Podcasts about vendavo

Jared Smith is the CEO of PriceSmith, a consulting firm specializing in pricing strategies for distributors and light manufacturers. With a background in pricing systems from Vendavo and experience as an adjunct professor at Oklahoma State, Jared brings a wealth of knowledge to the table. He is passionate about helping companies optimize their pricing strategies to capture more value. In this episode, Jared shares his journey from Frito-Lay to leading pricing innovation in the B2B distribution space. Together, they explore the key distinctions between B2B and B2C pricing models, especially the negotiation-heavy and data-rich nature of distribution.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Learn about the differences between B2B and B2C pricing strategies. Understand the role of pricing systems in managing large SKU portfolios in distributorship. Discover how to effectively segment customers for better pricing strategies.   “Invest in your master data and keep chipping away at it. Start with 80/20 of your products and get that right.”  – Jared Smith   Topics Covered: 01:42 - Jared shares how he got into pricing after his MBA and experiences at Frito-Lay and in B2B distribution. 02:57 - Discussion on the differences between B2C and B2B pricing, including transparency and data access. 06:06 - Challenges in understanding why customers buy and the limitations of data analytics. 12:55 - Jared explains his focus on distribution and the unique challenges it presents. 14:40 - Discussion on the relevance and limitations of cost-plus pricing in distribution. 19:17 - Exploration of how to implement good, better, best pricing in distribution. 25:28 - Discussion on whether distributors publish prices or rely on quotes for transactions. 26:33 - Jared shares insights from Uber experiences and how they relate to distribution pricing. 31:27 - The impact of customer loyalty on pricing strategies and potential risks. 32:55 - Jared's key piece of advice on investing in master data for better pricing strategies. 33:58 - Connect with Jared.   Key Takeaways: “Distribution is an amazing thing. Obviously, it's worldwide. And the simple fact of it, it has two very unique aspects. The first one, a lot of SKUs. And then, the second one is that you have a lot of customers.” – Jared Smith   People/Resources Mentioned: PriceSmith: https://www.pricesmith.com/ Vendavo: https://www.vendavo.com/ Oklahoma State University: https://www.okstate.edu/ Pepsi: https://www.pepsi.com/ Frito-Lay: https://www.fritolay.com/ Coca-Cola: https://www.coca-cola.com/ Apple: https://www.apple.com/ LG: https://www.lg.com/ Uber: https://www.uber.com/ Lyft: https://www.lyft.com/   Connect with Jared Smith: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredpaulsmith/ Email: jared@pricesmith.com   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com  

Steven Forth is Ibbaka's Co-Founder, CEO, and Partner. Ibbaka is a strategic pricing advisory firm. In this episode, Steven shares the potential commoditization of AI pricing agents, explaining how their replication and standardization could drive down differentiation and value. He explores the interplay between AI-driven sales and buying processes, emphasizing that businesses must consider how AI will influence purchasing decisions. He also touches on the potential of AI to simplify legal tasks.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Learn how AI-powered pricing agents compare to SaaS models and why they might face rapid commoditization in the evolving AI landscape. Discover why AI-driven buying decisions are just as important as AI-powered selling strategies—and what that means for the future of pricing. Find out how DeepSeek's approach to AI training and pricing could shake up the industry, with potential implications for OpenAI and other major players.   "I think that they need to put themselves in the buyer's shoes and ask themselves, how would I be using AI to make a buying decision?" - Steven Forth   Topics Covered: 01:23 - Explaining the four types of AI products and how they impact pricing, automation, and value creation 09:51 - Exploring whether AI agents will become commoditized 12:46 - How complex pricing workflows require multiple AI agents working together as a service, rather than a single standalone pricing agent 14:17 - Explaining that differentiated AI agents with better performance will still command higher prices 19:20 - Highlighting how DeepSeek's advancements in post-training optimization and lower pricing could drive broader AI adoption 21:20 - What makes AI agents more prone to commoditization  23:22 - How SaaS solutions are less prone to commoditization than AI agents  26:32 - Suggesting that tasks like real estate conveyance could be automated by AI agents 29:02 - Steven's best pricing advice   Key Takeaways: "A lot of the use cases for outcome-based pricing or results-based pricing really only become relevant when an action is taken on your behalf. And you can evaluate the value of that action and the success of that action." - Steven Forth "Are all agents by nature more subject to commoditization than other parts of the ecology, like copilots or service as software or generators? My gut feeling is that there are going to be agents that are highly differentiated because they rely on highly customized underlying language models and highly tuned prompt sequences that would not be easy for someone else to recreate. And that they'll be able to make better decisions." - Steven Forth "Apart from very specific and narrow cases, I don't think pricing is going to be done by agents. Pricing will be service as software." - Steven Forth   People/Resources Mentioned: Grammarly: https://www.grammarly.com Copilot: https://copilot.microsoft.com/onboarding ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/ Hugging Face: https://huggingface.co Hubspot: https://www.hubspot.com FinnAI: https://www.finnai.io/en LegalZoom: https://www.legalzoom.com Zendesk: https://www.zendesk.com Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/ Pros: https://pros.com Vendavo: https://www.vendavo.com Zilliant: https://zilliant.com Pricefx: https://www.pricefx.com Maxio: https://www.maxio.com DeepSeek: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeepSeek   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 Scale Up Valley podcast, Mike Dias interviews Eric Carrasquilla, CEO of Vendavo. They discuss Eric's journey from product management to CEO, the value proposition of Vendavo as a commercial operating system, and key insights from Eric's first 90 days in the role. Eric emphasizes the importance of clarity, speed, and culture in leadership, and introduces the V2MOM framework as a tool for organizational alignment. The conversation also touches on building the right team and fostering a culture that supports growth and success. Takeaways Vendavo helps companies unlock profitable growth. Speed in decision-making is essential for success. Culture is set by the CEO and is vital for the organization. Growth mindset is necessary in a scale-up environment. Simplifying goals helps in achieving clarity and focus. Building the right team is critical for achieving goals. Sound Bites "I'm a recovering product guy." "Speed is about decisiveness." "Culture is a you thing." "You should watch what I do." "It's about who you need to become." "It's a very selfish thing." "You gotta earn it every day." "We are in the rentals business." "A little bit of empathy goes a long way." Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Vendavo and Eric Carrasquilla 02:31 Understanding Vendavo's Value Proposition 10:35 Key Insights from Eric's First 90 Days as CEO 16:10 The V2MOM Framework and Its Importance 20:29 Building the Right Team and Culture 21:40 Building a People-Centric Culture 24:03 The Commercial Operating System 25:34 Partner-Led SaaS Strategy 26:32 Customer Success as a Priority 28:11 Strategic Cross-Functional Initiatives 30:35 Leadership Development and Clarity 32:52 Balancing Discipline and Detachment 35:26 The Importance of Resilience 37:27 Building High-Performing Teams 39:57 Navigating the CEO Journey

