Today, a growing number of companies are focusing on pricingprocesses and capabilities to improve profitability. They understand thatbecause customers’ perceptions of value vary—as does their “willingness-to-pay”for that value—it is important to treat different customers differently atdifferent times, especially as markets become more dynamic.
Successful sales people intuitively understand thesevariations in willingness-to-pay. The challenge however is turning thatintuition into a repeatable and measurable process. You need a system in place thatlets sales reps know what they are able to quote for each opportunity. Your sales process must quote faster, to increasebusiness velocity. At the same time,business drivers require maximizing profits while still minimizing the risk oflosing a deal.
TargetPricing Sets the Stage for Success
In order for sellers to close the most profitable dealpossible, they must have a clear and practical goal in mind as they enter intonegotiations. When considering the prices they offer to customers, sellers needto know what is acceptable or achievable. And the best way for an organizationto communicate that information to its sellers is through well-defined,data-driven price targets.
As such, the first step toward better negotiations is toestablish a “culture of target pricing.”
With an established culture of target pricing, you can then work to improve how you determine the target price recommendation in the first place. Most organizations fall somewhere within 4 levels of pricing guidance maturity.
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A Roadmapfor Implementing Pricing Guidance
To get where you want to be, start by defining where you arenow. Here’s a roadmap that helps you understand where you are today on the pricingmaturity model along with a few tips on how to mature.
STAGE ONE MATURITY:Cost awareness is a foundation for gathering data that is used in moreprogressive stages. At this stage you are actively evaluating the profitabilityof proposed customer business. If you aren’t already here, it’s a great placeto start.
TIP: Although many businesses choose to start this journey with spreadsheet-based costing, investing in technology can yield benefits. It can provide a platform and repository for cost information; improve cost and profitability assessment; automate the escalation and approval process; and improve data collection and analytic insights.
STAGE TWO MATURITY:Transitioning to a target pricing culture requires an organizationaltransformation. To create acceptance around this approach to pricing, it isimportant to be clear with your sellers about the strategy and incentives youare creating—with different pricing for different customers.
TIP: As with stage one, businesses may choose to start this journey with paper or spreadsheet-based pricing tools for sellers—but technology can provide analytics to improve target price setting and performance monitoring. Additionally, it can provide a central platform for managing customer segments and target pricing—and effective delivery of this information to point-of-use, within quoting tools.
STAGE THREE MATURITY:At this stage, a typical organization will be actively collecting and managingtransaction data—at the product line item level—for at least 20 to 50 customersegments.
TIP: At this stage, investment in technology becomes a necessity. Without appropriate software, designing customer segmentation and calculating percentile-based floor and target price guidance would simply be too difficult and time-consuming.
STAGE FOUR MATURITY:In stage four pricing guidance maturity, math plays a central role. In manycases, businesses start on this path by engaging with any number of pricingscience consultants who specialize in this work. Consultants typically receivea large data set from the customer and work with an offline toolset to designand validate customer segmentation for pricing. Once their work is complete,they typically deliver a customer grouping model that is then used in theongoing calculation of target pricing guidance by the business.
It’s important to note that for some organizations, stagefour price guidance maturity is not the necessary end state. Philosophically,some companies prefer segmentation that is purely strategy-based, versus onethat is mostly math-based.
TIP: At this stage, investment in a proper software toolset is critical. Given that a math-based exercise usually results in a very discrete segmentation, with hundreds or even thousands of customer segments, investing in a system to manage the calculation of target pricing is essentially a non-negotiable requirement.
Establishing—and utilizing—appropriate and smart pricingguidance in B2B organizations that matches the pace of today’s businessdynamics can drive spectacular gains in contribution margin. And the good newsis you don’t need perfect data or a sophisticated tool to make progress in thisarea. By taking logical steps, you can achieve your goals without the need formajor investments or quantum leaps in sophistication.
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