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We chatted "Price Optimization in 2017" with Philip Huthwaite of BlackCurve.com - view the full #PricingChat recap! A new year of #PricingChat content kicked off with the CEO of BlackCurve.com Philip Huthwaite. Philip is by far one of the most enjoyable interviewees we've had and he's a wealth of pricing knowledge! Check out our exchange on Twitter discussing Price Optimization in 2107, how businesses should be using new strategies, which companies are failing, and ways everyone can benefit from optimization. Click the image & link below to view the full #PricingChat RECAP About Black Curve: BlackCurve is a cloud-based price management and price optimization platform, which helps businesses to fine-tune their pricing. Philip has been using software to solve pricing challenges since 2012. Before BlackCurve, he was a Technology Consultant at Accenture, he worked with multinational companies such as The Royal Bank of Scotland, ITV, Royal Mail and EDF Energy. Join us this Spring in Chicago, IL to learn directly from the Pricing experts and obtain your CPP Designation.

We talked with Philip Huthwaite of BlackCurve.com about ways companies can fine-tune their pricing! It's a New Year and we're back with fresh content to keep pricers and pricing businesses ahead of the competition. The #PricingPodcastseries delivers pricing strategies, pricing interviews with experts and more via an audio download. In this episode, Philip Huthwaite, CEO of Black Curve Software solutions. In this #PricingPodcastPhilip discusses: How to avoid pricing errors Common pricing strategies adopted by successful businesses Price Optimization - 2017 How to execute "quick wins" to better target prices Long-term strategies to fine-tuning pricing What businesses should avoid Case Studies/ Company Examples of success Listen to the NEW #PricingPodcastfeaturing Philip Huthwaite! Click the image below to listen to the audio... About Black Curve: BlackCurve is a Price Management and Price Optimization Platform. Our cloud-based software empowers businesses to price smarter and in doing so increase their profitability. Learn more: BlackCurve.com We're excited to provide great pricing interviews and business strategies in our #PricingPodcast series! Check our website, subscribe to the Newsletter and follow @PricingSociety on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook for the latest pricing updates and shares!

The term "CPQ" is tossed around, but we have the pricing tips proven to master the software. What can CPQ do for pricing business? How can pricing businesses avoid quote errors? How can pricing businesses efficiently (quickly) create quotes? How can pricing businesses attract customers with tailored offers using IMPROVED quotes? Configure Price Quote (CPQ) software can aid in core stages within business to set, control and quote pricing. CPQ software typically comes with a price engine that can assist businesses to keep their prices more in line with current market conditions – and to keep abreast of the competition. CPQ software automatically pulls together all the necessary pricing information, allowing you to produce a quote promptly and accurately. Pricing data becomes streamlined, time is saved - and ultimately, more sales can be made. It can be applicable in business-to-consumer (B2C) sale interactions, but is more commonly adopted in business-to-business (B2B) situations. The Configure or configuration element, essentially refers to all the products or services that you want to include in the quote. Click HERE to read the full article by Moira McCormick on BlackCurve.com!

We gathered the best photos, videos and more from the successful, 12th Annual European and Global Pricing Workshops & Conference in Berlin, Germany for the official recap! The conference was well attended with over 200 professionals from 30 countries representing 80 companies making this a truly global pricing event. Our expanded agenda included 9 full-day workshops covering important topics such as Core Pricing Skills, Behavioral Economics, Partnering with Sales, and Price Optimization in Consumer Facing Industries. Another great option was the Global Pricing for Executives Summit where senior managers discussed how their organizations are thriving in spite of economic pressure. We kicked off the conference day with compelling keynotes from Georg Tacke, author of Monetizing Innovation, and Tim Smith, author of Pricing Done Right. Also joining us were senior pricing practitioners from PepsiCo, Cisco Systems and General Electric. View #PPBERLIN2016 photos in our Facebook Album! As the only organization exclusively committed to growing the pricing profession and disseminating pricing expertise throughout the business world, PPS is proud to offer a conference that is concentrated on your connection, growth, and success in the pricing industry.