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 emphasizes the importance of shaping willingness to pay by understanding and communicating real value to customers. He also highlights the role of AI and context-driven pricing in adapting to customer needs dynamically, stressing that consistent delivery and documentation of promised value are crucial for long-term retention.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Explore the nuances of pricing strategies, distinguishing between perceived, real, and proven value and how each impacts customer retention and willingness to pay. Learn why documenting value delivered to customers can significantly reduce churn, with actionable steps to demonstrate value in B2B sales. Gain insights on Context-Driven Pricing, offering a fresh approach to optimize pricing in real time.   "You need to make sure that the value you promise in sales is the value that you deliver and that you can document that value. Because if you don't do that, you're going to struggle with renewals." - Steven Forth   Topics Covered: 02:09 - Why Steven believes that value-based pricing and willingness to pay are distinct, with value coming first shaping willingness to pay 06:19 - How techniques from behavioral economics, like anchoring, actually impact value perception rather than solely increasing willingness to pay 07:12 - Acknowledging Mark's example of using "good-better-best" as a framing strategy but argues that it's more than just a "trick" 10:40 - Introducing his concept of generative pricing, which leverages generative AI to dynamically adjust product configurations and prices based on each buyer's context 12:35 - Steven emphasizes the need for a clear value model rather than solely relying on AI-driven willingness-to-pay estimates 14:49 - Highlights how value is not only unique to each customer but also varies over time for the same customer 17:05 - Underscoring that willingness to pay is actively shaped by how a company communicates and delivers value 18:34 - Emphasizes the need for a value model in pricing, contrasting it with software approaches like revenue management that estimate willingness to pay without actively shaping it 20:37 - Explaining why B2B pricing cannot rely on traditional price elasticity curves 21:36 - Steven's best pricing advice   Key Takeaways: "Willingness to pay is an outcome that you shape. It's not something that is given to you by something outside of your product and how you sell it, and that you play a huge role in defining the context." - Steven Forth "We want people to pay a fair amount of money. If I can trick someone into paying more than something's valuable, greater than its actual value, and value in this case means the economic return they're going to get, I don't think I've done myself a service in the long term." - Steven Forth   People/Resources Mentioned: Pros: https://pros.com Pricefx: https://www.pricefx.com Zilliant: https://zilliant.com Vendavo: https://www.vendavo.com Tom Nagle: https://impactpricing.com/podcast/604-insights-into-value-based-pricing-strategies-for-b2b-with-tom-nagle/ Barret Thompson: https://impactpricing.com/?s=barrett+thompson B.F. Skinner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner   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  

Have you been wondering how to best leverage customer reference calls to make better CPQ Solution decisions? In this episode, we dive into the essential questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how. We'll share practical tips and best practices to make the most of these important and powerful calls.

Join us for an insightful conversation with Heather Hershey, the Digital Commerce Research Director at IDC. Heather, a self-made entrepreneur with a unique journey from adult learner to commerce expert, shares her personal experiences and industry insights. In this episode, we dive deep into the world of IDC Analyst Reports and explore the current state of CPQ. Heather discusses her early days in CPQ, the valuable lessons learned from recent ProductScape and MarketScape reports, and her surprising discoveries during CPQ solution reviews. We also cover hot topics like digital quoting, subscriptions, and the "everything as a service" trend. Heather provides her expert perspective on these issues and shares her thoughts on the future of CPQ. Don't miss this opportunity to hear from one of the industry's leading analysts. Tune in to learn more about IDC's research and gain valuable insights into the world of CPQ. Note: Want to meet Heather in person? She'll be attending Optimizly Opticon the week of November 18th. LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherhershey1/ 

In this episode, we sit down with Pascal Yammine, the dynamic CEO of Zilliant, to delve deep into the world of pricing, CPQ, and the future of revenue operations. Get ready to be inspired as Pascal shares his insights on: Zilliant's journey: Learn about Pascal's experience at the helm of Zilliant and how the company has evolved under his leadership. The power of partnership: Discover how Zilliant's collaboration with private equity partners and system integrators is driving innovation and growth. Strategic vision: Uncover Zilliant's ambitious plans for the future, including key priorities and product innovations. AI revolution: Explore how artificial intelligence is changing pricing and CPQ, and Zilliant's role in this changed landscape. Competitive edge: Understand how Zilliant differentiates itself from competitors and delivers exceptional value to customers. Whether you're a seasoned pricing professional or just starting your journey in the CPQ space, this episode offers invaluable insights and inspiration. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from one of the industry's leading experts! CPQ Podcast is your go-to source for the latest trends and best practices in CPQ (and pricing). Subscribe now to stay ahead of the curve! Website https://zilliant.com/    LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascalyammine/   

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 explains how AI can significantly enhance software customization and pricing, enabling more precise value delivery for each customer. He emphasizes that while AI introduces new capabilities, it does not fundamentally change the core principles of pricing.    Why you have to check out today's podcast: Dive deep into the comparison between AI and the transformative impact of SaaS, providing valuable insights into the future of software pricing and delivery Understand value models and how AI can optimize pricing strategies Explore how AI can enable highly customized software configurations and pricing, making it easier to deliver and capture value tailored to individual customers   "Before they invest a lot of time and effort in developing or pricing their own AI, find out what their customers are already doing and how they're thinking about the problems." - Steven Forth   Topics Covered: 00:47 - Skepticism as well as optimism regarding AI and addressing the hype surrounding AI 04:15 - Exploring how AI might impact software pricing compared to the changes brought about by cloud-based SaaS. 07:05 - The way AI can optimize software configurations and pricing based on individual value drivers for each customer 10:44 - Discussing how SaaS fundamentally changed software pricing compared to AI 14:11 - How AI, while it enhances capabilities and user experiences, does not fundamentally change the underlying principles of pricing 16:31 - What is a value model? 18:15 - Pricing being tied more closely to value with the rise of AI 23:27 - Steven's best pricing advice   Key Takeaways: "The underlying ways that we think about pricing have not changed because of generative AI and will not change, but some of them we'll be able to execute on much, much more effectively." - Steven Forth "I think of pricing not as being something that is data-driven, but something that is model-driven." - Steven Forth "AI is changing how we build, deliver, and experience the functionality that software and data can bring. But as it does that, it also opens new ways for us to think about the pricing of the applications and the data." - Steven Forth   People/Resources Mentioned: Pros: https://pros.com Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ph/Don Norman: https://www.nngroup.com/people/don-norman/ Jacob Nielsen: https://www.nngroup.com/people/don-norman/ Totogi: https://www.totogi.com McKinsey: https://www.mckinsey.com Tom Nagle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-tom-nagle-2bb2288/ Zilliant: https://zilliant.com Pricefx: https://www.pricefx.com Vendavo: https://www.vendavo.com Tomasz Tunguz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasztunguz/   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  

