PriceCheck-Podcast: Preisgestaltungsmomente

>> Price Check, the pricing podcast powered by Quick Lizard. >> Hi, I'm Anne Lewis, VP of Pricing and Sales here at Quick Lizard. Um today's podcast I'm joined by Joe. Joe, do you want to give a quick >> Yeah, um I'm Joe Fleming um and I work at Venatek. We're a pricing and commercial excellence headhunter. >> Great. Um thanks for making the time to join on this conversation today. Um I thought maybe we'd kick it off with some of the changes that we're seeing both in companies and recruitment. How things are different now 2026 compared to say 10 years ago? Thinking about things such as how the role of pricing has become either more broad or more specialized. Thinking about how there's much more data available now and that this data is being used for decision-making. How that brings in challenges and so on and so forth.

So, Joe, first of all, thinking about from a hiring perspective, are you seeing any changes nowadays compared to say 10 years ago focused around the breadth of the role, the data, and so on and so forth? >> Um yeah, good to be here, Anne. Nice to um spend some time to talk about it. And absolutely, I think so. I think obviously the challenges have always been there, but the way that companies are approaching it now um are very different. Um and the kind of priority they're giving to pricing that wasn't given before. Um and the realization really of the the value that it can bring. with that said, there's still lots of companies that don't get it right. Um uh and lots of issues in there. Companies that do it well, companies don't don't do it well. Um but um I think the role generally um has a lot more prominence than it did yeah, kind of 10 years ago.

>> One thing I'm starting to see, the companies I'm talking to, they're starting to separate out the role of pricing as something becoming more dedicated rather than something as part of somebody else's day job. So, if we think about retailers, often pricing sits amongst category managers, amongst buyers, and so on and so forth. And you mentioned there in the introduction about the increased value of pricing. Are you seeing more of an increase in the need for specialist roles dedicated pricing, or is it still quite a fluid part of someone else's >> Yeah, I think with with the with this kind of function, it's still so individual to each different company. Um and and kind of how they manage it and how they set these things up. there are definitely more of these specific roles and positions around than there were kind of 10 years ago.

Um but how how companies are setting them up, um I think cuz some of them still be a little bit confused. Um a lot of times people talk about where does a role report to, what's it sit under, um and I think there's still in a lot of cases a bigger question around the the culture of pricing within a business. Um maybe more so than how it gets set up and who who's actually doing the job. >> One of the big changes I think that's happened, certainly over the last 10 years, has been really focused on the data. The amount of data that's available, the focus on it, the speed of change around data, the different sources of data. And because companies are relying so much on data for making decisions, both quicker decisions, more transparent decisions, and so on and so forth. Have you seen any shift in the skill sets that people need to move into dedicated pricing or dedicated commercial roles?

>> Um yeah, I mean I think on the data question, you're you're definitely right Um and it kind of opens up an interesting question as to who who is a good person to to do a good in in that in that kind of a role. Um and the challenge we often see is companies who are getting started with it, they want somebody that can do kind of do everything. Um and so somebody who's got a really strong data skill set.

Um so there you're maybe looking at kind of a pricing analyst or doesn't they don't necessarily need to come from pricing, but with that sort of Um but then they're also expecting that same person to be making longer term strategic decisions um and being able to do other parts of the job around the change management Um and then so finding that individual um where you know, you may have some a really senior person carrying out a more a job that somebody less experienced could do um on a higher higher pay rate. Um yeah and the same the other way around, it's difficult to find a senior person that's going to get stuck in and do the rolling the sleeves up and doing doing the data bit. Um I mean and that kind of doesn't even get started on the question with what's going on with AI at the moment.

Um but I think there are a lot of companies that need to be doing the basics before they're doing they're getting started with that bit >> I know certainly from some recent conversations I've had with companies, they're thinking about do they make or do they buy? And that introduces a whole skill set question around where do you have the expertise, where do you bring the knowledge in, how do you stay current and so on and so forth. So it's interesting thinking around how companies could potentially use AI to drive things. Uh and is interestingly you mentioned that the the need to drive change and decision process in the organization. I often see a need for companies to have a pricing person who's very influential around different aspects of the role.

