linkedin.com/in/colin-jasper-7a401213/ Win Keep Grow:https://www.amazon.com/Win-Keep-Grow-Accelerate-Subscription/dp/1631954784 Time's Up:https://www.amazon.com/Times-Up-Subscription-Business-Professional/dp/1119893526 Marco Bertini:https://marcobertini.com/ The Ends Game:https://marcobertini.com/book/   Connect with Ron Baker: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronbaker1/   Connect with Mark Stiving:    LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com  

Many CPAs struggle with pricing. Some have moved to flat rate or subscription pricing, and some still bill by the hour. For CPAs who are used to getting compensated for time and effort, it can be difficult to learn how to see value and to learn how to price accordingly. But if they don't make the transition, they risk underpricing themselves in perpetuity and having to keep working long hours to make up for unearned revenue.  To talk with me about this problem is my guest, Mark Stiving.  Mark is a pricing educator and advisor, the host of the Impact Pricing podcast and the owner of Impact Pricing, where he teaches clients how to win, keep, and grow customers to drive higher revenue. In Mark's most recent book, Selling Value, he shares his expertise to help companies win more business at higher prices.  Highlights: — “Salespeople need to know how people value products.”  — “Our buyers buy products because they want to solve problems.” — “The salesperson's job is to help the buyer understand the true amount of value they're going to get from the product.” — “Buyers who don't believe that you understand their problems won't listen to your solutions.” — “If we truly believe that we're going to deliver more value, we should make sure they understand the value before we give them the price.”   ***Want one piece of business strategy delivered daily to your inbox?*** Subscribe here: https://www.geraldinecarter.com/subscribe-main-list Connect with MARK: Website: https://impactpricing.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com Episode mentions: 125 Value and Segmented Pricing for CPAs with Pricing Expert Mark Stiving, PhD https://www.businessstrategyforcpas.com/125 153 A Formula for Quantifying Value with Mark Stiving, PhD https://www.businessstrategyforcpas.com/153 172 Subscription Pricing Strategies with Mark Stiving, PhD https://businessstrategyforcpas.com/172 Mark's book: Selling Value: How to Win More Deals at Higher Prices  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09Y8V7FWX/  

Knowing what your customer values most should be a bright guiding star on their journey though your pipeline, but assuming they value what you value is a common error that can lead you in entirely the wrong direction.  In this episode Darryl is joined by Pricing Expert, Speaker and Author Mark Stiving, and they're here to flip your thinking on pricing on its head. Darryl and Mark to signpost three buyer journeys that demonstrate just how fluid price sensitivity is, illustrate how those journeys shift the perspective of price, and outline what your activities should be regardless of the customer's journey (or your own perspective). They'll also remind you that you are not normal. 

Orvel Ray Wilson is co-author of the book, “Guerilla Selling”, and five other books in the “Guerilla Marketing” series, the best-selling marketing series in history. He is a Certified Speaking Professional, a coach to those who want to build their practice as an author, a speaker, and a thought leader. Through The Guerilla Group, he helps professionals build and grow their business by focusing on writing, stagecraft, and marketing. Orvel Ray is Mark Stiving's personal business coach. In this episode, Mark and Orvel Ray talk about the former's newly released book, Selling Value, as they both share stories in all ways connected to his account.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Learn about the importance of translating what matters to your customer into something of real value, like measurable dollars Discover what the book, Selling Value, is trying to show salespeople Find out how the Guerilla series was able to move a lot of people, including product managers, product marketing, and other VAs   “If you're closing more than about 70% of your opportunities, you're not charging enough.” – Orvel Ray Wilson   Topics Covered: 01:55 – The story of how Mark and Orvel Ray met 02:40 – Working with Mark for his book, Selling Value: Taking note of what's important to your customers 06:19 – What the book is showing salespeople how to do + how the ‘Will I? In which one?' concept came to exist 10:03 – Orvel Ray's friend, Jordan, who was able to close an $85,000 deal as he learns from Mark's book 14:59 – Why should salespeople and pricing people care about selling value? 18:14 – Send Orvel Ray a message and get one free hour of free consultation on how to become a speaker and/or an author. 19:20 – Orvel Ray's piece of pricing advice 21:43 – What anchoring is all about   Key Takeaways: “Salespeople need to understand how this really works, not only to convey and do the math and show them that this is a good investment, but to do that in terms that are important to them.” – Orvel Ray Wilson “I might have 100 good reasons why you should buy my product, but your decision is going to hinge on the three or four reasons that you think are important. And if you can isolate what those are and sell to those, then two things happen – one, the sales process is a lot simpler, and your offering is going to be irresistible.” – Orvel Ray Wilson, Guerilla Selling “Many times, we fail, we lose the sale, not because our product isn't a good fit, or because we don't have superior technology, or aggressive pricing, but simply because we haven't got the customer to make the ‘will I?' decision in the first place.” – Orvel Ray Wilson “Just putting this technology in the hands of your sales team is going to make an immediate and measurable impact, as I've already said, and certainly more so than any other sales book I've read recently; and I've read them all.” – Orvel Ray Wilson “Build value, include everything, load up the table like it's Thanksgiving dinner, and then if you have to talk about reducing your fees, you can take things off the table and still defend your value.” – Orvel Ray Wilson   People / Resources Mentioned: Selling Value: https://www.amazon.com/Selling-Value-Deals-Higher-Prices/dp/1737655217/ Houghton Mifflin:https://www.hmhco.com/ Guerilla Selling: https://www.amazon.com/Guerrilla-Selling-Unconventional-Weapons-Increasing/dp/0395578205/ Impact Pricing: https://www.amazon.com/Impact-Pricing-Blueprint-Driving-Profits/dp/1483489701/ Patricia Fripp: https://www.youtube.com/user/PatriciaFripp   Connect with Orvel Ray Wilson: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orvelray/ Email: orvelray@guerillagroup.com Website: https://guerrillagroup.com/   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com  

Pricing is the top profit lever at companies. Pricing can boost profits way more than increasing sales or cutting costs can. But most companies leave money on the table because they don't charge the right price. Why is pricing underdeveloped in most companies? And how can companies do better?In this episode of The Marchitect, pricing gurus Mark and Kyle explain which function should own pricing (cough, product marketing) and how to choose the right pricing strategy.

In the latest episode of Subscriptions: Scaled, we speak with Mark Stiving, the Chief Pricing Educator at Impact Pricing and author of Win Keep Grow.Impact Pricing aims to educate companies about value-based pricing, which means to charge what a customer is willing to pay. The company's initial courses are focused on pricing and value in subscription businesses.The episode starts with Mark explaining his background and how he came to found Impact Pricing. Mark also delves into the psychology of pricing and shares his opinion on whether there are different personal behaviors in B2B decisions versus B2C.We also learn how Mark finds out about the issues his customers experience. He also explains his experiences dealing with companies he felt had priced their subscription services wrong.Mark discusses the bundling trend and whether he sees it continuing. Bundling refers to the selling of different items together as a package.Toward the end of the episode, Mark talks about the link between subscription services and loyalty. He discusses loyalty programs and whether we can expect this trend to continue.Discover more about pricing and value in subscription services by tuning into the latest episode of Subscriptions: Scaled with Mark Stiving, Chief Pricing Educator at Impact Pricing and author of Win Keep Grow.Impact PricingWin Keep GrowReady to get started with Rebar?Head to rebartechnology.com or email info@rebartechnology.com to schedule a call today.

