We share expert perspectives on value-based pricing, strategy, behavioural economics, and what’s shaping pricing conversations in boardrooms today.
With his biopic now in cinemas, this latest celebrity pricing lesson comes from Robbie Williams. After receiving his 2000 BRIT award for Single of the Year from Craig Cash and the late Caroline Aherne, Robbie Williams asks the audience (fast forward to the 3:30min...
In my book, "Overcoming Floccinaucinihilipilification: Valuing and Monetizing Products and Services", I ask the question “wouldn’t the right people to ask about inflationary pressures be pricing managers? They are the ones setting the prices of products and services”....
Earlier this month, the Berlin-based company 7Learnings listed me as one of its 99 Pricing Thought Leaders to follow on LinkedIn. I was very humbled by this announcement, and the first I knew about it was when I found a dozen or so request to connect with people on...
This post has been on what I'd call "high rotation" on LinkedIn. Perhaps you've seen it…? Most readers will think about a post like this from the perspective of their own purchasing decision: it's cheaper for me to buy coke from a supermarket than it is for me to buy...
As a Pricing Geek, one of the things I look forward to at this time of year is how much all the gifts in the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" will cost. PNC have been calculating cost of this basket of goods (all the birds, the milking maids, the ladies dancing,...
In the course of my work, I come across important resources, writings and articles on the topic of Pricing. This post shares a few of those that recently caught my attention in mid-2022. I hope you find them as useful as I did. Why 'Shrinkflation' means you are paying...
The book "Overcoming Floccinaucinihilipilification: Valuing and Monetizing Products and Services" has been available for twelve months now. To celebrate the first anniversary of publication, over the coming weeks, Chapter 2 of the book will be serialized, revealing...
The book "Overcoming Floccinaucinihilipilification: Valuing and Monetizing Products and Services" has been available for twelve months now. To celebrate the first anniversary of publication, over the coming weeks, Chapter 2 of the book will be serialized, revealing...
The book "Overcoming Floccinaucinihilipilification: Valuing and Monetizing Products and Services" has been available for twelve months now. To celebrate the first anniversary of publication, over the coming weeks, Chapter 2 of the book will be serialized, revealing...
The book "Overcoming Floccinaucinihilipilification: Valuing and Monetizing Products and Services" has been available for twelve months now. To celebrate the first anniversary of publication, Chapter 2 of the book will be serialized, revealing nine myths that surround...
Demand curves are not smooth; finding the inflection points (kinks) where price does influence demand is key to uncovering profit improvement opportunities. Economists believe in nice, smooth demand curves. Many research tools do as well, based on the output they...
Ten years ago, I started running pricing workshops for start-up accelerators. As part of the meet-and-greet, I would ask entrepreneurs to describe their pricing model to me. Nine out of ten participants would reply with something along the lines of “Oh, we’re building...
There has never been a better reason to ditch cost-plus pricing than the health and economic crisis we are experiencing right now. Cost-plus pricing is traditionally defined as the pricing methodology where you add up all your costs, throw on a desired profit margin...
Twelve years ago, when the GFC broke, I was firmly entrenched on the speaking circuit, running pricing workshops all the way from Melbourne to Mumbai, and all points in between. During the course of those workshops, a fair chunk of time was spent exploring what...
There’s no such thing as a pricing laboratory. There’s only the real world to test prices in. So why bother with pricing research at all then? The simple answer is ‘because it’s better than nothing’. Pricing research can cost you a packet, or it can be dirt cheap. One...
There are a lot of service professionals who are frustrated at pricing their services based on timesheets, but they’re not sure how to transition out of it into value-based pricing. What’s a safe way to get started? So before I answer that question, let’s just define...
Five simple, but critical elements of a Pricing strategy The Thursday after next marks the start of Spring in Australia. Lawn mowers will be heard and barbecues will have their winter cobwebs blown away, in anticipation of sunny days just around the corner. These...
Watch those price changes There is no doubt that over the next couple of weeks, companies everywhere are going to be executing price changes as the new financial year approaches on the 1st July. This is a time for Pricing diligence. There are two types of costs...
In my post Advertising's Slow Road to Value-Based Pricing, I talked about what Value-Based Pricing is, why companies are adopting it, and why advertising agencies run the risk of “commoditisation hell” by not adopting it. But it would be remiss of me not to tell you...
