Bjorn Willemsens is director at Monitor Deloitte and acts as lead member of the European Pricing and Profitability Management Community. As such he is one of the key members in the further development of pricing related methodologies and market awareness. Bjorn was one of the first trainers joining the CPM programme. We asked Bjorn about the programme and why it's important to join.
How do you evaluate the CPM programme?
The CPM program submerges pricing managers for a week in the concepts and good (and bad!) practices of pricing. What I especially like is that we bring together people with different skillsets and pricing experience so they can learn from each other on top of what they get from the trainers and materials. The interactive discussions help in understanding and framing the challenges of each participant. This in its turn is a very good input for the personal business case/pricing improvement programme.
How did your share in the training evolve during the years?
As a first day CPM trainer I have seen the program evolving over time, improving the setup based on participants ‘feedback. Depending on the CPM objective (gaining transactional control, going for price optimization or even dedicated in company CPM sessions), I vary my content and cases from my experience as a professional pricing consultant. I like to use own cases rather than schoolbook material because I know from practice where the pain comes from and how we got to resolve it. I very much enjoy to see the participants training their grey cells on the exercises – can’t be too easy to make it a good learning experience!
What is the outcome for the participants?
Being part of CPM broadens your horizon on the potential of pricing. It is only partially about tools and techniques, yet mainly about sharing experiences and being able to ask questions about your pricing challenges as a participant. You will not go away with the perfect answer to your needs, but hopefully with a good cook book and plenty of examples to start working your pricing kitchen.
___________________________________________________________________________
Bjorn talks about transactional control and pricing optimisation. Do you want to know how far your organisation is in its pricing journey. The European Pricing Platform has developed a tool - the Pricing Maturity Indicator (PMI) - which allows you to know immediately your own organisation's pricing maturity level: going from level 1 (price list maintenance) to level 4 (full profit optimisaton). Take the survey here!
And reserve your seat at the next edition of the Certified Pricing Manager programme in Göteborg on June 13-17, 2016.
Some pictures of the last edition in Barcelona