Many CPAs struggle with pricing. Some have moved to flat rate or subscription pricing, and many still work by the hour. Subscription of course is a hot topic. But for many CPAs, that business model feels too far out of reach and too theoretical to be able to put it into play in their business anytime soon. But if they don't make the transition, they risk missing out.  Here today to talk with me about the subscription business model is my guest Mark Stiving. Mark is a pricing educator and advisor. He's the host of the Impact Pricing podcast and the author of Win Keep Grow, among other books. Mark helps companies win more business at higher prices. Highlights: — “To make the shift from the traditional transactional model to the subscription model, you have to figure out how you can add value to a customer on a regular basis.” — “A customer who frequently receives value from your product or your service is much more willing to offer to pay you as a subscription because they're paying you for the ongoing value they receive.” — “Accountants and CPAs who want to bring subscription into their business need to really understand what the stream of benefits could be beyond just the delivery of month-end deliverables.”  — “One of the big advantages of subscriptions is it's less expensive to get into and try a new service or a new product.” — “Accountants and other business owners need to talk to their customers on a regular basis and try to find out what problems they're dealing with, and what solutions they want.” Connect with MARK: Website: https://impactpricing.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com   Past Episodes: 125 Value and Segmented Pricing for CPAs https://www.businessstrategyforcpas.com/125   153 A Formula for Quantifying Value https://businessstrategyforcpas.com/153   Mark's Books: Win Keep Grow: How to Price and Package to Accelerate Your Subscription Business https://impactpricing.com/resources/books/   Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits https://impactpricing.com/resources/books/   ***Want one piece of business strategy delivered daily to your inbox?*** Subscribe here: https://www.shethinksbigcoaching.com/subscribe-main-list

Competitive pricing strategy is key to not leaving money on the table. How to price your product or service is often a cost plus idea - with a focus on desired profit margins. But there are more indepth ways to do this right. The guest on this episode is Mark Stiving from Impact Pricing. He is the Chief Pricing Educator, and he helps companies win more business at higher prices (who doesn't want that?). In this conversation Mark shares his brilliance around value based pricing, how to price for products, services, and subscription based offerings. Mark helps his clients have a value based mindset and to re-think how the set their pricing strategies.  You can learn more about Mark at Impact Pricing (www.ImpactPricing.com). About Impact Pricing The mission at Impact Pricing is to educate companies about value based pricing, which simply means charge what a customer is willing to pay. Once a company starts down that path, it's quickly apparent that they require a much deeper understanding of value. By starting with the goal of charging for value, the focus shifts to how to create, communicate and capture value. Every company exists to create value for their market. Value based pricing spotlights how much value you truly create. Education is their passion. Teaching you how to fish and feeding you for an entire career is one of the most fulfilling endeavors they have the honor of sharing. In late 2019, they launched Impact Pricing University as and online education platform for pricing professionals and company leaders to learn more about value and how to drive significant growth in their organization through pricing.   Impact Pricing has a full catalog of courses focused on pricing and value. These courses and multi-day live training can be offered online as well as live. Impact Pricing offers a unique way of coming along side companies to help them better understand their pricing. Their advisory services are for companies or individuals who would like to have a pricing expert looking over their shoulder while they make enormously impactful pricing decisions https://thomsinger.com/podcast/impact-pricing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's bonus UNCUT episode, "Advanced Pricing Strategies for Accountants" with Mark Stiving. Mark has studied, led and coached businesses through the lens of pricing for 25 years. His company Impact Pricing is dedicated to educating B2B companies about pricing and value. He has driven company-wide pricing initiatives worth hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental profit. He started and sold three companies, improving his championship pricing skills in each one. His book, Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits, is a highly readable and practical manual (4.9 stars on Amazon).  Key takeaways from the full uncut interview include: ➩ The makings of a world-renowned pricing and value expert - how Mark became an international pricing educator ➩ Why pricing matters in business and why accountants especially should care about pricing ➩ The different kinds of pricing, starting with the billable hour and ending with subscription pricing ➩ The problems accountants (and others in professional services) have that doesn't always apply to other sectors ➩ What exactly value is and how it figures into different pricing models ➩ Why accountants have problems with value-based pricing and fail to understand the nuances of pricing ➩ The two decisions buyers make in assessing a purchase and deciding value for money ➩ How the rigid structure of the billable hour and timesheets has stopped accountants from embracing more effective and profitable methods of pricing their services ➩ Why the 'value conversation' is so important for accountants when talking to their clients, and how to use it to price services better ➩ Shout out to Ron Baker, the 'godfather of pricing', and where Mark Stiving takes issue with his stance on timesheets ➩ The importance for accountants of involving the client in the determination of value, ROI and pricing metrics ➩ Whether it's possible to value price for anything, such as accounting audits or basic commodities ➩ Why there is no such thing as a commodity and how sellers can charge differently for what seems to be a basic, standardised product ➩ What an accountant can do when they don't know how long a job, project or particular outcome will take ➩ The biggest risk accountants face in moving from hourly to value based pricing ➩ The single best pricing technique that accountants can use to put together compelling packages, products and services for clients ➩ How lifetime value factors into value pricing, particularly with longer term projects ➩ When it's okay for an accountant to discount their prices or even offer services or advice for free ➩ When a lower price might overcome a buyer's inertia to make a purchase ➩ How accountants can get started with value pricing, both in negotiation and mindset terms ➩ Tips to drive a better pricing culture and a more positive attitude to pricing in your accounting firm. Contact Mark here: https://impactpricing.com (https://impactpricing.com) https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving (https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving) NOTE TO LISTENERS: This is a full-length interview (usually 20-30 mins long) from which the highlights show earlier in the week was taken. You can listen to this on a previous episode. Martin and Rob love to hear from the show's 7000+ listeners in 144 countries around the world. If you like the show, leave a review wherever you listen, and please recommend the show to your friends and colleagues.

Episode 75. On today's show, "Advanced Pricing Strategies for Accountants" with Mark Stiving  Mark Stiving has studied, led and coached businesses through the lens of pricing for 25 years. His company Impact Pricing is dedicated to educating B2B companies about pricing and value. He has driven company-wide pricing initiatives worth hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental profit. He started and sold three companies, improving his championship pricing skills in each one. His book, Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits, is a highly readable and practical manual (4.9 stars on Amazon).  Key takeaways from the full uncut interview include: ➩ The makings of a world-renowned pricing and value expert - how Mark Stiving became an international pricing educator ➩ Why pricing matters in business and why accountants especially should care about pricing ➩ The different kinds of pricing, starting with the billable hour and ending with subscription pricing ➩ The problems accountants (and others in professional services) have that doesn't always apply to other sectors ➩ What exactly value is and how it figures into different pricing models ➩ Why accountants have problems with value-based pricing and fail to understand the nuances of pricing ➩ The two decisions buyers make in assessing a purchase and deciding value for money ➩ How the rigid structure of the billable hour and timesheets has stopped accountants from embracing more effective and profitable methods of pricing their services ➩ Why the 'value conversation' is so important for accountants when talking to their clients, and how to use it to price services better ➩ Shout out to Ron Baker, the 'godfather of pricing', and where Mark Stiving takes issue with his stance on timesheets ➩ The importance for accountants of involving the client in the determination of value, ROI and pricing metrics ➩ Whether it's possible to value price for anything, such as accounting audits or basic commodities ➩ Why there is no such thing as a commodity and how sellers can charge differently for what seems to be a basic, standardised product ➩ What an accountant can do when they don't know how long a job, project or particular outcome will take ➩ The biggest risk accountants face in moving from hourly to value based pricing ➩ The single best pricing technique that accountants can use to put together compelling packages, products and services for clients ➩ How lifetime value factors into value pricing, particularly with longer term projects ➩ When it's okay for an accountant to discount their prices or even offer services or advice for free ➩ When a lower price might overcome a buyer's inertia to make a purchase ➩ How accountants can get started with value pricing, both in negotiation and mindset terms ➩ Tips to drive a better pricing culture and a more positive attitude to pricing in your accounting firm. Contact Mark here: https://impactpricing.com (https://impactpricing.com) https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving (https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving) NOTE TO LISTENERS: This is a condensed highlights version of the full interview (usually 20-30 mins long), which you can catch as a bonus UNCUT episode at the weekend. Martin and Rob love to hear from the show's 7000+ listeners in 144 countries around the world. If you like the show, leave a review wherever you listen, and please recommend the show to your friends and colleagues.