Companies should better understand "customer willingness-to-pay" concepts before starting or negotiating new products. How important is Willingness To Pay (WTP) in business? How can pricing strategies impact the desired result? Below are (9) Factors That Affect Willingness To Pay from our friends at BlackCurve Pricing. The article was originally posted on BlackCurve.com and authored by Moira Cormick. 1. PRICE V. QUALITY EFFECT Buyers will be more willing to pay if they believe that a higher price signals higher quality. 2. UNIQUE VALUE EFFECT If the buyer values the unique attributes of your product they they will be more willing to make a purchase. In a nutshell they value your product above others in the marketplace. 3. EXPENDITURE EFFECT Buyers are less willing to buy an item the higher the total expenditure, both in pounds and pence terms and as a percentage of their income and/or budget. 4. THE EFFECT OF CUSTOMER CHARACTERISTICS Several pricing studies have found that customer characteristics may influence WTP. These differences in WTP may depend on demographic, psychographic, or behavioral characteristics. The demographic variables include age, sex, race, income, marital status, education, and geographical location as well as psychographic variables such as activities, interests, opinions and life-style. 5. ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECT Macro environmental factors such as the overall state of the economy could influence customer willingness to pay. For example in a down turn in the economy the customer's willingness to pay may be lower as compared to a period when the economy is booming. 6. FASHION EFFECT Fashions increase the demand for certain products and services and consequently increase the customer willingness to pay for those products.7. FAIRNESS EFFECT If the customer perceives the price to be fair in comparison to similar products on the market they will be more inclined to buy. 8. CUSTOMER RESEARCH EFFECT If the buyer perceives that the current price is temporarily lower or higher than it will be in the future this will influence the timing of their purchase. 9. 2-FOR-THE-PRICE-OF-1 EFFECT Or, 3 for 2 effect etc. The buyer wants a bargain of course, to believe they are getting something for nothing. They are statistically less likely to buy a single item than a 'bundle' of items. CLICK HERE to read the full & original post!

Ben Blaney, CPP from PROS shares best types of change management software and benefits for pricers and business. We chatted on Twitter with Ben to gain more insight for integrating these practices. We had a great talk online (Twitter) in a recent #PricingChat featuring pricing expert Ben Blaney, CPP, a Strategic Consultant at PROS. Ben shared valuable lessons on the best ways to ease departments into a new era of pricing software. Read the #PricingChat recap below: About Ben Blaney: Ben Blaney, CPP, is a featured pricing expert, currently serving as a Strategic Pricing Consultant at PROS. A former Director of Commercial Excellence for ESAB, he was responsible for strategy, execution, and measuring all aspects of commercial excellence. Ben has a Bachelor's degree from the University of Exeter, PRINCE2 and PMP certifications in Project Management and is a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt.Ben is a featured speaker at the 13th Annual European & Global Pricing Workshops & Conference this December in Barcelona! Click the image to learn more and register your team This Fall, learn more about Change Management and Pricing during our 28th Annual Fall Pricing Workshops and Conferences in San Diego, California! Learn more about our upcoming Pricing Conferences and register your team by clicking the image or visiting the Conferences section on our website!

We chatted with pricing expert Lydia DiLiello about ways to increase profits for companies and how to improve their pricing focus. When companies don't have a clear directive, it becomes difficult to increase profits. Isn't that what it's all about? Lydia DiLiello hopped on Twitter to provide strategic answers to questions including: Should companies be focused on top line revenue or bottom line profit? Can companies increase profitability with their poor pricing practices? What impact does dirty data have on a company's ability to increase profit? How can companies use price lists to increase profitability? And more! View the full #PricingChat recap below: Lydia DiLiello is the Founder & Principal of Capital Pricing Consultants and Professional Pricing Society Board Member. Have more questions about this pricing topic? Send her a tweet @LydiaDiLiello. Log on to Twitter to join the #PricingChat conversations in real time. Make sure to follow @PricingSociety and visit our website for the latest and greatest pricing industry information.

