Topics

Pricing with Confidence

Customers have never met a price they liked.  And they will use every trick in the book to get you to lower your prices and give up profits. As businesses face increased and global competition, and an uncertain economy they believe that discounting is the only key to survival.

In Pricing with Confidence, we offer new strategies and insights that are particularly valuable and relevant right now. An approach that actually builds revenues and profits without lowering prices.  Presented as10 simple rules that will be able to hold steady or even raise prices while your customers experience increased value for every dollar they spend.  A value focused strategy that gives sales people utter confidence when negotiating with customers. 

• Audience:  executives in sales, marketing, finance, operations who need to find ways to improve the profitability of their company.

Growing Profits in a Recession

With the recent news of the recession, moves by the Federal Reserve, and global markets on a downslide, most companies will be to be too slow to make the changes necessary to help protect their profits.  This presentation outline the five steps companies can take to protect their profits against the devastating effects of an economic slowdown.  Those five steps are:     

• Hold off on increasing the discounting of your best and most differentiated offerings

• Consider offering flanking products

• Re-evaluate financial goals

• Invest in niche marketing

• Understand Competitive dynamics

• Audience: Management level executives considering alternatives to just cost cutting in order to protect profits from declining in a market slowdown. 

 Kick the Discounting Habit

In reality pricing is far from simple.  Setting the optimum price for products and services for your customer opportunities is one of the most difficult decisions sales people and managers can make. But when your prices don’t reflect the value of the offering, are wrong for the type of customer, or don’t make sense under current market conditions, every sale you close could be leaving money on the table.

The key to winning the pricing game is to focus on the financial value your customer enjoys from using your offering.  Linking your price with the value you deliver allows you to differentiate your solution in commoditized markets and offer trade-offs to put teeth into negotiations with customer.

• How to find out the real value drivers of your customer’s business

• Reliably predict the right price for the right solution

• The four types of customers and how to price for and sell to each one

• The nuts and bolts of bundling products, services and solutions to create pricing leverage for every negotiating situation

• Audience: Sales people, managers and executives looking for ways to instill confidence when negotiating with tough customers and their purchasing agents

How to Introduce a New Product into the Market

This presentation helps executives understand how to value and price innovative offerings, to drive adoption and maximize revenue and profitability.

An innovative new product lacks ready pricing references, and users are unfamiliar with the true value they will derive.  Often, price is used as a tool to facilitate early adoption, which seldom is successful.  We lay out a simple, rigorous three-step process to improve new product pricing:

• Step One: Measure customer value – how does the innovation impact your customer’s financial performance?

• Step Two: Align pricing with the industry lifecycle – different price strategies are required when launching a product into an emerging, growing, mature, or declining market

• Step Three: Align price strategy with drivers of adoption – different price strategies are required for different types of new products, based on their impact on ease of adoption

We also offer valuable lessons about why innovations fail – defining the three major drivers of high failure rates.

• Audience: Marketing and sales people who need quantify the right price for a product launch and maximize the return on new product investmen

Speakers

Reed Holden, D.B.A., Founder

A world-class pricing expert and founder of Holden Advisors, Dr. Holden helps companies in a broad range of industries create go-to-market strategies that drive price leadership and profitable growth. He an enthusiastic and persuasive advocate of the Value Discipline^SM, a process he pioneered to help companies in highly competitive markets optimize their marketing programs. As a change agent, he helps business leaders put these strategies into action by instilling pricing confidence across their organizations.

A dynamic and insightful presenter, Dr. Holden has been speaking professionally for 20 years and is a regular keynote for programs with Professional Pricing Society and PriceX. He speaks at The Conference Board, SAP Sapphire, and the Strategic Account Management Association, and regularly runs targeted private company sessions with management teams to drive change and consensus for new directions.

Mark Burton, Cofounder

Mark Burton is the driving force in creating offering and pricing strategies for firms in industries such as IT outsourcing, semiconductor, financial and business services, and enterprise software and maintenance.

Mark brings his experience in these fast-paced industries to life in a range of keynote and seminar environments. He speaks at conferences on business-to-business marketing, gives talks company events, and conducts client workshops for a range of clients. He has shared his insights with audiences at events ranging from The Professional Pricing Society, Pricex and SAP Business Forums, to the Capco Roundtable for Financial Executives, Better Management, and AIPMM’s Annual Conference.