Pricing can mean various things in various industries and companies. Similarly, the tasks that different pricing professionals require at different stages in their career vary considerably as well. However, there are certain commonalities in the type of skills that pricing professionals use at different levels of maturity, as the author explains.
In this article, the author presents a scenario of an all too common lifecycle that plays out consistently in pricing management groups in mature companies: new pricing managers are hired for growth, they immediately lower prices while ignoring other key indicators, and when this doesn’t work they scramble for other solutions or leave before creating a black mark on their resume. This article describes how to break this cycle and provides strategies for new pricing managers to help improve their chances of success.
Pricing projects involve a great deal of collaboration, communication and coordination between numerous, diverse departments within an organization. Oftentimes, projects become derailed because one side doesn’t know what the other side is doing or, in many cases, each side is speaking a different “language.” In this article, the author presents recommendations for ensuring that your pricing project isn’t sabotaged by ambiguous or contradictory communications.
In this article, the author shares his own personal journey of how he entered the pricing profession, and shares lessons learned from his own experiences in building his pricing career. He also presents key questions for any new pricer to answer in order to build their own pricing journey roadmap for success.
Stephan M. Liozu is Chief Value Officer of the Thales Group (www.thalesgroup.com) and Chief Marketing Officer of Thales Inc. in the USA. He is also an Adjunct Professor & Research Fellow at the Case Western Research University Weatherhead School of Management. Stephan holds a Ph.D. in Management from Case Western Reserve University (2013), an MS in Innovation Management from Toulouse School of Management (2005), and an MBA in Marketing from Cleveland State University (1991). He is a Certified Pricing Professional (CPP), a Prosci® certified Change Manager, and a Strategyzer Business Model Innovation Coach. He authored four books, Value Mindset (2017), Dollarizing Differentiation Value (2016), The Pricing Journey (2015) and Pricing and Human Capital (2015). He also co-edited three books, Innovation in Pricing – Contemporary Theories and Best Practices (2012) and The ROI of Pricing (2014), and Pricing and the Salesforce (2015).