There isn't just one type of buyer's journey, there are three: trust journey, relationship journey and analytical journey. During this episode, Rebecca Kalogeris, VP of marketing for Pragmatic Institute, interviews pricing expert Mark Stiving, chief pricing educator at Impact Pricing. Not only does he explore the three types of buyer's journeys in-depth, but he also gives listeners the one question they should ask to quickly identify which journey their customer is on. He also explains the value map and why you should always assume your buyer is on a trust journey until proven otherwise.

Mark Stiving, chief pricing educator at Impact Pricing, joins Channelnomics' Changing Channels host Larry Walsh to talk about pricing, discounting, and channel sales strategies.   No one wants to pay full price for anything. And people love winning. So it shouldn't be a surprise that when it comes to the list price of products, people are always looking for a discount. They want to win a deal.   Through partners, manufacturers often offer significant discounts on their products to meet this negotiation demand and avoid losing a sale. The question arises: Why does a list price even exist?   It's a question that Mark Stiving, chief pricing educator at the consulting firm Impact Pricing, relishes answering.   In this episode of Changing Channels, Stiving explains how a product with a discounted list price creates a unique set of benefits for manufacturers. It makes the product more desirable and gives end users the impression that the product is of a higher value. Even so, it can be difficult for manufacturers to determine exactly how to price their products when they must consider the needs and desires of both distributors and end users.  Stiving joins Channelnomics' Changing Channels host Larry Walsh to discuss why the concept of a list price persists and what manufacturers can do to best determine their ultimate selling price.   Follow us, Like us, and Subscribe!  Channelnomics: https://channelnomics.com/   LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2NC6Vli   Twitter: https://twitter.com/Channelnomics      Changing Channels Is a Channelnomics Production   Follow @Channelnomics to stay current on the latest #research, #bestpractices, and #resources. At @Channelnomics – the voice of thought leadership – we define #channel trends, chart new #GTM strategies, and #partner with industry leaders to champion #diversity in the channel.     Episode Resources:  Host Larry Walsh: https://bit.ly/3beZfOa   Guest Mark Stiving: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/   Credits   Production: Changing Channels is produced by Modern Podcasting. For virtual content capture and video-first podcasts, check out http://www.modpodstudio.com.   Host Larry Walsh: https://bit.ly/3beZfOa   Voice-Over: Denise Quan  

Accountants have a hard time getting their head around assigning a price to squishy stuff like peace of mind, quick response time, and ease of access. While they understand that these things are valuable, it's not widely understood how they can be converted to dollar prices. Today I speak with Mark Stiving, a pricing educator and advisor. He's the host of the Impact Pricing podcast and is the owner of Impact Pricing, where he teaches clients how to win, keep and grow customers to drive higher revenue. Mark talks about perceived versus real value, and the concept of the value table to come up with quantifiable results that can then be used for pricing. Highlights: — “Understanding how our customers perceive our value is not only how we set our prices or how we should be setting our prices. It also should be how we communicate through our marketing messages or our sales efforts. It also should be how we choose what products to build or services to offer.” — “Nobody cares about your product. What they care about is the problem they have that you're going to solve for them. They care about the result they might get after they buy and use your product or service.” — “Buyers are using perceived value when they make a decision to purchase something.” — “A value metric is how your customers measure the value you deliver to them.” — “The key to a really good pricing metric is understanding our customer's value metrics.” Connect with Mark: Website: https://impactpricing.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Previous episode with Mark: Value and Segmented Pricing for CPAs https://smartstrategyforcpas.com/125 Free 5-day email course - Better Pricing Strategies for CPAs Get here   Want some help in your CPA firm, but not sure where to start? Schedule a free discovery call with me: https://calendly.com/geraldinecarter/15min   Want to find out what options you might have for working together? More about 1:1 coaching, roadmaps, and DIY courses here: https://shethinksbigcoaching.com/coaching-options

We welcome to the show Mark Stiving, host of the fantastic Impact Pricing podcast, to pick his brain about the B2B subscription pricing model. Mark literally wrote the book on this topic – the upcoming “Win Keep Grow” – so it's a must-listen for anyone looking to shift all or part of their traditional business to subscription.   Mark and host Lindsay Duran discuss why subscription pricing is on the rise in B2B, as well as the many advantages and potential challenges involved in embracing a subscription strategy. Learn why it's such a colossal business model and culture shift, and how those that grow revenues fastest are always actively managing the three revenue buckets (acquisition, retention, expansion).   Pre-order “Win Keep Grow” now.  www.zilliant.com/podcasts

"If your salespeople are asking for discounts that are too big or too often, then your product team hasn't given sales the tools, knowledge and confidence they need to win deals at the right price." - Mark Stiving. Rebecca Kalogeris, VP of marketing for Pragmatic Institute, talks with Mark Stiving, founder of Impact Pricing, about the importance of value-based pricing. In this conversation, Rebecca and Mark explain what a value-based pricing table is and how it can equip sales teams so they can confidently and effectively approach prospective buyers.

Often people ask if I offer consulting services.  I hate that question because I have to honestly answer no, but then explain I offer advisory services.  Here is what you might want to know about being or hiring a pricing advisor.   What is the difference?   In my career, I’ve hired and worked beside pricing consultants.  For each project, they typically have an experienced leader who commands a team of less-skilled workers.  The team gathers and analyzes data and recommendations are made to the hiring executive.  Companies who follow the recommendations often find phenomenal results.  The key is that consultants do the work and present their findings.    A pricing advisor works with executives and teams within the client so they can solve their own pricing problems.  This happens through a combination of education and frequent consultations. The advisor asks many questions and applies his/her vast pricing experience and knowledge to the client’s specific situation.  Instead of making recommendations at the end of a project, the advisor discusses ideas throughout the engagement.  When data needs to be collected or analyzed, the advisor helps the client understand what to do and the client is responsible for the execution.   Should you choose a consultant or an advisor?   It depends on your situation.  If you have money but not people resources, a consultant is probably your best choice.  If you don’t have a lot of money, but you have people to work on the project, then an advisor probably fits better.  An added advantage to using an advisor is your people become more skilled at pricing and value. What about a coach?  I have a lot of friends who are coaches so I have to tread lightly here.  My understanding is that coaches ask a lot of questions to guide you to find the answer yourself.  That may help the lessons stick better, but it is slower.  An advisor asks questions to understand your situation and then makes recommendations.  I often think of myself as a coach as I’m helping individuals uplevel their skills, but my coaching friends tell me that’s not coaching.   Is education enough?  I’ve taught pricing to thousands of students over the last 27 years, and I’ve learned even when students understand a concept, they aren’t able to apply it to their situation.  That takes practice and guidance.  To those of us who have been doing it for so long, solutions sometimes seem obvious, but experience shows it is challenging for new practitioners.  Education is a significant first step that benefits dramatically from implementation assistance.  What makes a good advisor?  Here are three important characteristics of a great pricing advisor.  Pricing expertise – A true pricing expert has worked in many industries, solved many different pricing problems, and has created a set of principles that apply in most situations.  True experts study their field and create thought leadership content to share with the world.  They willingly engage with other experts and practitioners to push the boundaries of knowledge.   Communication skills – Knowing pricing isn’t enough.  A pricing advisor must be able to communicate their ideas and reasoning to their clients in ways that resonate.  Clients can only make good decisions when they understand the options.  Helpful attitude – Pricing advisors must know their role is to advise, not make decisions.  Their job is to help their clients make the best decisions possible.  This requires an attitude of service, not a belief that they know everything.   Is Mark Stiving a good pricing advisor?  YES!  (I had to say that since I’m writing this.)  However, here is some supporting information. Pricing expertise – I’ve been in pricing for over 27 years.  Here are some highlights.  Ph.D. in pricing (marketing) from U.C. Berkeley Two pricing articles published in top tier academic journals Experience as a pricing executive at a $2B technology company Started, grew, and sold 2 businesses Helped companies with pricing in many different industries Author of Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits (Entrepreneur Press 2011) Author of Win Keep Grow: How to Price and Package to Accelerate Your Subscription Business (Morgan James Publishing, October 2021)  Communication skills – I love to teach and help people succeed.  As an educator, I’ve created ways to simplify pricing concepts so more people can learn and use them.  I’ve been teaching at least part-time most of my career.  Here are a few highlights to demonstrate my ability to communicate complex concepts. Distinguished Toastmaster  NPS score of 81 when teaching for Pragmatic Blog weekly on pricing since 2010.  Initially at pragmaticpricing.com and now impactpricing.com Host the Impact Pricing podcast Created 10 different pricing courses in my career … so far Helpful attitude – I will always tell you what I think, but all decisions are yours.  I am never upset if you don’t like or use my advice.  I know pricing better than you.  You know your company and market better than I do. My job is to make sure you have more relevant information to consider when making decisions.  Your job is to decide and execute. Our time together will be spent discussing your specific situations, me teaching how relevant pricing frameworks and strategies may apply, and us discussing whether and how to apply them.   Before committing to pricing, I was an electrical engineer and a sales engineer (with a quota).  These, plus my experience starting and running companies make me empathetic to every role inside your company.   