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  

Robert Ribciuc is the Managing Partner at EBITDA Catalyst. He helped establish, grew, and managed a successful advisory/consulting firm focusing on pricing strategy and analytics, go-to-market optimization, and revenue management for middle-market corporate and private equity portfolio (PE) clients in diverse industry verticals. In this episode, Robert shares the key to succeeding as a pricing practitioner: nurturing curiosity. By continually seeking new experiences and knowledge, you'll not only advance in your current role but also pave the way for future promotions, ultimately leading to a successful career as a consultant.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Explore effective strategies for boosting personal and professional development as a pricing professional Discover the endless possibilities that come with nurturing your curiosity in the field of pricing Find out significant insights about specialization at the same time taking a broad approach in the pricing profession   "Without curiosity, you wouldn't have tried and you wouldn't know how much room for improvement to have." - Robert Ribciuc   Topics Covered: 01:51 - The breadth of the pricing field extending beyond one's job 03:57 - Specializing in a particular industry versus embracing a multifaceted approach to pricing 08:37 - The importance of constantly learning and adapting in pricing 12:02 - How pricing professionals can be better at what they do 14:40 - How curiosity gets your job done easily and gets you promoted  20:46 - The challenge of teaching for students in university versus teaching for companies 26:08 - Summarizing what the whole topic is about 28:18 - Robert's motivational message   Key Takeaways: "Go read a book about a different industry, something that's not pricing. Also, get out of your chair and go walk to our product people, go walk to our marketing people and make some friends. Get them to tell you what their job is like and what they're thinking about." - Robert Ribciuc "Curiosity is kind of the opposite of, ‘I can do it easy.'" - Robert Ribciuc "In many companies the curiosity gets subdued by, ‘Oh, I find that if I just do this repeated cycle my boss is happy enough,' right? And that can be an illusion." - Robert Ribciuc   People/ Resources Mentioned: Ronald Baker: https://impactpricing.com/podcast/497-classic-trash-the-timesheet-exploring-opportunities-in-subscription-businesses-with-ronald-j-baker/ Susan David: https://www.susandavid.com Vendavo: https://www.vendavo.com Pros: https://pros.com Zoom: https://zoom.us Honeywell: https://www.honeywell.com/us/en   Connect with Robert Ribciuc: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ribciuc/ Email: robert@ebitdacatalyst.com   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com  

Join us for a conversation with Scott Green, a seasoned business leader with over 30 years of international experience. Scott is the Founder & CEO of Profit Drivers, a company specializing in System Integration and pricing strategy services for solutions like Pricefx. They also offer their own proprietary software to help businesses tackle their pricing challenges. In this episode, Scott dives deep into: The benefits of diverse industry experience in navigating the complexities of pricing strategy. Profit Drivers' offering: a fractional Center of Excellence (CoE) to empower businesses with pricing expertise. Top business priorities companies are facing today. C-suite expectations and how to meet their needs. The typical project process at Profit Drivers. Why pricing consulting goes beyond simply improving margins and unlocks broader business value. This episode is packed with insights for anyone looking to gain a competitive edge through strategic pricing. website: https://profitdrivers.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottgreen5/ email: scott.green@profitdrivers.com 

Mike Bernard, CMO of Vendavo, explores strategies for improving your margins. Luxury brands like Louis Vuitton can command premium prices due to their exclusivity and status. In contrast, a wire manufacturer deals with a commodity where pricing is competitive. When setting prices for your product or service, it's crucial to assess its perceived value in the eyes of customers and align it with their willingness to pay. Today, Mike discusses whether your product is priced correctly or not. Show NotesConnect With:Mike Bernard: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // Newsletter // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mike Bernard, CMO of Vendavo, explores strategies for improving your margins. Luxury brands like Louis Vuitton can command premium prices due to their exclusivity and status. In contrast, a wire manufacturer deals with a commodity where pricing is competitive. When setting prices for your product or service, it's crucial to assess its perceived value in the eyes of customers and align it with their willingness to pay. Today, Mike discusses whether your product is priced correctly or not. Show NotesConnect With:Mike Bernard: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // Newsletter // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mike Bernard, CMO of Vendavo, explores strategies for improving your margins. When contemplating margin improvement, numerous factors influence the path to achieving a successful outcome. It's essential not only to identify and rectify margin leakage but also to devise strategies for generating additional margin leverage within your business.Today, Mike discusses the starting point for improving your margins. Show NotesConnect With:Mike Bernard: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // Newsletter // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mike Bernard, CMO of Vendavo, explores strategies for improving your margins. When contemplating margin improvement, numerous factors influence the path to achieving a successful outcome. It's essential not only to identify and rectify margin leakage but also to devise strategies for generating additional margin leverage within your business.Today, Mike discusses the starting point for improving your margins. Show NotesConnect With:Mike Bernard: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // Newsletter // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Get ready to hear from Walter Wijnands,CEO of Sposea, a Pricing Solution Provider with headquarters in the Netherlands. Walter has 30+ years of business expertise. In this episode he talks about starting Sposea in 2016 changing from an on-prem solution to a cloud solution in 2018 his wife as a professional musician BrightPrice Suite capabilities being a strategic OEM Partner for SAP being an Industry Cloud Partner for the Chemical Industry Rebate Management Don't miss this insightful conversation with Walter as he provides pricing information that is interesting for customers with SAP systems.  website: https://www.sposea.com LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/walter-wijnands/ 

Mike Bernard, CMO of Vendavo, explores strategies for improving your margins. Luxury brands like Louis Vuitton can command premium prices due to their exclusivity and status. In contrast, a wire manufacturer deals with a commodity where pricing is competitive. When setting prices for your product or service, it's crucial to assess its perceived value in the eyes of customers and align it with their willingness to pay. Today, Mike discusses whether your product is priced correctly or not. Show NotesConnect With:Mike Bernard: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // Newsletter // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mike Bernard, CMO of Vendavo, explores strategies for improving your margins. Luxury brands like Louis Vuitton can command premium prices due to their exclusivity and status. In contrast, a wire manufacturer deals with a commodity where pricing is competitive. When setting prices for your product or service, it's crucial to assess its perceived value in the eyes of customers and align it with their willingness to pay. Today, Mike discusses whether your product is priced correctly or not. Show NotesConnect With:Mike Bernard: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // Newsletter // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mike Bernard, CMO of Vendavo, explores strategies for improving your margins. When contemplating margin improvement, numerous factors influence the path to achieving a successful outcome. It's essential not only to identify and rectify margin leakage but also to devise strategies for generating additional margin leverage within your business.Today, Mike discusses the starting point for improving your margins. Show NotesConnect With:Mike Bernard: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // Newsletter // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mike Bernard, CMO of Vendavo, explores strategies for improving your margins. When contemplating margin improvement, numerous factors influence the path to achieving a successful outcome. It's essential not only to identify and rectify margin leakage but also to devise strategies for generating additional margin leverage within your business.Today, Mike discusses the starting point for improving your margins. Show NotesConnect With:Mike Bernard: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // Newsletter // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 designed to help companies create and capture value. In this episode, Steven discusses the challenges of pricing AI, primarily due to the limited availability of data. He emphasizes the importance of shortening the time required to build value models in order to easily establish pricing.   What you will learn from this episode: Discover the complaints and challenges associated with pricing AI Enhance transparency in establishing the price point with creating value models Find out the most recent advancements in AI pricing concerning language models and software, which greatly enhance productivity   "Once you have a good value model, coming up with pricing is maybe not trivial but it's certainly much easier."  - Steven Forth   Topics Covered: 01:15 - Discussing complaints about AI through the Value Models 07:57 - Steven's added thoughts to Mark's suggested solution to achieve pricing transparency [limitations in creating value models] 11:43 - The need for more trainings for language models used in pricing 14:25 - What is Copilot by Microsoft and what it is capable of doing that can help salespeople 17:04 - How is Copilot might disrupt the market especially Google Workspace user 17:50 - Survey of people's willingness to pay $30 a user for Copilot [and whose group is more willing to pay more] 22:20 - How were the users segmented, are they all Copilot users, and finding out people's reaction to AI 23:37 - The amazing capabilities of these two AIs 24:57 - What could happen if Mark Stiving will use AI to write his fourth book [The need for great prompt engineering] 28:12 - How are AIs going to be priced 29:59 - Microsoft Copilot as a 'Will I' question   Key Takeaways: "If you can build a value model and validate a value model, then you can fairly easily, I believe, derive pricing from the value model." - Steven Forth "We should be able to customize a language model based on our training and integrate mathematical AI from a place such as Wolfram/Alpha to greatly scale up our ability to build value models so that we could legitimately do a thousand a year or so." - Steven Forth   Resources/People Mentioned: Craig Zawada: https://impactpricing.com/podcast/ep95-defining-no-touch-and-self-serve-pricing-with-craig-zawada/ PROS: https://pros.com/ Vendavo: https://www.vendavo.com/ Zilliant: https://www.zilliant.com/ McKinsey: https://www.mckinsey.com/ Wolfram/Alpha: https://www.wolframalpha.com/ iGenius: https://www.igenius.ai/ Hugging Face: https://huggingface.co/ OpenAI: https://openai.com/ Figma: https://www.figma.com/ Notion: https://www.notion.so/product   Connect with Steven Forth: Email: steven@ibbaka.com   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenforth/   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com  