In Conversation: Jon Manning & Michael Hardiman Michael Hardiman runs a business called ZenBus Advisory, specializing in economic and demographic insights and forecasts for the retail industry and beyond. We sat down recently to discuss the intersection of his...
In Australia, the new financial year commences on the 1st July. Many companies use this as an opportunity (or an excuse) to increase their prices. After all, that's what the Accountant, the Budget or the Business Plan (sometimes all three) says you should do. However,...
One of two industries where customers are forcing suppliers to adopt value-based pricing This article first appeared on the TrinityP3 blog on the 23rd January 2013. Have you seen any changes in the advertising industry in the last three years? Why not comment below......
Five simple steps to charging the right price In my column, A Pricing Lesson from Richard Gere, I mentioned that one of the questions I'm most frequently asked is “How do we know we’re charging the right price?” During a pricing roadshow for a client in Auckland, an...
How to deal with Procurement Managers, Gwyneth Paltrow -style In the 1998 movie Sliding Doors, there are two plots that play out between the leads Gwyneth Paltrow and John Hannah, depending on whether or not the former caught a London Underground train. Imagine, for a...
What customers say they will do, and what they actually do, can be two completely different things As all businesses know, when it comes to customers, what they say they will do (in market research), and what they actually do, are two completely different things. All...
What role, if any, should it play in pricing? A couple of weeks ago, I was a panelist at the NAB Small Business Summit. Along with two other panelists, we discussed the importance of cash flow, from a tax, accounting and pricing perspective. During the Q&A session...
Customers will tell you what they will pay…after the deal is done One of the most frequently asked questions I'm asked is “How do we know we’re charging the right price?”. A recent Richard Gere movie offers an answer. In Arbitrage, Richard Gere plays a businessman who...
My last post Are you Pricing Like Dennis Denuto? seems to have resonated with many readers. As an interesting juxtaposition, in this week’s column, I thought I’d take a look at five of my favourite and most powerful pricing quotes, three of which come from the one...
NB: An audio recording to accompany this post can be found here. In the 1997 movie “The Castle”, Dennis Denuto (played by Tiriel Mora) was the incompetent lawyer who tried to fight the compulsory acquisition of the Kerrigan’s family home. Denuto fell into the trap of...
If you don’t experiment with Pricing, you’re not doing Pricing Love him or hate him, you do have to give Ruslan Kogan credit for one thing: he has the appetite to experiment with his pricing that many companies lack. In mid June 2012, Kogan decided to apply a 6.8%...
An alternative to one of the most commonly asked questions in Pricing One of my favourite pricing cartoons[1] is that of a schoolgirl selling lemonade for $500, with the caption reading “I just want to sell one and call it a summer”. The cartoon epitomises one of the...
Or why every person who sets prices needs to spend time with a purchasing manager. Every time I conduct a pricing workshop, during a tour de tables, I ask delegates amongst other questions whether their company has a Pricing department and whether their company has a...
One of the biggest myths in pricing is that “its all about the dollars and cents”, the figures that go on the price tag we attach to our product or service. Pricing is so much more than that: most of the 80 or so public or in-house pricing workshops that I’ve...
How to entice customers to buy Last week, I was in Shanghai delivering some in-house and public workshops on value-based pricing. As the name suggests, time in the workshop is devoted to identifying the economic value provided by a company’s products or services. One...
The latest Pricing revolution has started The French have always loved their food. So its hardly surprising that rising food prices, amongst other factors, contributed to the French Revolution of 1789 -1799. Several decades later, a Frenchman started another, less...
Sometimes, price wars can make sense Is there “pricing logic” behind the current price war being fought between Coles & Woolworths? Pricing theory tells us that there are three situations where a price war may make sense, none of which support the strategies...
Should you drop your prices if customers don't say anything? Silence isn’t a sound that most leaders want to hear in the aftermath of their pitch for new business. Still, if customers don’t immediately sign on the dotted line, silence is the second best reaction. Let...
Inventory isn’t something companies want to sit on. You want to sell it as quickly as possible and turn it into revenue, not pay for it to be sitting in a warehouse. Why not turn your unsold goods into a service? Last Sunday, a friend invited me to opening night of an...