Jon Jennings is the Founder and Managing Partner of Jennings Executive Search, LLC. He began his career with a boutique recruiting firm, building relationships with C-Level accounting and finance professionals utilizing a research-based approach of study and analysis to best serve his clients.  In 2012, Jon took this approach to a larger firm where he worked with several CFOs to build entire accounting and finance departments and gain a large firm perspective in how to build a successful practice. This experience led to the creation of Jennings Executive Search, LLC.  In this episode, Jon talks about how he matches pricing talents depending on a strategy the company uses and each company’s preferences, what screening process he uses when looking for pricing people.  He also shares how he guides companies in choosing the best pricing leader they can get as sometimes they don’t know what they are looking for. He also emphasizes on skill sets a pricing person should develop and acquire early on as he starts to elevate his career along the way.    Why you have to check out today’s podcast:  Learn how to build out your skillset as a pricing person so you get more relevant in today’s competitive world of pricing Find someone who knows Pricing people if you are looking to hire Pricing leaders Discover how to find Pricing people that match your company’s strategies to get a good fit to impact the business   “Think about what you're leaving on the table. If you're not trying to be creative around pricing, you're losing. If you're not thinking about ways to add some sort of dynamic element in trying to find ways to increase profitability from that standpoint, then someone else is.”  - Jon Jennings    Topics Covered:  01:39 - How he got into Pricing  03:15 - What do they focus on when hiring Pricing people  03:50 - How the company’s strategy matter when hiring Pricing people  05:42 - Delineation of roles among Pricing analyst, the VP, and the middle level  07:03 - HIs screening when looking for Pricing leaders  08:37 - How they provide guidance to companies when looking for Pricing leaders  09:39 - Building off of the job description, value-based principles, and the roadmap of the company to find potential Pricing leaders  11:53 - How he helps clients find Pricing people  13:49 - Starting with questions to convince a company to hire a pricing person  15:10 - Suggesting to companies to listen to Impact Pricing    15:32 - How value-based pricing makes sense in the world of recruitment  16:48 - Skillset you need to build as a pricing person early on in your career  18:16 - What more you can do to expand your capabilities as a Pricing person  19:40 - Beg, borrow and steal  20:44 - Be a driver and not a whiner  21:06 - Are pricing people well compensated  22:37 - Setting differentiators for Pricing persons to match with client companies preferences  23:48 - Setting expectations for yourself and executing it  25:20 - The strengths and weaknesses of a consulting talent  27:15 - HIs impactful advice to help you in your business    Key Takeaways:  “Our job is to find people who make impacts with fitting culturally and have a history of really impacting the business.” - Jon Jennings  “It's really about me kind of telling them [client companies] a story, and asking questions to see if I can guide them to a more dynamic solution if they're not already there.”  - Jon Jennings  “I always start with questions. Because I can't give advice without context.”  - Jon Jennings  “If I'm advising someone, I have to build out their skill set. There's a couple of elements that you want especially nowadays. Get into as much data science as you can, teach yourself coding. It doesn't matter, as you get to higher levels, obviously, you're not going to utilize that as much, but you're going to still use that a little bit.”  - Jon Jennings  “As you move up the organization, it's about reaching out across company lines, and not being afraid to go talk to the marketing person, pick people's brains. Try to expand that knowledge as much as you can and just always be learning. That's how you can elevate your career.”  - Jon Jennings  “Be a driver. Don't be afraid to challenge above you. If you believe in your concept, just be the squeaky wheel until you get some traction.”   - Jon Jennings  “Being mindful of constantly trying to improve your strategy and looking at competitive advantage and all different elements is 100% key.”  - Jon Jennings    Resources / People mentioned:  Professional Pricing Society McKinsey BCG   Connect with Jon Jennings:  www.jenningsexec.com LinkedIn Email: jon@jenningsexec.com   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: mark@impactpricing.com    LinkedIn  

If you've ever asked yourself the question, can I raise my prices?   Or wondered about things like:   • What is the most effective way to arrive at a price • What process should we employ • What factors should we weight or variables to consider   This podcast is for you: High-Impact Pricing with Mark Stiving   We cover:   1. Value based pricing 2. The importance of finding your value-metric 3. How determine how people measure value   And much more.

Make sure you're not leaving money on the table! Listen to our conversation with the  Chief Pricing Educator  of Impact Pricing, Mark Stiving. Get ready to have several

Mark Stiving has studied, led and coached businesses through the lens of pricing for 25 years. His company Impact Pricing is dedicated to educating B2B companies about pricing and value. He has driven company-wide pricing initiatives worth hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental profit. He started and sold three companies, improving his championship pricing skills in each one. His book, Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits, is a highly readable and practical manual (4.9 stars on Amazon). Selected shownotes: The makings of a world-renowned pricing and value expert - how Mark Stiving became an international pricing educator Why pricing matters in business and why accountants especially should care about pricing The different kinds of pricing, starting with the billable hour and ending with subscription pricing The problems accountants (and others in professional services) have that doesn't always apply to other sectors What exactly value is and how it figures into different pricing models Why accountants have problems with value-based pricing and fail to understand the nuances of pricing The two decisions buyers make in assessing a purchase and deciding value for money How the rigid structure of the billable hour and timesheets has stopped accountants from embracing more effective and profitable methods of pricing their services Why the 'value conversation' is so important for accountants when talking to their clients, and how to use it to price services better Shout out to Ron Baker, the 'godfather of pricing', and where Mark Stiving takes issue with his stance on timesheets The importance for accountants of involving the client in the determination of value, ROI and pricing metrics Whether it's possible to value price for anything, such as accounting audits or basic commodities Why there is no such thing as a commodity and how sellers can charge differently for what seems to be a basic, standardised product What an accountant can do when they don't know how long a job, project or particular outcome will take The biggest risk accountants face in moving from hourly to value based pricing The single best pricing technique that accountants can use to put together compelling packages, products and services for clients How lifetime value factors into value pricing, particularly with longer term projects When it's okay for an accountant to discount their prices or even offer services or advice for free When a lower price might overcome a buyer's inertia to make a purchase How accountants can get started with value pricing, both in negotiation and mindset terms Tips to drive a better pricing culture and a more positive attitude to pricing in your accounting firm. Contact Mark here: https://impactpricing.com/ (Website) https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ (LinkedIn)

Mark Stiving of Impact Pricing discusses the different types of pricing structures, and how to decide how to price your products and services.