Even today, Dayton Kellenberger marvels at his good fortune in having landed inside the corporate finance department of The Coleman Company, Inc.. Of course, like a lot of career success stories, this tale had timing as a large contributor, especially inasmuch as and a little more than 10 years ago, Coleman was experiencing declining gross margins across its business. To Kellenberger, a recently hired business analyst, Coleman's shrinking gross margins seemed to present not only a problem-solving challenge but also an opportunity to help to rewire a renowned brand's customer best practices.    “When you're part of a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company, you basically have one shot at the beginning of the year to do an annual line review with a customer,'” explains Kellenberger, who adds that at the time, the process might have involved having a “seller” from, for example, Cabela's freely thumbing through different Coleman catalogs while casually signaling to a Coleman representative, “Okay, we'd like to sell this product.”   “The process change that we made was to get finance involved from the very beginning and have us run the line reviews so that we would create one catalog of feature products,” recalls Kellenberger, who notes that the new catalog proved particularly invaluable for what it displayed internally.   Comments Kellenberger: “Because we could see what a product's margin was from the previous year and compare it to the current one, we could flag low-margin products, consider replacement products with higher margins, and sometimes even sunset certain SKUs.” Kellenberger believes that the resulting price volume analysis exposed the previous risks of making business decisions based on analysis that had historically seldom penetrated beyond the customer or product category level. “What we learned at Coleman was that a single SKU at a single customer could be responsible for dragging an entire product category down,” remarks Kellenberger, who reports that the analysis also exposed the alarming fact that Coleman had at times unintentionally been replacing high-margin products with lower-margin newer ones. Looking back, Kellenberger observes that Coleman's margin decline turnaround might have had a different outcome had the manufacturer not rejected certain popular theories. At the time, Kellenberger remembers, one management team member attributed the decline to “rising prices in China,” while another suggested that the downturn was due to “manufacturing snags in the U.S.” Says Kellenberger: “This all began with a debate that was rooted not in fact but in emotion.” –Jack Sweeney

In this episode Frank provides some insights and considerations regarding the CPQ Market and about selecting a CPQ Solution. It provides basic info about Product Configurators (rule -based vs constraint-based solutions), Pricing and Quoting as well as some outlook regarding additional capabilities like AI/ML, visualization and so on.  It also shows some homework that customers have to do to increase the likelihood of a successful project. If you have any follow up questions contact Frank at Frank.Sohn@NovusCPQ.com .  Note: Novus CPQ offers a 2 hour FREE course for interested customers who want to dive a little deeper into some of the topics that Frank mentions here. Send email to info@NovusCPQ.com to learn more about that offer. 

Are you tired of sitting through unproductive monthly meetings that turn into show-and-tell sessions? Do you want to shift your focus to key metrics that matter and move away from storytelling to a more data-driven approach? In this episode of the Planning Aces podcast, Cohosts Jack Sweeney and Brett Knowles feature the commentary and insights of three finance leaders who don't mind displacing the status quo as they seek to optimize their business metrics and drive performance. Episode #23 kicks off with the hosts featuring recent commentary from Dayton Kellenberger, CFO of Vendavo, who shares his experience with implementing a metrics-based approach to monthly business unit reviews. He explains that they shifted their focus to key metrics that matter and moved away from storytelling to a more data-driven approach. Dayton also discusses the importance of optimizing SAS gross margins, which is a cross-functional effort that involves finance, sales, cloud ops teams, and customer success teams. Later in the episode, Celeste Ackert and Jason Quinn share their insights on creating cross-functional dashboards and raising the profile of metrics within an organization. Brett emphasizes the importance of using planning tools to build cross-functional dashboards, as it allows for better integration between the planning and operational cycles. He also highlights the significance of customer contribution analysis in optimizing resources and identifying areas of sub-optimization. Jason Quinn also discusses the importance of cultural norms in achieving desired outcomes. He emphasizes the need for fairness, transparency, kindness as a service, pursuit of truth, and trust through transparency. Brett summarizes Quinn's points into three categories of measures for FP&A professionals: the overall scoreboard, success potential (leading indicators), and experiences. Overall, the episode aims to highlight the takeaways and provoke listeners to think about other ways of monitoring how their businesses are performing. Related Episode Content

Are you tired of sitting through unproductive monthly meetings that turn into show-and-tell sessions? Do you want to shift your focus to key metrics that matter and move away from storytelling to a more data-driven approach? In this episode of the Planning Aces podcast, Cohosts Jack Sweeney and Brett Knowles feature the commentary and insights of three finance leaders who don't mind displacing the status quo as they seek to optimize their business metrics and drive performance. Episode #23 kicks off with the hosts featuring recent commentary from Dayton Kellenberger, CFO of Vendavo, who shares his experience with implementing a metrics-based approach to monthly business unit reviews. He explains that they shifted their focus to key metrics that matter and moved away from storytelling to a more data-driven approach. Dayton also discusses the importance of optimizing SAS gross margins, which is a cross-functional effort that involves finance, sales, cloud ops teams, and customer success teams. Later in the episode, Celeste Ackert and Jason Quinn share their insights on creating cross-functional dashboards and raising the profile of metrics within an organization. Brett emphasizes the importance of using planning tools to build cross-functional dashboards, as it allows for better integration between the planning and operational cycles. He also highlights the significance of customer contribution analysis in optimizing resources and identifying areas of sub-optimization. Jason Quinn also discusses the importance of cultural norms in achieving desired outcomes. He emphasizes the need for fairness, transparency, kindness as a service, pursuit of truth, and trust through transparency. Brett summarizes Quinn's points into three categories of measures for FP&A professionals: the overall scoreboard, success potential (leading indicators), and experiences. Overall, the episode aims to highlight the takeaways and provoke listeners to think about other ways of monitoring how their businesses are performing. Related Episode Content

