Aug 23, 2021
Jared Smith is a Business Consultant at Vendavo, a world-class commercial excellence software firm that enjoys seeing clients evolve into leaders in their industry. He is a Ph.D. candidate at Oklahoma State University researching how companies execute strategies, pricing, and sales dynamics.
In this episode, Jared talks about salespeople's insufficiency where business acumen is concerned. He is encouraging companies to put some training where salespeople can do value statements, challenger selling, and using whatever pricing methodologies they can have.
Why you have to check out today's podcast:
"Have the courage to experiment, have the courage to look at different things and approach pricing in a different way. The statement that we're going to raise prices and our customers are going to leave us, and we live in that fear all the time, that's not a really rational way of looking at things."
- Jared Smith
Topics Covered:
01:18 - Relating his first exposure to pricing
02:55 - Pricing for B2C versus B2B
04:43 - Taking a look at the whole value statements between B2C and B2B
06:45 - The disconnect between sales and pricing
08:26 - Shortfall in business acumen of most salespeople
10:06 - How to make value conversation happen
12:56 - Talking about sales discount and escalation processes
15:03 - He believes giving salespeople autonomy
16:50 - Setting compensation structures in a way that motivates salespeople not to discount but sell on value
18:24 - The compensation style that motivates most salespeople
20:35 - The challenge of getting salespeople sell above the target price
21:34 - Higher commission rate when hitting the price ceiling
22:20 - Understanding the value that customers get from the product
23:17 - Jared’s best pricing advice that greatly impacts a business
Key Takeaways:
"The key thing that I see is, when you start to talk about price, it gets into that whole thing of the sales operations, ‘Do I go there and do I lead with that ceiling price and discount down to the target?’" - Jared Smith
“What about if we set our compensation structures in such a way that motivates them not to discount, to always sell that value, but also maybe even motivates them to go higher than that as well?” - Jared Smith
“In the psychology of salespeople, that's what really drives a lot of the behavior and how you put your compensation system to move with those three numbers right there - the list price, ceiling, and target price.” - Jared Smith
"Have the courage to develop the capability of pricing in your company. Invest in good people, invest in good technologies, things that can support this as a discipline, much like you've been doing in the supply chain and all these other ones for years. So have the courage to change, have the courage to have the critical conversations." - Jared Smith
Resources/People Mentioned:
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