Mark Stiving, Ph.D., MBA, is a widely recognized pricing expert and marketing pro who teaches companies how to boost revenues and realize their true value. Theresa French is the Sales and Marketing Operations Manager at Impact Pricing.  Pricing has been a lifelong passion for Mark. As a child, he contemplated why companies always use 99 cent price endings, which led to the question, "Do companies think we're stupid?" As Mark would admit it, he feels guilty every time he is selling, that's why he wants everyone to know what he is doing, and the reason why he does Impact Pricing Podcast. In this episode, Theresa and Mark talked about IP’s program called Guidance for Pricing Success(GPS), sharing everything you need to know about it, who this program for, what's in it for you, and what solution this would ultimately provide to a company's faster revenue growth. Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Find out why companies should go for Guidance for Pricing Success(GPS) over hiring a pricing consultant Discover the ultimate value you can earn from the courses offered in Champions of Value Learn about the impact value conversation brings to your product, to your customer, and ultimately to your company’s profitability   “Every company I’ve ever talked with and I’ve ever worked with, they don’t understand what value really means.” – Mark Stiving   Increase Your Pricing Knowledge: Become a Champions of Value INSIDER! To sign up go to insider.championsofvalue.com   Topics Covered:   01:43 – Mark talks about a program he’s releasing called Guidance for Pricing Success (GPS) 02:58 – For whom is Guidance for Pricing Success(GPS)? 04:45 – Who can take the most advantage from The Champions of Value? 06:13 – Convincing reasons why you should go for GPS over hiring a consultant 08:20 – What company challenge is GPS creating a solution for?  09:55 – Strengthening the value conversation 11:51 – How to go about value conversations and how to have this conversation with a customer 13:09 – What’s in it for you in the courses Champions of Value offer and why you will get value way more than what you paid for the courses? 14:39 – Mark confessing his guilt in selling and helping you   Key Takeaways:   “Everybody needs GPS. If there was anything I could convince people of, it’s, you need to go understand value, how your customers perceive your value. Most companies have at least realize they want to move away from cost-plus pricing, they want to do value-based pricing. And yet they don’t understand value.” – Mark Stiving   “Champions of value is really about helping people learn way more about pricing and the things they need to know. And at the same time coaching them to deal with internal politics, or how to have meetings or how to do change management.” – Mark Stiving “The other thing for the champions of value is when we have smaller companies, companies that aren’t quite at the $50 million range. It’s pretty cost-effective if they send several people through the champions of value program, and then they can try to implement this themselves.” – Mark Stiving   “If you have somebody who understands value and puts themselves in the minds of the buyer, and we’ve really thought through this, well, then you’re much less likely to make those million-dollar mistakes.” – Mark Stiving   “CEOs have many different issues. Probably the one thing that they would say, ‘I’m not growing fast enough, I need faster revenue growth.’ And how do they go get faster revenue growth? Well, it turns out that probably what’s happening is the company has figured out how to deliver a lot of value to the marketplace, what they haven’t done is figured out how to capture that value.” – Mark Stiving   “Why wouldn’t you spend 100 bucks a month in order to get promoted in order to improve your career, and I don’t care who you are if you’re a pricing professional if you’re a product manager if you’re a product marketer if you’re in sales. If you understand value, the way your customers understand value, I guarantee you it will impact your career for the better.” – Mark Stiving   Connect with Mark Stiving:    Email: mark@impactpricing.com    LinkedIn https://www.championsofvalue.com/   Connect with Theresa French:    Email: theresa@impactpricing.com LinkedIn  

Today we are talking with Dr. Mark Stiving. Dr. Stiving is the Chief Pricing Educator for Impact Pricing. Dr. Stiving is a widely recognized pricing expert and marketing pro who teaches companies how to boost revenues and realize their true value. Welcome to the SubscriptionMaker Podcast. This is your host Zachary Alexander, Enterprise Architect at […] The post An Interview with Mark Stiving appeared first on SubscriptionMaker.

Mark Stiving Ph.D. is a widely recognized pricing expert with 27 years of experience. His mission is to educate people about pricing and value so they win more revenue at higher margins. In this Interview Mark talks about his origin story, benefits and challenges of value pricing, and why black box pricing isn't ideal LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Websites impactpricing.com, championsofvalue.com Impact Pricing Podcast podcast.impactpricing.com Ron Baker Podcast thesoulofenterprise.com

Mark Stiving of Impact Pricing and the Impact Pricing podcast and I talk about value-based pricing. We agree on how important it is for sales, marketing, and product management organization to have a coordinated approach to building value in the customer's mind, so that a value-based price is possible Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mark Stiving of Impact Pricing shares with us how we can price our offerings better. In this episode we discuss value-based pricing and why there is an advantage to list three offerings or three pitches at a time.

This week I’m excited to have special guest Mark Stiving on the show! Mark is the Chief Pricing Educator at Impact Pricing. Mark is the author of “Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits. He is also the host of the Impact Pricing Podcast.  Mark currently helps companies understand how buyers perceive their value and helps them create price offerings that better reflect their value. My kind of guy indeed! Mark and I discuss all things pricing on this episode of The Pricing is Positioning Podcast!    In this episode, Mark and I discuss Mark’s business background Pricing Endings Pricing online products and subscription-based services  Pricing for consultants and coaches  How buyers perceive value   Connect With Mark: Website- https://impactpricing.com/ Podcast- https://impactpricing.com/resources/podcasts/ LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Twitter- https://twitter.com/MarkStiving   Connect with Paul The Product Pricing Roadmap Web: www.paulklein.net LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulkleintv/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/paulkleintv Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/paulkleinTV/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/PaulKleinTV YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoQRkgXR4ClPAub12lXgPwg   Episode Links:  Subscription Growth Calculator - Free Spreadsheet www.championsofvalue.com Accelerate Your Subscription Business-Online Course Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry   *** EPISODE CREDITS: If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment. He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com   