In this #PricingPodcast, expert Joanne Smith shares strategies to improve partnering with sales within pricing partnerships. Joanne Smith is a featured Workshop presenter during our Winter European Global Pricing Workshops and Conference in Berlin, Germany. Before sharing exclusive insight with attendees, she shared best-practices to improve price execution in our #PricingPodcast series! Click the image below to listen to the audio recording: **We've transcribed the full audio interview below: Why is this an important topic that should be considered? J.S.: This topic is so important since most companies that embrace pricing focus on price setting, but that is just half the battle. Price execution is the other 50%. The best price setting does you little good if sales can’t successfully negotiation the price. So it is imperative that pricing work closely with sales to support or guide them in the execution. I continue to see weak execution skills in virtually every business I work with; from highly experienced sales professionals and leaders through pricing leaders & professionals. Unfortunately, so many pricing groups think the execution is the sole responsibility of the sales force and thus they don’t think they need to (or should) get involved. This could not be further from the truth. The pricing group must be the champion for better pricing and that extends through helping to build the pricing skills of the sales force. Furthermore, a pricing person can’t be a valued partner of sales if they don’t understand price execution and have skills to coach or guide sales in difficult price drop or price increase situations.What are some of the biggest challenges to price execution?J.S.:The two tough challenges are 1. how to manage situations where there is high pressure to drop your price and 2. how to successfully manage situations where you are increasing the price. In both of these situations, the customer is pushing hard for the lower price (or lower increase) and competitors are potentially positioning to ‘take your share”. Most salespeople don’t know how to assess their pricing power in these situations and thus they often drop the price far too frequently and much more than they need to. They don’t know how to manage aggressive competitors. In the end, their actions often lead to more price aggressive customers and price aggressive competitors; making their jobs more difficult.What are a few of the key reasons that companies have such low success with their price increases?J.S.:Most companies only achieve about 30% of their price increase targets. It doesn’t need to be that low and with good skills, they can greatly improve (double or triple their success). There are a number of reasons why companies have such low success, and unfortunately no silver bullet to fix these issues; it takes a combination of skills to turn things around. But, the top two high-level reasons for low success are 1) mindset and 2) execution skills. Mindset gets into things like the culture being so volume focused that they are afraid to risk any volume loss, to sales not having the courage and conviction to really ‘sell’ their price increase. The lack of courage and conviction often stems from their lack of strong price execution skills. Once you enhance the skills the mindset shifts occur and your performance greatly improves.What was your experience when you ran DuPont’s Marketing and Pricing Group? Was execution a key issue?J.S.: Absolutely! Nearly every business believed that had highly experienced salespeople who had repeatedly tried to improve price but their highly competitive environment made it too difficult to raise (or sometimes even hold) price without losing their volume. They and their leaders were amazed at their success when they started to use best practices for pricing execution. They learned (then demonstrated) that their own actions & behaviors could influence the market in a very positive way.What makes this workshop unique or different from other workshops on pricing execution?J.S.: When I ran DuPont’s Corporate Pricing, I evaluated numerous externally available pricing and negotiation courses looking for the best course to train our sales and pricing professionals. This course combines some of the best of these courses but I have also added several powerful modules and exercises (and modified others) to make it more practical, easy to understand and quite relevant to the sales force. I want folks confident to immediately start using their new knowledge to make better pricing decisions.What approaches do you use in this workshop?J.S.: Think fun and practical. This course is loaded with games, exercises and real-life examples that focus on very practical advice. Advice that can be immediately applied. There are take-home tools to help reinforce the key messages and improve price drop decisions. It is fast-paced and fun, but most of all practical.Have you offered this course in the past? If so, what was the participant’s response?J.S.: Yes, I have offered this course, or a similar version, a number of times. Typically I am offering internally to a company’s sales & pricing groups but this is the first time that I am offering it at the Spring Pricing Workshops & Conference - (#PPSCHI18). I have always gotten outstanding feedback for this course, in fact, a few experienced sales leaders have even said it was the best course of their career. **You can hear directly from Joanne Smith during the Spring Pricing Workshops and Conference event in Chicago, IL 2018! Follow @PricingSociety across social media for the latest pricing information in real-time!

We had a WONDERFUL time in Las Vegas during the 27th Annual Fall Pricing Workshops and Conference #PPSLV16! Over 500 attendees enjoyed learning from industry leaders all over the world. We jam-packed four days with Pricing Workshops, Pricing Practitioners Tracks, Networking Receptions, Keynote Presentations, Sponsor Hall exhibits and giveaways, and so much more fun that only the great city of Las Vegas could deliver. So many photos... so much to SHARE! View event coverage on our Social Media platforms! An Announcement To Conference Attendees: Thank you for attending - we hope that you downloaded the Conference Event APP for more interaction! Within the app are the Keynote and Breakout Session slides & presentation notes. To access: Click on the "MENU" option on the main screen Then click "Presentation Slides" Select the Speaker/Presenter of interest & then select "Speaker Slides" At the bottom of the new screen will appear another "MENU" icon option. Select the icon to either access the PDF Files directly on your mobile device's web browser OR select the option to download & email to your address. A special thank you to all of the Hotel Staff, PPS extended staff, team members, special guests and friends that made this such an exceptional Conference! We want to hear from YOU! Comments, suggestions, feedback or concerns? Please drop us a line: MarketingTeam@PricingSociety.com Registration for our upcoming Spring Pricing Workshops and Conference in Chicago, IL in 2018 is OPEN! Register your team TODAY!