In this episode you hear from Bernard Kang, Global Pricing & Commercial Analytics Leader at EY. Bernard has 20+ years of business experience and lives with his family in Los Angeles, CA. Here he talks about the EY Service Offering and approach in the CPQ and Pricing area, why he looks where value is created, Price Optimization, differences between Rev. Mgmt and CPQ, Top Customer requirements and much more web https://www.ey.com/en_us/people/bernard-kang LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernardkang/

In this episode I share some thoughts about how (generative) AI may be used in CPQ going forward. There are also some thoughts about how users may use it and some thoughts on how CPQ administrators may use it. I'm very interested to hear what you think about this topic and how important it is for your company / use case.  Send feedback to Frank.Sohn@NovusCPQ.com 

In this episode I talk to Google's Bard about CPQ topics to learn if and how Bard can be used for anyone that is interested in CPQ. At the end of each question there is a short note from me about the quality of the answer. Take a listen and try it yourself as well. Anyone interested to follow up on this go to https://bard.google.com and try it yourself.

Dick Sobel was with Emerson for 21 years where he mostly worked on pricing roles. Currently, he is the managing director of PricePoint Partners, a company that helps clients achieve significant gains in price realization and profitability with salesforce implementation utilizing cloud-based Acuity Margin Management BI software. In this episode, Dick talks about the work they do at PricePoint Partners as he points out the importance of assessment and consulting in coming up with optimal solutions to clients' problems. He also touched on the topic of AI interference in the pricing world.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Learn the work that PricePoint Partners does, the range of clients they serve, and how they could help your company in pricing Find out why you can't rely on AI alone in doing prices and why AI can do better in B2C than in B2B Find out why today is the best time to raise your prices   “Inflation's persistence is here to stay for a long time. And if you're not doing something right now, you are really missing out.” – Dick Sobel   Topics Covered: 01:49 – How Dick got into pricing 04:40 – How Emerson did pricing before, and how they moved to value pricing as time went by 06:50 – The work that PricePoint Partners does, and the range of clients that they support 08:21 – Is PricePoint Partners a software company, or a consulting company? 10:23 – What prompts companies to focus on pricing 13:19 – Does PricePoint Partners charge for assessment? 14:58 – Why assessment is an essential part in consulting, and why you should definitely pay for it 17:25 – Why you should be careful in using AI, and why pricing people and clients are still more comfortable  22:02 – Dick's pricing advice 23:32 – Connect with Dick Sobel   Key Takeaways: “Somebody has to be in charge somewhere that can at least gather the crew together and make it [changes in pricing strategy] happen.” – Dick Sobel “At least for the people that I deal with, I don't feel comfortable having or I don't think they're even comfortable in having black box artificial intelligent price recommendations where “Okay, here's the price you should charge for this product, for this SKU”. And it's given to the salespeople arbitrarily. There's got to be this human interface still. And so, yeah, you can look at it, but be careful.” – Dick Sobel “This idea of “Well, you know, we're just going to try to hold the line”, you keep doing that, you won't have a business.” – Dick Sobel   People / Resources Mentioned: Emerson: https://www.emerson.com/en-us/global PricePoint Partners: https://pricepointpartners.com/ Resilience Capital: https://resiliencecapital.com/ Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ap/ Vendavo: https://www.vendavo.com/   Connect with Dick Sobel: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardsobel/ Email: rsobel@pricepointpartners.com   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com  

In this episode you hear from Mitchell Lee, VP or Product Marketing at Vendavo. Mitch has 30+ years of business experience with companies like BASF and Orica and lives in Norfolk, Virgina. Here he talks about Vendavo's Revenue Optimization Platform (Pricing+CPQ) for manufacturers and distributors, the Market Medium acquisition in 2022, Gartner's MQ Report, managed services, omni-channel usage, ChatGPT and much more web www.vendavo.com email mdlee@vendavo.com LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchelldlee/ 

We wish all our listeners a happy and healthy 2023! Here we announce a couple of short updates Next CPQ Podcast episode will be released January 15, 2023 Review the CPQ Podcast so more like-minded listeners can find it We now have YouTube channel that regularly provides video of CPQ Leaders, Customers, Thoughtleaders etc. Subscribe to it at https://youtu.be/D-j7hzi4nQc  Any questions send to Frank.Sohn@NovusCPQ.com 

Christine Carragee has been working as Carragee Consulting's Business Consultant for more than six years now. She's done two different stints at the Vendavo – first as their Senior Pricing Consultant then as a Principal Consultant – so she certainly understands pricing. Christine was a Senior Pricing Analyst at Capella University. She lived on three continents before she was four years old. In this episode, Christine explains why it's a must that you consider the segmentation of individuals when doing pricing in higher ed as she shares her pricing journey with Capella University.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Find out how Capella University sets their price to students; Discover how financial aids such as scholarships and loans help you create good quality for the university; and Understand why it's a must that think about the segmentation of individuals when doing pricing in higher ed   “A huge portion of higher ed pricing is through the grants and scholarships and loans. And so, what you're initially paying at the time that you're doing your coursework is very different from what the total cost of a program is for you.” – Christine Carragee   Topics Covered: 01:47 – How Christine got into pricing 03:02 – Learning about airlines from her roommate and the book Hard Landing 05:01 – Trying to put economic value to a university; Segmentation of individuals in higher ed pricing 08:48 – Capella University's two tuition structures; Grants, scholarships, and loans in higher ed pricing 12:54 – What Mark loves about the way they do pricing in higher ed 14:48 – Looking at how competitors do pricing + accepting high achievers and issuing financial aid 17:04 – Christine's pricing advice for the listeners 18:15 – Table topics: “Pricing champions drive pricing change”   Key Takeaways: “There's a huge portion of pricing in higher ed that you have to think about the segmentation of the individuals, where they are in their life and then what their personal and professional goals are. There's a big pressure on colleges and universities to provide educations that have a financial ROI. But if you think about the history of university, especially in the U.S., many, many of the universities started as seminary schools or they started as state institutions with land grants, and they were more about having an educated population for a general purpose, involvement in society, and they were not the career track programs that we think of them as today.” – Christine Carragee “You can admit people who couldn't afford to come but have very high grades and have those personal statistics that make your institution look better on average by issuing financial aid.” – Christine Carragee “That's a self-reinforcing cycle, where once you become established or you have a reputation around having very good quality students, then it's going to attract more people who want to go to school with high achievers.” – Christine Carragee   People / Resources Mentioned: Vendavo:https://www.vendavo.com/ Hard Landing book:https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Landing-Contest-Profits-Airlines/dp/0812928350   Connect with Christine Carragee: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/christine-carragee-83642b226/   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com  

