Aug 5, 2019
Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
- Understanding the complexities each organization have involving pricing and zeroing in on how to capture a product’s full value
- Understanding Fear and Competence when talking about value pricing, digging deep into how to do it (increasing prices) side by side with the confidence to do it
- Getting an overview of a masterclass about value pricing and what value can you get from it
Adrienne Gordon has a passion for the power of pricing. She has dedicated her career to pricing since 1999, working with multiple companies in several different pricing roles. She began her pricing career at Parker Hannifin as the project manager of their global strategic pricing initiative. During this time, Adrienne worked with multiple consulting groups and revenue optimization technology companies as she helped architect the vision for Parker’s Best in Class pricing approach. From there, Adrienne took the Director of Pricing role at American Greetings, where she executed a multi-phase value pricing research effort ultimately resulting in the redesign of their approach to pricing cards. At Eaton Corp, she worked with several different businesses on strategic projects as an internal consultant. Finally, in 2009, Adrienne became an external pricing consultant based in Northeast Ohio, working with dozens of companies in the manufacturing and distribution space. Today, she is a blogger, author, and entrepreneur. Prior to pricing, Adrienne held several roles in Technical Sales and Marketing. She holds an MBA in Marketing from Western New England College and a Bachelor’s in Engineering from Boston University.
In this episode, Adrienne takes us to dig deeper into the culture of fear in pricing that is pervading an organization. She manages to uncover bit by bit where this fear is coming from at the same time provides a perspective where all these fears can be removed thus capturing a full value for a product. With an expertise spanning two decades, she has but a lot of inputs to share about winning deals even when you increase prices, where most organizations are afraid to toe in.
“When in doubt, offer versions and your customer will opt into the best value proposition for themselves and you'll learn a ton about your business.”
- Adrienne Gordon
Topics Covered:
01:07 - What got her into pricing
02:46 - Scope of her work as a pricing manager at Parker Hannifin
05:57 - Where is the culture of fear in pricing manifesting in an organization
06:57 - Her thoughts on companies building a great product but not good at capturing value for their product
08:46 - How to fix that culture of fear of pricing in an organization
09:41 - How to remove fear to capture a full value
10:36 - Of fear, of competence, of metrics and of analytics. How do these relate to pricing and value
15:11 - How do I do it versus do I have the confidence to do it
16:58 - How to win deals even when you increase prices
18:51 - Tools to help companies have the confidence in going about their value pricing
19:32 - Talking more about the masterclass she is offering on value pricing
20:14 - Who is this masterclass for
22:08 - Giving her best advice on value pricing to impact your business
Key Takeaways:
“So companies that think about this, in my opinion, in the right way, look at it as a process. Knowing that it's not going to be perfect, we're going to have an opinion on our strategy, we're going to execute it flawlessly, we're going to measure what happened. I'm going to optimize that strategy. It's very simple. And I think when leadership can articulate that, that's how they want to approach pricing from a continuous improvement process standpoint. It gives their teams the comfort that it is gonna be okay, a little bit of failure is okay cause we're going to learn and we're going to get better.” - Adrienne Gordon
“And so all the work that a lot of organizations do around pricing around the data science, around this strategy and testing and the research, It's all good stuff, but at the end of the day, it's really just taking that information and getting it in front of a person to say it's okay to ask for a little bit more.” - Adrienne Gordon
“Leadership will never be effective at attaining their full value unless they recognize their job is to remove the culture of fear.” - Adrienne Gordon
Connect With Adrienne Gordon
- pricingempowered.com
- Email: info@pricingempowered.com
Connect with Mark Stiving