Travis Umpleby, pricing expert and Senior Consultant at Holden Advisors, shares 4 strategic lessons that make for effective price increases. Understanding the best strategies to price products in business has proven to maximize business profits. We talked with Travis Umpleby, Senior Consultant at Holden Advisors, about ways to improve prices in business. Listen as he shares lessons that will aid in growth revenue growth within business. Learn the best tools, the right timing and ways to approach price increases with confidence in this #PricingPodcast! Click the image below to hear the #PricingPodcast: About Travis Umpleby: Travis is a Senior Consultant at Holden Advisors and drives pricing and negotiating initiatives with customers. He specializes in creating pricing-to-value strategies and negotiation tools that include Give-Gets and value messages that sales teams can use when facing tough negotiations. Travis excels in developing Backbone Coaches to reinforce behavior change. As a certified Negotiating with Backbone facilitator, Travis leads workshops across diverse industries such as SaaS, manufacturing, and data services. Travis holds an MBA from the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, and a Bachelor of Science from Brigham Young University. Speakers from Holden Advisors will be featured during the 29th Annual Fall Pricing Workshops and Conference in Dallas, Texas!

We talked with Peter Barr, Director of Pricing at McKesson, about pricing smoother to impact business in this #PricingPodcast. The McKesson Corporation is an American company distributing pharmaceuticals at a retail sale level and providing health information technology, medical supplies, and care management tools.McKesson is a top-ranked business grossing well over $100 billion in 2015. As a pricing expert, Peter has proven there is an art or skill, if you will, to mastering effective pricing. in this #PricingPodcast episode, he shares five great tips to improve smoother pricing in business! Click the image below to listen to the #PricingPodcast: About Peter Barr: Peter Barr has been leading pricing for distribution business for over 10 years and is the Senior Director of Pricing for the Primary Care Business at McKesson Medical-Surgical. He joined McKesson when the company acquired PSS World Medical, where he served as Director of Strategic Pricing. He previously served as the head of pricing for the plumbing and electrical businesses at HD Supply, where he worked in a series of leadership positions in pricing, operations and finance during his 16-year career with the company. Peter holds a B.S. in Finance and International Business from Oregon State University. We proudly feature McKesson Speakers during our events and this Spring during the 28th Annual Spring Pricing Workshops and Conference is no exception!

We talked with featured pricing consultant Lydia DiLiello about the "Current Trends In Pricing" in a NEW #PricingPodcast! We're excited to feature pricing experts and share business insights in our #PricingPodcastseries! This latest edition features PPS Board Member and friend, Lydia DiLiello. Lydia took time before her upcoming appearance during #PPSLV16 to share an expert opinion on the current pricing industry landscape. Listen to the exclusive insight in our #PricingPodcast. Click the image below to listen to the #PricingPodcast audio: About Lydia: Lydia Di Liello is the founder and principal of Capital Pricing Consultants L.L.C. a Revenue Management consultancy dedicated to improving profitability for its clients. She brings more than 22 years of global revenue management, pricing expertise and business leadership experience to her clients. Spending her corporate career in B2B, Di Liello’s experience working in 16 countries with global Fortune 500 companies and mid-size privately held firms provides a breadth of knowledge and an understanding of the unique challenges her clients face. Her leadership roles have included manufacturing, pricing and procurement.Di Liello earned her MBA from The Youngstown State University and is a prominent member of the Professional Pricing Society Board of Advisors and regularly presents at Conferences. She also frequently contributes to pricing industry publications including The Pricing Advisor, Pricing Brew and The Journal of Professional Pricing. For more information about pricing strategies that will better impact your business, contact Lydia directly with questions and comments! Email: Lydia@capitalpricingconsultants.com Lydia is also a featured Workshop presenter during the upcoming 28th Annual Fall Pricing Workshops and Conference in San Diego.