Tiffany is on a mission to customize an organizational strategic approach to internal efficiencies to create optimal capital gains. She has obtained a B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics and has 15+ years of professional experience in Program/Project Management and Business Process Management, her portfolio includes a host of multi-million-dollar programs and leading high-profile projects. She has worked industries that span from Education, Finance, Title, and currently Pricing and Sales solutions. She has been consulted by executive leaders on maturing their organizations by developing and visualizing effective practices, measurements, and methods. She is a Denver native and enjoys working with her community. Tiffany Boyd – Chief of Staff, Vendavo

Elizabeth A. Colombo ("Beth") is from Ridgewood, New Jersey, but lives in sunny Sarasota, Florida. Beth earned her B.A., magna cum laude, in Film, Television, and Theatre from The University of Notre Dame and her J.D., cum laude, from Quinnipiac University School of Law. With 15 years of legal experience and a decade of in-house experience, Beth was corporate counsel for Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. and senior associate, cyber risk for Kroll. Beth currently serves as senior legal counsel at Vendavo, Inc., working cross-functionally with the relevant business teams and stakeholders, providing legal advice on a broad range of topics and guiding the business on legal compliance with a particular focus on drafting, managing, and negotiating client and vendor contracts of moderate-to-high complexity from the bid phase through contract execution, including software licensing and SaaS-specific provisions, as well as matters related to contractual liability and risk-shifting provisions, data privacy, intellectual property, and products. When not working for Vendavo, Beth teaches business law for Southern New Hampshire University and sits on the Board of her all-girls Catholic high school in Washington Township, New Jersey, Immaculate Heart Academy. On a personal level, Beth enjoys spending time with loved ones and swimming, writing, dancing, dining out, and television! Beth moved to Sarasota, in part, because she loves the beach, sunsets, birds, manatees, and other wildlife! As attorneys, we are often continual learners. Thus, it makes sense that we can utilize lessons learned from education to enhance our practice of law. Join Beth Colombo, corporate counsel, board member, professor of business law, and author this episode. She will explore skills and abilities utilized in education as a means to excel in your legal career. Join Beth as she discusses her Four “C”s of Education in Law: Communication, Counsel, Creativity, and Compassion.

In this episode we are so blessed to be speaking with an Uber talent, in perhaps the most impactful business fields today, the cutting edge of AI, crypto, and all things tech. A towering figure in the head hunting industry, Steven Skinner is humble when speaking about his contributions and accomplishments as only a true gentleman could be. From knowing the who's who, and having the rolodex to match any top 100 C-suit list in the world, when Mr.Skinner calls you're switching jobs! We are so pleased to learn about this elusive and exciting world, so listen close to gain some insider intel on the coming waves of technology, what to look out for, and how to stay ahead of the curve in this ever changing world.Steven Skinner, Founder of Millennium Solutions, is a 25 year veteran credited for helping build the most progressive Hi-Tech companies in the United States and around the globe. Venture Capitalists in Silicon Valley have relied on Mr. Skinner and Millennium Solutions for their most vital C Suite and Executive searches to ensure proper execution and long term success. Skinner's work has helped launch over 140 technology IPO's listed on the NYSE and NASDAQ which contributed over $7.1 trillion in market capitalization. As a supplement to hunting game-changing talent, Mr. Skinner had provided equity investments within specific Artificial Intelligence companies headquartered in the US, Romania, and Germany. Notable hits include - Amazon, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce, i2 Technologies, Metreo, Certus, OpenPages, Conversica, Coursera, Corio, USinternetworking, Agilera, Sabrix, Whoknows, Orchestria, LinkedIn, Deliv, Google, Facebook, SNAP, Vendavo, Boomerang Commerce, Tesla, Savi, Matrix, Zendesk, Currency, MessageOne, Dell, Nutanix, PSS Systems, Looker, Snowflake, MuleSoft, Slack, Vertex, Workboard, DruidAI, Bryter, and UiPath. Today, Skinner is called on by top Venture Capitalist for his proven go-to-market strategies and headhunting expertise. His passion is helping companies to achieve billion dollar valuations by his strategic directions and unmatched recruiting services. Skinner's most recent success is building the North American Sales program for UiPath. Skinner delivered over 200 hires including the top producers in Sales, Partner & Alliance, and Strategic program(s) which have resulted in over $300 million in ARR since 2016. Currently Steven Skinner is working behind the scenes to help launch new start-ups in the AI, Data Mining, and the No Code space. Millennium Solutions has offices in Atlanta, Georgia and Menlo Park, California. Steven Skinner can be reached at skinner@millenniumsolutions.com and 404-786-2007

In this episode Girish Juneja, SVP & Chief Digital Officer of Dover and John Major, CEO of CDS Visual talk about the recent acquisition of CDS Visual by Dover. Girish is based in Lexington, MA and John is based in San Jose, CA. Girish and John talk about where Dover plans to use CDS Visual's technology, Dover's CPQ capabilities, how manufacturers can benefit from visualization and CPQ, how existing CPQ Vendor relationships are impacted and much more John jmajor@cdsvisual.com  Girish gjuneja@dovercorp.com 

Jared Smith is a Business Consultant at Vendavo, a world-class commercial excellence software firm that enjoys seeing clients evolve into leaders in their industry. ​He is a Ph.D. candidate at Oklahoma State University researching how companies execute strategies, pricing, and sales dynamics. In this episode, Jared talks about salespeople's insufficiency where business acumen is concerned. He is encouraging companies to put some training where salespeople can do value statements, challenger selling, and using whatever pricing methodologies they can have.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Find out how to motivate salespeople to understand the target price and capture a product's value Learn how salespeople can deviate from the target price and still earn from it Find out how salespeople can defend pricing from a product's economic value and not just on discounting   "Have the courage to experiment, have the courage to look at different things and approach pricing in a different way. The statement that we're going to raise prices and our customers are going to leave us, and we live in that fear all the time, that's not a really rational way of looking at things." - Jared Smith   Topics Covered: 01:18 - Relating his first exposure to pricing 02:55 - Pricing for B2C versus B2B 04:43 - Taking a look at the whole value statements between B2C and B2B 06:45 - The disconnect between sales and pricing 08:26 - Shortfall in business acumen of most salespeople 10:06 - How to make value conversation happen 12:56 - Talking about sales discount and escalation processes 15:03 - He believes giving salespeople autonomy 16:50 - Setting compensation structures in a way that motivates salespeople not to discount but sell on value 18:24 - The compensation style that motivates most salespeople 20:35 - The challenge of getting salespeople sell above the target price 21:34 - Higher commission rate when hitting the price ceiling 22:20 - Understanding the value that customers get from the product 23:17 - Jared's best pricing advice that greatly impacts a business   Key Takeaways: "The key thing that I see is, when you start to talk about price, it gets into that whole thing of the sales operations, ‘Do I go there and do I lead with that ceiling price and discount down to the target?'" - Jared Smith “What about if we set our compensation structures in such a way that motivates them not to discount, to always sell that value, but also maybe even motivates them to go higher than that as well?” - Jared Smith “In the psychology of salespeople, that's what really drives a lot of the behavior and how you put your compensation system to move with those three numbers right there - the list price, ceiling, and target price.” - Jared Smith "Have the courage to develop the capability of pricing in your company. Invest in good people, invest in good technologies, things that can support this as a discipline, much like you've been doing in the supply chain and all these other ones for years. So have the courage to change, have the courage to have the critical conversations." - Jared Smith   Resources/People Mentioned: Prime Source Building Products: https://www.primesourcebp.com/ Frito Lay: https://www.fritolay.com/   Connect with Jared Smith: Email: jared@jaredpaulsmith.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredpaulsmith/   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