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:  Learn about account-based marketing’s role in pricing your service  Know how to lead an effective pricing strategy and sales enablement by working closely with stakeholders  Discover how to effectively deliver strategic product marketing to your target market that increases your win rates    Natalie Louie is the Director of Product Marketing at Hired where she leads pricing strategy, and sales enablement while working closely with stakeholders to ensure alignment and executional excellence.   With over 20+ years of experience in Silicon Valley and Wall Street, Natalie delivers strategic product marketing and pricing expertise. Prior to Hired, Natalie was in PMM at Responsys and during the Oracle acquisition and was Head of Cloud Pricing Operations at the Oracle Marketing Cloud. She also serves as an advisor for Impact Pricing. Natalie currently loves living in the Bay Area with her husband and 3 children.  In this episode, Natalie shares her pricing expertise, deep knowledge, and specialties on improving operations, revenue, profits, integrations, partnerships, managing, SaaS pricing and packaging, product marketing, planning, and development. She also digs deeper into what account-based marketing is all about, how it is related to pricing and product marketing, also the different cross-functional duties of the organization in order to close deals and increase win rates.    “The trend is that marketing actually has a seat at the revenue table. Because with things like marketing automation, where we can impact top of the funnel leads coming in, we now have a direct lever that impacts revenue.”   – Natalie Louie    Get Accelerate Your Subscription Business: Your Blueprint to Packaging & Pricing for Growth Course at https://www.championsofvalue.com, Use the DISCOUNT CODE: ‘EARLYBIRD’, valid until October 31st, 2019.      Topics Covered:  00:46 – Natalie’s path into pricing  01:52 – Her big AHA moment at the PMM Summit, pricing’s trend in relation to product marketing  03:46 – Accelerate Your Subscription Business: Your Blueprint to Packaging & Pricing for Growth Course’s impact, the outcome on the actual on the pricing session that she did at the PMM Summit event  05:04 – Account-based marketing, what is this all about in relation to product management  08:37 – Looking at all the different personas inside an account, why you should dig deeper into it  09:54 – Creating conversations whose role is it, sales or marketing, or both?  10:16 – Keeping an eye on what’s happening on accounts and how people are interacting with the different digital and in-person touchpoints  11:31 – Personalizing content for your target market as a sample of account-based marketing making sure that the content you create is based on the company that you’re going after, and the actual people that are in the market  16:12 – Account-based marketing going hand in hand with pricing strategy  16:44 – What Portfolio Marketing is all about, tracking buyer personas to make sure that you know, there are results that have a good impact on the business  18:51 – Watching potential customers or buyers touchpoints – what do they care about, what kind of solutions should you be presenting to them or what should you be talking to them about  19:53  – Cross-functional coordination, why is this important, how daily stand-ups help your team strategize to win deals  22:00 – Product Marketing and sales enablement  22:31 – Natalie’s one piece of pricing advice that she thought could have a big impact on people’s business?    Key Takeaways:  “I see a lot of product marketers now focusing on pricing, on the packaging, on revenue much more, because now marketing can influence every revenue bucket.” – Natalie Louie    “Ideal portfolio marketing is not just one group or one team it’s everybody working together, being on the same page to make sure that we’re giving the customer what they want.” – Natalie Louie    “What we do is we bring in people from different cross-functional groups to come into our meetings and tell us what’s happening. And so the more alignment there is, we find that the better we are able to react and deliver what our customers want.” – Natalie Louie    Links and Resources Mentioned:    PMM Summit San Francisco  Ep9: Natalie Louie – Product Marketing and Pricing Expert  Product Marketing Alliance Pragmatic Marketing Salesforce Oracle IBM https://www.championsofvalue.com   Connect with Natalie Louie  LinkedIn    Connect with Mark Stiving   Email: mark@impactpricing.com   LinkedIn   Twitter  

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:  Get into grips with the latest thinking on assessing and formulating subscription pricing strategies  Challenges of people and companies in understanding, creating and talking about pricing and value to the customers  Learn how   the Accelerate Your Subscription Business course can help your business create and capture more value in your business  Why don't you win deals at higher prices? You don't get paid enough for the value you create. Or do you build products that your customers don’t value (and don’t buy)?  Today, we have no guests. It’s just going to be Mark talking about  Impact Pricing’s latest course Accelerate Your Subscription Business: Your Blueprint to Packaging & Pricing for Growth. A course will help YOU drive growth in your subscription business by giving you clarity and certainty around which tasks drive growth at your current stage.    Listen in to hear the exciting things that Mark has in store for companies, entrepreneurs, and experts that will help them price offerings to capture more of the value they create. Please afford a few minutes to tell you about the course, share a couple of nuggets from the course, and stories behind the journey of creating the course.      “There's so much to learn. Many people and companies don't understand about value, how to sell it, how to create it, how to talk about it, how to figure out what it is to the customer. These are fascinating topics for me.”  - Mark Stiving      Get Accelerate Your Subscription Business: Your Blueprint to Packaging & Pricing for Growth Course at https://www.championsofvalue.com, Use the DISCOUNT CODE: ‘EARLYBIRD’, valid until October 31st, 2019.        Topics Covered:      00:39 – Mark’s passion for creating courses to help people and experts about pricing and value, why he left Pragmatic Marketing despite loving creating and teaching about pricing  01:51 – All about Subscription Businesses, Mark’s  AHA after AHA moment that made him decide to create a course around this industry  04:03 – 'Love Win. Keep Grow. Makes it simple.'  and more...what people say about the course   06:35 – Where to get Accelerate Your Subscription Business: Your Blueprint to Packaging & Pricing for Growth: Checkout: https://www.championsofvalue.com     People and Resources Mentioned   Zoom  LinkedIn  Pragmatic Marketing  Tomasz Tunguz' Red Point Ventures  Bessemer Ventures  www.zuora.com  Patrick Campbell of ProfitWell  Natalie Louie-Kao     Connect with Mark Stiving   Email: mark@impactpricing.com      LinkedIn   Twitter   https://www.championsofvalue.com   

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:  Learn how Mark discover his pricing superpower through a heartbreak  What it is with LinkedIn’s algorithm that made him decide to build a close-knit community of pricing experts called Champion of Value’  Find-out what subscription value management is all about     Today, we have no guests. It’s just going to be Mark talking about the far better things ahead with Impact Pricing.  Listen in to hear the exciting things that Mark has in store for companies, entrepreneurs, and experts that will help them price offerings to capture more of the value they create.     “In pricing what we have to do is we have to look at each person’s decisions.  They’re going to buy my product or not. They’re going to buy my product or my competitor’s products. They’re going to make that decision in their own best interest. And our job has to be to understand that decision they’re about to make and help them understand that it’s in their best interest to choose our product.”  – Mark Stiving    Topics Covered:    00:51 – Jay Baer of Convince & Convert talk at National Speakers Association Conference, what is the issue with LinkedIn viewing analytics for your shared posts that unable followers to see your content  02:22 – Mark discovering his pricing superpower through a heartbreak, why people make a decision in their own self-interest  08:20 – Why Mark can’t trust Linkedin- not getting your content out to everybody who wants to see it  08:33 – Building the Champions of Value community and the launch of Impact Pricing’s upcoming courses   09:32 – Subscription Value Management  11:05 – Solo cast, Interview, or both? What do you want to hear?     People and Resources Mentioned  Jay Baer of Convince & Convert  National Speakers Association    Connect with Mark Stiving  Email: mark@impactpricing.com     LinkedIn  Twitter   

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:  Learn how pricing in retail is done, the strategies to implement to get the right data analytics for value pricing  Why throwing out a number before a customer tells you your value to them is a mistake  Understanding  the impact of category management on retailer prices and performance: theory and evidence    Stacy Sifleet is a consultant whose expertise includes pricing strategy, business process improvement, change management, inventory, S&OP, advanced problem solving, strategic planning and procurement.  In this episode Stacy shares how using data analytics, correctly, identifies value levers for customized pricing, especially in the B2C market.    “I think it is important that once you figure out what you want your pricing strategy to be, figure out how to make it easy for your team to execute it.”  –Stacy Sifleet     Topics Covered:   00:45 – Stacy’s backstory in pricing  01:22 - Her biggest mistake in pricing: Why throwing out your number to a customer without knowing your value to them is a mistake  06:10 - Differences between B2C and  B2B in business systems’ pricing  08:53 - How using data analytics, correctly, identifies value levers for customized pricing  09:40 - What is category management is all about and its relation to value pricing  16:11 - How pricing in the retail industry is done?  20:39 - Stacy’s favorite data tools and strategy she implements to get the value pricing right    Key Takeaways:   “When I think about B2B, I think the sales team, even if the're working on  a specific account, they really should be diving into the data across their account and say.’ How are these customers different? Which of these customers add more value to the business?' You cannot do that just by  conversation, you have to look at the numbers.” –Stacy Sifleet     Connect With Stacy Sifleet  https://www.supplyvelocity.com  Email:stacy@supplyvelocity.com  LinkedIn          Connect with Mark Stiving     Email: mark@impactpricing.com     LinkedIn     Twitter  

