Our last Certified Pricing Management training of 2015 in Barcelona

The European Pricing Platform organises its Certified Pricing Manager programme twice a year.  This last edition of 2015 took place in the wonderful city of Barcelona, Spain.  Despite the timing at the end of the year temperature was still pleasant to do some walking and sight-seeing in this vivid city.

And did our attendees like that….

As you may know - or not know - this EPP Certified Pricing Manager® programme is the only officially recognised pricing and profit optimisation accreditation programme in the world. No other programme is so comprehensive and practical. The Certified Pricing Manager® programme is specifically designed around the organisational and personal skill cards to perform on the different pricing maturity levels. Certification is based on real business project success. Every participant needs to successfully complete a business project proving that he/she masters the pricing and change capabilities to make things really happen.

The CPM® Programme teaching approach is organised around 4 learning principles:

- You learn by listening to conceptual frameworks brought to you by top pricing experts. We take care to ensure maximum knowledge-sharing between trainers and participants. Our top experts for this edition were Kristof Boodts and Oliver Dallemagne from Monitor Deloitte and Antoine Weil, director with Simon-Kucher & Partners. These were our trainers for the CPM®2 programme.  The participants of the CPM®3 level listened to Juriaan Demeure, also from Simon-Kucher & Partners and Paul Glenn from Heidelberg.

     - You learn from interactive discussions with your peer pricing colleagues sharing their best practices and experiences. And there is plenty of time for that!

  

 

 

- You  learn by reflection on your own situational context in the organisation – we make intensive use of ‘real world’ business cases and examples. For this session we invited Felix Krohn, Vice President Corporate Strategy, Pricing & BI at Wolters Kluwer. He talked about Wolters Kluwer transition to pricing maturity with the launch of a Corporate Strategy Pricing Excellence Programme. With the support of a Center of Pricing Excellence, a framework has been deployed to define best practices across Wolters Kluwer.
 

 

   The complete presentation has been downloaded to our Partner Zone on www.pricingplatform.eu.  This is one of the reasons to join the EPP community: get content that surely helps you further in your pricing journey!

 

- You learn by action and make the change really happen. Certification is based on real business project success with a margin impact of at least 30.000 euro*. You work on an actual business challenges for your company. Final CPM® certification depends on whether you succeed in completing the identified margin, profit optimisation or change targets set by yourself and your direct manager(s) in your certification project plan. Read about the Philips case here.

* the average margin improvement result (until nov 2015) is 60 K !

 

This intensive week of training has once again proven to be ‘tiring but happy’ and to say it with the words of Linda Thalmüller from Fresenius Medical care: ‘Industry speakers brought valuable food for thought!’ Look out for this year's EPP training calendar on www.pricingplatform.eu.
Hope to see you this year!

 

Essential skills for maximizing your business strategy

Getting added value from conjoint analysis

The added value of conjoint analysis lies in the fact that values that aren’t measured can also be predicted. This is generally achieved by linking the values that one wants to measure in a linear fashion. Even though this normal adaptation of conjoint analysis has its advantages, conjoint remains a flawed tool because it simply ignores the fact that price assessment follows a step-by-step model rather than a linear pattern.

An important correction of the analysis is achieved by including the consumer’s not-so-rational decision-making process. Prices that are optimized on the basis of the consumer as homo oeconomicus will therefore mean that the conjoint analysis (in its normal adaptation) will not have a very major impact. The validity will be greatly increased if the analysis incorporates the irrationality associated with decisions made by consumers plus a more in-depth analysis of the psychological side of decision-making. (Dr. Bauer, Vocatus AG, 2006-2011)

To get more in-depth knowledge of this process, the European Pricing Platform is organizing a Master Class training on the Pricing Toolbox, given by Dr. Bauer on the 9th and 10th of May in Hamburg. In this training Dr. Bauer will introduce his expert view of the ‘Psychological Price Profile’ and take you into the world of financial risk-taking, rational decision-making, and how to set prices accordingly. This means gearing your pricing strategy towards existing consumer types that are based upon pricing psychology. By focusing on how to adapt existing tools that are dealt with during the training (such as BPTO and conjoint analysis), Dr. Bauer will show you how to get the best of both worlds. During the course of this two-day training, he will transfer his insights to the participants’ own pricing issues so that they can maximize their own organization’s business strategy.

Articles of Dr. Bauer can be found online at: http://www.vocatus.com/publications/feedback.php.
 
For more information on this training please visit: http://www.pricingplatform.eu/site/public/trainings_detail.asp?id=126.

Why is Pricing Strategy the Sales Training Gap that Leaders Ignore?

In 2011, we surveyed and interviewed over 12,000 sales people about sales training. When we asked what area of the sales process reps wanted help with, 4 out of 5 answered “Pricing/Justifying Costs/ROI for our product/service”.  Sales people are uncomfortable having the pricing discussion. And leadership is letting them down by not developing their skills.

The impact on the sales force is stalled deals. Sales cycles get extended. Reps pester customers. Managers pester reps. VPs of Sales pester Managers. Everybody is staring at the forecast keeping score. The best sales leaders have changed the game with pricing by involving the key stakeholders (internal and external) early in the sales process. The best leaders use the following 3 steps to solve the Sales Training Gap in Pricing.

#1 - Exit Criteria—does your sales process have exit criteria? Exit Criteria is observable customer behavior that signals the buyer has progressed to the next stage..

Why does this matter—Sales people throw price out too early. Most times customers ask for a number because they have been conditioned to do so by other bad sales people. Unless a customer has clearly articulated all of their problem solving options and ranked them, you cannot discuss price. Why? Because you will have no ability to put a thoughtful proposal together that is focused on what matters to The Customer.

#2 - Collaboration—does your sales process have a step for collaboration with the customer on pricing?

Why does this matter—Budget—is this a replacement spend or new spend? If new, where will the money come from? They will have to create budget and it is your job to show them a believable revenue lift (longer term) or a tangible cost savings (short term). If your solution does not grow revenue or reduce cost In the Eyes of the Customer, you are done. If they don’t have some overwhelming compelling event that is creating urgency for you, the lack of value is the reason for the stall. That is a fact.

#3 - Internal Approvals—does your sales process have a fluid, easy process to get pricing for a customer?

Why does this matter—We see too many companies where non customer facing stakeholders (finance, procurement, legal) are making customer facing decisions without any customer facing knowledge. If this is happening don’t blame them. Blame sales leadership. It is the job of the sales leaders to ensure back office process is smooth and there is trust. Take these people out on some sales calls. Expose them to what it means to get a customer. Show them your customer acquisition cost.

Call To Action -

Make the investment in the 3 stakeholders. Your ability to help your reps, your customers and your company understand pricing is a valuable exercise. The talent management activities above can generate a nice Q1 ROI in a short period of time. If you are looking for ways to execute this flawlessly call my friend John Deris SVP of National Accounts at Ryder or my friend Rick Cibos, Group Director of National Accounts at Ryder. These guys are two of the best.

What tactics have you deployed to manage the pricing discussion internally and externally?

Source: Sales Force Effectiveness Blog on Linkedin (Posted by Matt Sharrers on Fri, Jan 20, 2012)