Mitchell D Lee  |  Profit Evangelist, Vendavo Mitch is the Profit Evangelist at Vendavo with decades of experience in the technical, operational, marketing, and commercial arenas of the chemical industry. Prior to Vendavo, Mitch was with BASF and Orica in product marketing and business management, driving operational optimization, pricing excellence, and margin improvement, as well as personal engagement in high value sales negotiations. Mitch also has deep experience with raw materials supplier portfolio management having negotiated large scale and long-term supply agreements with leading global manufacturers.

Jordan Hahn has 10+ years of business experience with Pricing & CPQ Solutions. He lives with his family in Denver, Colorado and is responsible for the Vendavo Intelligent Pricing CPQ product. In this interview he talks about his product, the convergence and trends he sees from CPQ adjacent spaces, mentions a surprising influencer he listens to, value pricing in general as well as challenges & benefits of value pricing and much more website www.vendavo.com  LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanhahndenver/ 

x Marin Ukalovic is VP + Chief Product Owner, Digital Configuration Lifecyle and has been with SAP since 1999. He lives with his family in Walldorf, Germany. In this interview he talks about co-authoring 5 books that made it to the SAP Bestseller List, the Configuration Workgroup (CWG), various SAP configuration products including Advanced VC (AVC), commerce, subscriptions, APIs and much more CWG: configuration-workgroup.com/  email sapvc@sap.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marin-ukalovic-7b8a5511/

Ben Blaney has had broad pricing stints with companies like GE, Pros, Colfax, and Updegraff Group Realty. To date, he is with Vendavo taking the role of Vice President for Pre-Sales. In this episode, Ben talks about how misunderstood, underserved, and undervalued channel selling or channel management is. He shares that unless you have a clear understanding of your value chain, only then you can price your channel partners. As this pandemic shaped how we need to look at the future, so has e-commerce posed an important issue on how we should think about whether it be considered a channel in itself.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Learn to understand the value a channel brings to you to help you price your channel partners Find out the force multiplier effect of your channel partners in your product distribution Learn how to make the value chain better for you, your distributor, and ultimately your end-customer   "On a whiteboard, on a piece of paper, draw all of your channels to market. How many steps are there on this value chain? How many possible different ways are there? Because until you know that, you can't possibly say how things should be priced into these different channel partners." - Ben Blaney   Increase Your Pricing Knowledge: Become a Champions of Value INSIDER! To sign up go to insider.championsofvalue.com   Topics Covered: 01:11 - A funny story on how he started his pricing career 01:42 - Any transaction has already been priced 02:22 - What makes him love pricing 03:22 - Defining price 04:22 - What makes channel selling, channel management, and channel pricing underserved, misunderstood, and kind of undervalued 07:10 - What is a channel, and what are examples of it 09:51 - Seeing the important value distributors provide to manufacturers 11:26 - The force multiplier in the network of distributors 13:52 - Of commodity selling and delivered pricing 15:13 - Sell on Amazon or get distributors 18:42 - What the future of e-commerce would likely be 20:18 - What a distributor provides that an e-commerce platform could not 21:57 - The difference between distributor and brokerage 24:47 - What is going to distinguish the winners in channels from the losers 25:21 - Creating a unified price in the marketplace 27:36 - The essence of shifting from cost-plus pricing to value-based pricing 29:43 - The need for data cleansing 31:19 - Ben's best pricing advice that could impact your business   Key Takeaways: "I kind of feel like the word price always needs a word before or after it because otherwise you can quickly become confused about what we're talking about." - Ben Blaney "To understand the value a channel brings to you, say, manufacturer, that's the only thing that tells you how you should price to and through the channel." - Ben Blaney "In commodity selling, you talk about a delivered price, meaning you are accommodating for the cost of transportation to the customer organization. These are important things; these are valuable to the end customer. And so, they're worth, the manufacturer, taking that margin out of their own pocket and put it in distributor because it's better for the value chain. You express better value for your customer." - Ben Blaney "The moment that the distributor fails to understand that the distributor has this function to provide over and above what can be provided by the manufacturer, that's the moment of which they are obsoleting themselves as a step in the value chain." - Ben Blaney "It's the focus, that relentless, obsessive focus on what the end-customer needs and wants, is going to distinguish the winners in channels from the losers." - Ben Blaney   Connect with Ben Blaney: LinkedIn   Connect with Mark Stiving:    Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn  

Gabe is a business leader with 20 years of experience in the pricing and CPQ space. In this interview he talks about the current, COVID-19 driven, interest in pricing solutions, the various accelerators that Pricefx offers (i.e. from Bain), the acquisition of Brennus Analytics, the partnership with SAP, their investment strategy in CPQ, the Forbes Business Council and much more website: www.pricefx.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabesmith/  twitter: https://twitter.com/SwEvangelist

Hila Segal is the VP of Product Marketing at Clari. She has more than 15 years of experience designing and executing GTM strategies for innovative, high-growth software solutions. Before her role at Clari, Hila worked for other high-growth tech companies, including Vendavo and Kapow Software. She has made a name for herself in the industry by building high-performance teams that foster cross-collaboration between product sales and marketing. In this episode… At the core of any good marketing campaign is the audience. Yet, many companies fail to keep their audience in mind when creating sales decks and instead focus on themselves: their founders, their company mission, their success stories. According to product marketing leader Hila Segal, this company-first approach is not an effective way to drive value to your customers. That's why her team at Clari innovated their product marketing strategy, starting with the way they interact with their audience.  In this episode of The Hook, host Brendan Dell sits down with Hila Segal, the VP of Product Marketing at Clari, to chat about the ins and outs of her audience-first marketing approach. Hila shares her strategies for putting the customer in the lead role and promoting collaboration between her marketing and sales teams. Keep listening to discover how to deliver value (and drive sales) with every audience interaction!