Mark Stiving is chief pricing educator at Impact Pricing.  He earned a Ph.D. in pricing, wrote a book on pricing, and wrote hundreds of articles and blogs.  He was a pricing executive and has coached many companies on pricing and value. He currently shares his pricing knowledge on the podcast, Impact Pricing.  In this episode, Mark talks about how value-based pricing helps a business be more profitable through an understanding of pricing and value.    “Value-based pricing simply means charge what your customers are willing to pay.” –Mark Stiving   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Know your way to more profitable pricing by adopting value-based pricing Learn why you should charge higher prices for your services Know why pricing is the most powerful tool in your marketing mix   Learn More about the 3X Value Growth Model Go to www.3xvaluegrowth.com/model     Episode Takeaways: Different Revenue Buckets that Subscriptions Have to Deal With The first bucket is customer acquisition and everybody deals with how do I go when new customers. The second bucket is customer retention; how do I keep the people who I’ve won. And this is a real pain point when people drop out so it’s an easy one to not ignore. But the third one is how do I grow my existing customers. How do I get my current customers to pay me more money? The third bucket is revenue bucket that almost everybody ignores.    Resources|Links Subscription Growth Calculator: Gain valuable insight when you try our proprietary Subscription Growth Calculator at no cost. This powerful tool helps you determine how to grow your company through each key revenue bucket: acquisition, retention, and expansion. get it here: www.impactpricing.com/sgc   Connect with Mark Stiving  Email: mark@impactpricing.com  www.impactpricing.com LinkedIn  Twitter  Podcast   Enjoyed the Podcast? Please subscribe on iTunes for updates  

Ed and Ron are honored to interview fellow Professional Pricing Society colleague, Mark Stiving. Why don't you win deals at higher prices? You don't get paid enough for the value you create. Or do you build products that your customers don't value (and don't buy)? Mark's passion is teaching the power of pricing. He evangelizes pricing at major conferences and has conducted over 400 days of corporate training around the globe. Mark's Price class maintains a net promoter score (NPS) of 81, higher than Apple's. Mark also writes about pricing. His book, Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits, is a highly readable and practical manual (4.9 stars on Amazon). Be sure not to miss this episode!

Ed and Ron are honored to interview fellow Professional Pricing Society colleague, Mark Stiving. Why don't you win deals at higher prices? You don't get paid enough for the value you create. Or do you build products that your customers don't value (and don't buy)? Mark's passion is teaching the power of pricing. He evangelizes pricing at major conferences and has conducted over 400 days of corporate training around the globe. Mark's Price class maintains a net promoter score (NPS) of 81, higher than Apple's. Mark also writes about pricing. His book, Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits, is a highly readable and practical manual (4.9 stars on Amazon). Be sure not to miss this episode!

Ed and Ron are honored to interview fellow Professional Pricing Society colleague, Mark Stiving. Why don't you win deals at higher prices? You don't get paid enough for the value you create. Or do you build products that your customers don't value (and don't buy)? Mark's passion is teaching the power of pricing. He evangelizes pricing at major conferences and has conducted over 400 days of corporate training around the globe. Mark's Price class maintains a net promoter score (NPS) of 81, higher than Apple's. Mark also writes about pricing. His book, Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits, is a highly readable and practical manual (4.9 stars on Amazon). Be sure not to miss this episode!

Where is Impact Pricing heading? What are our goals?   Many questions have been raised to us when we started the company.  What is the company doing? How do we run our business? How do we make money? But the question I like the most is about defining our goals.   In today’s podcast, I’ll discuss more of it with the hope that it’ll spark more of your interest in pricing.      “Our vision is to build a company focused on educating other companies about pricing and value.” – Mark Stiving, Chief Pricing Educator   Stay updated on all thing pricing. Subscribe to ‘The Pricing Perspective’ here   The Value in Value   Starting another new company has always been a challenge.  One of the most significant problems I see though in almost every single company is they don't understand value. Salespeople don't know how to sell it. Marketers can't talk about it. Product teams don't build it. It is a huge problem, and that was going to be my main focus. I help companies know what value is and help them create, communicate and capture it through education. I realized I don't want to be a consultant.  I want to be an educator.    The Power of Subscriptions  Subscription pricing is the hype for years now.  It is amazingly different and powerful. There are several excellent sources of information about managing subscription businesses, and they all seem to be on the leading edge. I fathomed nobody's teaching the basics and so, I decided to focus on pricing.     Choosing between Value or Subscriptions spells dilemma  Choosing between these two this seems like a significant problem to most people who are into pricing.    1st dilemma: Do I focus on subscriptions or value or both?  When coaching clients, I always tell them the focus is key. You have to pick.  Eventually, I chose subscriptions. I'm hoping in six months I can start shifting back toward value and you'll hear more about later.    2nd dilemma: Should I be a small Solopreneur or Should I build a company to do what I want to do?  I have to build a company. There's so much pricing knowledge to share and impact. Pricing is destined to be more than my personal brand. Currently, we have six part-time people and me to work on marketing and content. I'm the only full-time employee, but the team is amazing and growing. We’re unbelievably positive with our cash flows already.     Our Products    We currently sell two products, but we don't actively market them.  Mentoring I often get calls from companies who want me to do consulting for them, but I don't want to be a consultant. Instead, I offer the buyer a mentoring program and these consist of weekly phone calls with me to talk about their pricing issues. They do the work. I spoke with them about it. It works out well for both of us because my mentoring program costs a whole lot less than a consultant would and they learn along the way. I get to keep my fingers involved in real problems and test new ways of explaining things one person at a time.    Custom Content Twice in our companies have called and asked for webinars on specific topics.  One was pricing metrics, and the other was the psychological aspects of pricing.  Our first real product is set to launch in May. It is our course on subscription pricing.  The webinar has various topics, and one of them is the comparison between subscriptions and traditional business.      Here is a rundown of the differences between these two types:  Both are the source of revenue and revenue growth. Traditional companies rely almost exclusively on winning new customers.  Subscriptions do the same, but they also focused on retaining the current customers and expanding or growing the revenue they get from existing customers. These required new metrics, new thinking, and new pricing methodologies.  The pricing lever companies use in the subscription are a little bit different than they are in traditional. Both traditional and subscription businesses are much better off when they define their market segments, so that's a common lever between the two packaging.  Best packaging is a standard lever, but traditional businesses usually define a set of products and rarely change them. Subscription businesses use packages, frequently change them and often based on usage data.  Subscriptions use pricing metric while traditional companies don’t.  It is objectively a critical topic to know what businesses charge.     I had a shocking request from a very well respected B2B (business to business) subscription-based company from Silicon Valley and asked me if I could teach them the pricing metrics.  It was an unexpected question since I assume, they already knew this. I suppose they knew way more about this topic than I did since they live it.    “All companies set prices, yet very few know what they're doing when they're setting their prices. Why wouldn't that be the case with subscription pricing as well?” - Mark Stiving   We said yes to the opportunity, and that's part of the subscription pricing course. It is one piece of evidence that gives me massive hope that there's going to be a fantastic demand for this course.    Our Subscription Pricing Course   In our model, our very first class consisted of four 90-minute modules, jam-packed with information about subscription businesses.  The two-day class has lots of exercises so, the students will know the topic more in-depth. The course is instructor-led. It will either be in person or online, so we hit a lot of interaction and feedback from our students.    The future of Impact Pricing  Our vision is to build a company focused on educating other companies about pricing and value. We're currently looking at a few video training platforms and will likely offer a course on how costs related to pricing for free. We're going to provide that one for free as a way to gain experience on the platform and to get feedback on that type of training from our clients. We will add the topics of creating, communicating, and capturing value as soon as we possibly can. Since we're about to launch the first product and hoping that with all signs, it's going to do exceptionally well. We've started to think about how to scale this as a business and, you’ll hear from us on that soon.  But for now, we don’t need an answer immediately.    Connect with Mark Stiving  Email:mark@impactpricing.com  LinkedIn  Twitter   

He’s Back! Former Pragmatic Institute instructor and pricing guru Mark Stiving of Impact Pricing is back on our podcast, and this time he’s talking about subscription models. So if you’ve ever wanted to know how to successfully and effectively price your subscription models to drive value and create revenue, you won’t want to miss this episode of PragmaticLive!   Want to learn more about pricing? Make sure you register for our Price course today. And make sure you listen to our other great podcasts, and join us for the best product training in the world. Help us get a view of the product industry today by participating in our annual survey. Make sure your voice is heard!

