10 Learnings from PPS profitABLE26: Chicago
- PPS
- 4 hours ago
- 2 min read
Author: Kevin Mitchell, PPS President
Thanks so much to our members, speakers, sponsors, colleagues, and staff for a great conference event in Chicago. I enjoyed wonderful networking opportunities, insightful presentations, reconnecting with old friends, and making new ones. The weeks following Professional Pricing Society conferences are always a little bittersweet for me, because it will be almost another 6 months before I get the deep personal interactions that only happen at big events like ours.
The profitABLE Conference is too big for any one person to experience more than a fraction of all of the speakers and sessions, but I was lucky enough to moderate two full-day Certified Pricing Professional workshops led by Tim Smith (“Narrow AI for Price Management with Sales”) and Joanne Smith (“Managing Price Pressure from Customers or Competitors”), in addition to moderating 9 keynote speakers, 3 panels, and 7 breakout speakers.
Every presentation I attended had actionable strategies, tactics, and best practices for improving your company’s monetization and results, but here are a few particularly memorable learnings that will stick with me:
Current macroeconomic externalities mean that you may have to change your pricing models. Value-Based, Consumption-Based, Usage-Based, and Outcome-Based models all can have their place. What got you here may not get you there.
Great data is not enough. You need to use change management and storytelling in order to translate data into impact, align partners, and reinforce customer value.
When presenting to senior management, lead with The Decision to be made; don’t end with it. You can’t wait for certainty. Safe processes don’t move the needle.
Always be curious. Here are some questions for sales partners:
What would make you confident to sell this? What causes friction when you try to sell this?
There is a big difference between alignment and adoption. You can gain alignment with the C-Suite and still not get your ideas adopted.
You can raise prices with higher value, but your customers can question your estimation of their value.
Everyone thinks that they are a pricing expert, because we are all consumers. Do not accommodate everyone’s view of pricing – separate the signal from the noise.
There are lots of “hidden” initiatives to improve your monetization: If your customers value special freight considerations, customer service add-ons, rush orders, cancellation options, and warranties, then you can charge them for those options.
Your job is to help your leadership drive better decisions, not to do mathematics.
High Pricing Variability trains your customers to be even more aggressive on price.
Thanks so much for your partnership and I look forward to seeing you at upcoming profitABLE26 events:
Happy Pricing and Best Wishes! - Kevin