John is a successful entrepreneur with 30+ years of business experience. He lives in San Jose, CA and founded CDS Visual in 2005. CDS Visual is a partner for CPQ firms like Oracle, SAP, FPX, Vendavo and others. In this interview he talks about the impact of COVID-19, digital photography, Design Automation, 2D, 3D and Augmented Reality, the progress visualization has made in the last years and much more. Website: www.cdsvisual.com JMajor@catalogds.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmajor1/

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

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:  Learn how to use the data that is funneled into your subscription management   Find out the leading indicators of customer churn, and what to do about it  Learn how to package features into bundles that will create good pricing and eventually the most revenue for your company    Mark Thomason is a Research Director - Digital Business Models and Monetization at IDC. He is one curious person that loves the challenge of understanding needs and creating something that’s high quality, simple and easy to use. He understands the thrill of creating and working in a high-performance team. He is known for being focused, easy to get along with, & getting things done quickly.    In this episode, Mark shares technologies and best practices that are used in monetizing digital solutions that result in optimized pricing.     “If you're a company that has a physical product, if you haven't investigated price optimization product, you should because they have a very quick payback.”   -  Mark Thomason       Mark Thomason's Upcoming Event: Join IDC's 55th annual industry business briefing  Directions 2020 ~ Changing Customer Requirements: Creating Value in the Digital Economy  March 4 in Santa Clara, CA ~AND~ March 10 in Boston, MA  For more information visit: http://www.idc.com/directions   Get COV’s Pricing Metrics:   The Most Important Pricing Decision in a Subscription Business Course at https://www.championsofvalue.com      Topics Covered:    02:08 - What is IDC and what does it do  03:15 - What service do IDC sell  06:06 - What are digital business models and monetization  10:18 - What is futurescape  16:13 - Taking a closer look at Zuora's subscription business model   24:22 - Mark's best pricing advice    Key Takeaways:    "A lot of the based functionality of managing subscriptions is really just making sure that you do revenue recognition correctly." - Mark Thomason    “You want to know that as a product manager and as from a monetization point of view, you want to understand your value metrics. And if you're a software company, if you can identify and watch, basically your users use, you know, features or capabilities of your product, you can go, okay now I can watch over the shoulders of my potentially thousands of customers and I can know what this cohort value.” - Mark Thomason      People / Resources Mentioned:  Zuora  Forrester  Gartner  Pros  Vendavo    Connect With Mark Thomason:  LinkedIn  IDC.com    Connect with Mark Stiving:    Email: mark@impactpricing.com     LinkedIn     Twitter 

Louis is an expert in CRM, CPQ, PLM and ERP systems and works as a Principal at Dassault Systems. He is also a well-known Forbes Columnist. In this interview he shares why he thinks Machine Learning, Pricing and Visualization are CPQ topics to watch out for, why he thinks “auto-complete” is an important CPQ capability, how manufacturers stay away from price wars, what he means by collaborative selling and much more.  Follow him on Twitter @LouisColumbus LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/louiscolumbus/

Steve is the Founder & CEO of Strategic Pricing Services and has 30 years of pricing experience. In this interview he talks about his experience working with pricing-focused CPQ Companies like PROS, Vendavo, Pricefx & Zilliant, what results pricing-focused CPQ customers can expect to achieve, what PPS is, why AI and ML is important, what he thinks about the latest Gartner MQ Report and much more  LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-wilkins-690a4419/  Website http://www.strategicpricingservices.com 

In this episode Frank shares some tips about how customers can select the best CPQ Solution for their business. These tips can also be downloaded from https://novuscpq.com/resources/ in our "Essential CPQ Papers" (see the bottom of the page". For more questions and support on this topic send a message to info@novuscpq.com

In this second interview with Sean we talk about general pricing topics like Pricing Strategies, Pricing Optimization and Dynamic Pricing. Sean also talks about Vendavo specific topics like extended Pricing Guidance for Salesforce, their incentive manager, deal guide and business risk alerts. Plus he shares what capabilities are in high demand with their customers and much more.  Email smyers@vendavo.com  Website https://www.vendavo.com 

In this first of two interviews Sean provides an update on what Vendavo, Endeavor CPQ and Navetti have worked on in the last 20 months.  He talks about their changed target customers, what Navetti brought to the table, why Rest APIs are important, what relationships they consider strategic, where they make development investments and much more.  Email smyers@vendavo.com  Website https://www.vendavo.com  Learn more about the St Vincent de Paul Society in Dallas, TX @ https://svdpdallas.org  

Neil brings more than 25 years of experience in Software, Hardware and Cloud Technologies to Sailthru. As President and Chief Executive Officer, he leads the development and execution of the company’s strategic vision and daily operations. Before joining Sailthru, Neil served as President and CEO of Vendavo, a leading provider of revenue and price optimization and management solutions. Prior to joining Vendavo, Neil successfully directed Ariba’s North American field operations and, previously, European operations; preceded by 16 years at IBM, serving in a variety of sales and sales management roles in ecommerce solutions. Neil is a native of New York City and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from State University of New York at Albany.

Our guest today is Umbrex member Ian Tidswell. Ian has a PhD in physics from Harvard. He did science for a few years but missed the human element and ended up as a management consultant at McKinsey. After McKinsey he worked at Vendavo, a software firm, and that is where he fell in love with pricing, which for Ian is the perfect mixture of the analytical and the human element. In this episode, Ian shares his perspective on pricing, including Why pricing is so important signs that a company has an opportunity to optimize pricing what good pricing looks like how to organize the pricing function and we walk through an example of pricing for a crop protection company. I enjoyed my conversation with Ian and I hope you find it helpful.  You can follow up with Ian at Ian@eenconsulting.com

Ron Nash (@hronaldnash) is the CEO and Chairman of Pivot 3 in Austin. He’s worked alongside Ross Perot, Mort Myerson and many other industry titans. He’s been a VC, Board Member, and avid art collector. He has been a corporate officer at the following companies that completed IPO's: Perot Systems, Teleci and Rubicon. He has been a director of the following successful companies that were acquired: Vendavo, Lombardi Software. The Cheat Sheet: How do you turn things around when the wheels have completely gone off the wagon? What’s the ultimate secret ingredient to long lasting business success (and how is your ego intertwined with it)? How do you spot bigger and better deals as a venture capitalist or angel investor? Why do leaders fail, what blind spots are they missing, and how can they course correct? Do mentors really matter and how do you find them? What’s the role of Board Members and why do they often get off track? Does modeling others actually work? How should you do this? And so much more…

Corum's newly-promoted Senior Vice President, Allan Wilson, discusses his recently-closed deal of Endeavor Commerce being acquired by Vendavo.

Sam gets sick and infects conference attendees plus his employees, Steve’s guest appearance on “Our Love Hate Relationship With Sales”, Infor CRM’s integration to LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator, the high price of standalone Navigator, the value of connecting CRM to multiple big data sources, Nimble’s capabilities, Infor CRM’s Marketo integration, what doesn’t sync from marketing automation to CRM, tracking sources from Lead to Order, Contour mapping, Coleman AI, Infor’s vertical market strategy, integrating acquire companies’ products, the CRM beasts that will not die, companies moving back to ACT!, Google My Business for B2B companies, the sale of Endeavor Commerce to Vendavo, Zoho’s new Zoho Sign digital signature app, Zoho’s alternative to QuickBooks.