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:  Learn what a customer willing to pay Learn why it is much better not to do hourly billing How can you move beyond the fundamentals to “pricing segmentation   Summary   Mark Stiving, our host has a Ph.D. in Pricing from UC Berkeley. For over 25 years he has studied, helped and led businesses through the lens of pricing, a radically different approach from other business experts. In this episode, Mark shares the backstory how he started into the pricing career,  the decision-making process of a customer right before they buy a product and the process how he helps companies discover how buyers perceive value and how to price their offerings to capture more of the value they create to grow their business and their profits.   “People are not price sensitive when they’re making the “Will I” decision and people are very price sensitive when they are making “Which One” decision.” – Mark Stiving   Stay updated on all thing pricing.  Subscribe to the 'Impact Pricing Perspective' here   Topics Covered: 01:10 – Mark talks about his journey how he started into pricing 02:36 – How he takes so much courage to leave Pragmatic Marketing and build his own business 10:19 – Mark’s thoughts regarding the value-based pricing concern of companies 12:30 – Explanation about segmentation between the individual and general outcome in pricing 15:50 – How he helps people perceive value and how to price their offerings 24:00 – Mark’s explains the concept of ‘Which One and Will I’: Understanding the decision customer is making right before he buys your product     Key Takeaways:   “Whenever somebody asks me how I will go up and pricing this, I stepped back and asked, What decision are they making? I think people could adopt that attitude it would have a huge impact on how much they could achieve.” – Mark Stiving   “Buyers don’t understand our products or the outcome they can achieve with our products and what’s funny is we don’t understand our buyers. If we don’t have one of those value conversations, there is no way that we could pick either side to understand the value.” – Mark Stiving   Resources Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits     Connect with Mark Stiving Email:mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn Twitter   Connect with Kirk Bowman: LinkedIn artofvalue.com

Welcome to Impact Pricing. The podcast where we discuss pricing, value, and the intricate relationships between them. I'm Mark Stiving and I'll be the host. I love pricing. I love that it's quantitative. Eventually, it has to become a number. You can measure it. I also love that it's qualitative. The goal is to figure out how much people value your offer which of course is impossible to do. It's a continuous puzzle. I love that most companies don't understand pricing so there's huge value in having these conversations and helping them. There is so much to absolutely adore about pricing. And this podcast is all about pricing, which of course is all about value. As you listen you'll be eavesdropping on me learning from other professionals in pricing, sales, and business. You'll hear my thoughts as a pricing expert applied to the current topics. Best of all you will walk away with tips and tricks on how to improve your business just by focusing on the price. Pricing is such an amazing topic. It's complex quantitative and psychological. It's huge, powerful, and emotional. Most of all though pricing is fun. Please join me on this hopefully amazing journey through the world of pricing.   Connect with Mark Stiving LinkedIn Twitter Facebook

The rise of unauthorized sales of discounted products in marketplaces today is eroding the prices and margins for many businesses. Distributors and retailers have to reduce their prices to match the discounts on online marketplaces, and distributors and retailers are in turn demanding lower prices from manufacturers. All of this is causing a cascading effect on companies’ prices and margins that are dramatically reducing company profits. Whitney Gibson, partner at the law firm Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease and head of the internet brand and reputation group discusses this issue and ways brands are fighting back in this #PricingPodcast. Presented by: Whitney Gibson

Mark Stiving has a Ph.D. in Pricing from UC Berkeley. He is the author of Impact Pricing and writes a popular blog PragmaticPricing.com. He is consultant and teacher at Pragmatic Marketing, which helps product managers at Fortune 1000 companies define, build and market great products. What Is the Customer Willing to Pay? What is the […] The post Which One? or Will I? with Mark Stiving – 050 appeared first on Art Of Value.

Happy Thanksgiving! – What better opportunity for me to say thank you to our listeners! We hope these podcasts have made a positive difference in your college planning. If you have found these helpful please share this podcast with others in the planning process. I'm “going solo” in this podcast, and I'm covering the six types of colleges out there and how they have an impact on your bottom line. I've developed a classification of colleges, and based on your student's or your family's profile, you may see a perfect fit among these classes. I know some families have already made a decision to stick with state schools because they feel they offer the lowest cost for the value, and it's simply what they can afford. Others can get a similar if not better deal by going a different route, so let's break this down.

We all put a price on ourselves.  If you have a "job," then your wages are your price.  If you are a consultant or service provider, then you have to come up with a way to charge your customers.  That's putting a price on yourself.  Turns out that pricing you uses the same concepts as pricing a product.  Join me in a potentially lively conversation with pricing expert Mark Stiving, Ph.D. and you will walk away knowing if you should ask for a raise or change your prices.     Mark is a sought after speaker and author and explores with his audiences this least understood yet most powerful concept, the correlation of pricing to value.  His new book, Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits, was written to further share his expertise.  Additionally, Mark has a very entertaining and educational blog called PragmaticPricing.com where he introduces readers to the finer points of this significant subject.   So tune in and find out if you should be asking for a raise!

We all put a price on ourselves.  If you have a "job," then your wages are your price.  If you are a consultant or service provider, then you have to come up with a way to charge your customers.  That's putting a price on yourself.  Turns out that pricing you uses the same concepts as pricing a product.  Join me in a potentially lively conversation with pricing expert Mark Stiving, Ph.D. and you will walk away knowing if you should ask for a raise or change your prices.     Mark is a sought after speaker and author and explores with his audiences this least understood yet most powerful concept, the correlation of pricing to value.  His new book, Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits, was written to further share his expertise.  Additionally, Mark has a very entertaining and educational blog called PragmaticPricing.com where he introduces readers to the finer points of this significant subject.   So tune in and find out if you should be asking for a raise!

Join me Saturday, March 16th as I talk with Pricing Expert Mark Stiving and take LIVE calls so you can ask him your pricing questions!   If you have ever wanted to know more about how to set prices, this is your chance.  Mark is a pricing expert (practitioner, author, academic) with the unique ability to communicate a potentially dry topic in a manner that is fun yet informative.     Send me a note at wendy@wendyhansonconnects.com if you have a question about pricing your service or product but can't make the show.

Join me Saturday, March 16th as I talk with Pricing Expert Mark Stiving and take LIVE calls so you can ask him your pricing questions!   If you have ever wanted to know more about how to set prices, this is your chance.  Mark is a pricing expert (practitioner, author, academic) with the unique ability to communicate a potentially dry topic in a manner that is fun yet informative.     Send me a note at wendy@wendyhansonconnects.com if you have a question about pricing your service or product but can't make the show.