So they almost need to be experts around how production happens, how procurement happens, how marketing's happening, how sales is happening. There's a very much a cross-functional theme around the skill set needed of the Again, thinking about, you know, where you're seeing things now compared to maybe 10 years ago, has that changed? Is there more of a particular area or less of a specific area that is coming >> Yeah, I I think the you know, the big difference between maybe companies that that kind of get it and don't get it right is is the positioning of of the person or the within the business. Um and then so maybe coming a little bit back to, you know, you're talking about the different departments, um but it's like what's the culture across the organization?

Um uh and you know, I think you know, there are examples of some businesses we've seen in the past where you know, they don't have a pricing um and you think, how are they going to do a good job managing any of this? But because it's so disciplined through the um and everybody knows where it fits and where it stands, it can still work well. Um you kind of got the other end of the scale where you maybe have set up a pricing center of commercial excellence, um maybe a full kind of RGM function, you know, that sits that sits in there doing that.

Um it's all well and good having that, but it then needs the kind of the right level of resource given to it and the right level of kind of power and uh and for it not to be seen as a because quite often you kind of see a company will bite the bullet, bring somebody in to get something started, um you know, maybe they're quite a senior They don't get given the control they need, um the time or the resource, um uh and that means they can't get it they can't get what they've said they can do Um and then also you maybe then see some slow changes made. They then think they don't need that senior-level person. Um so the project's kind of finished. They switch that person out um and it kind of gets forgotten. The next thing you know, the investment that they've made isn't paying off as they thought it would do because the whole business situation and the environment's changed again.

>> That that's quite interesting and I'm thinking that particularly what you said about coming in and being quite ambitious initially, but maybe a lack of ownership or lack of ability to drive change in the organization. From my experience, some of this comes, I think, because pricing is such a cross-functional ownership today. So many departments and teams have a vested interest in pricing. You know, from sales who've got to go out and explain a price to a customer and win business. From procurement that's thinking around how pricing and volume changes affect what they're doing. From finance, how a change in price can have a big knock-on through profitability, through revenue, and so on and so forth. Thinking about those sort of situations, how prepared do you feel companies are to really think through just how important pricing is in an organization.

How can I do uh better with pricing? By better, I mean make more clear decisions around pricing, more easily explainable decisions around pricing, those sort of >> Um yeah, I think again it's company to Um if you're going to generalize, you'd probably say not not brilliantly. Um uh and often there's somebody kind of at the very, very top who who will get who who will get this topic and they'll they'll drive it through. Um and then you'll see changes made and and things happening. Um but then if there's a shift around there, uh you know, a change there, that can change what the company's trying to achieve, how they think they're going to do it, um and you know, and that's then when you know, things kind of go backwards a little bit.

Um and you know, from what we've seen, there's no one straightforward way to do any of these things, but there's probably, you know, a couple of those common things with within any you know, all businesses that are performing well that that do them in a good way although they're set up differently. >> I know when I think about pricing and how tools are used to support pricing thinking about how companies are going and executing that decision. Often Excel is the default pricing tool.

Excel is a great tool, but let's be honest, it doesn't scale in today's As I talked about earlier, the amount of data we have, the frequency of change of data, the use of data in that decision It lends itself more towards people in the pricing team who have that ability to do more than just analyze a spreadsheet, more than just build out some very interesting charts and data in But it's also leading towards where you touched upon earlier, AI and the use of AI in business. Obviously, yeah, there's a lot of companies that got to get the basics right, as you said, Joe, absolutely. But thinking a little bit more in the future is that AI tools become much more common in everyday use then and how we can potentially build tools and use tools to help with decision making to automate some of what we're doing.

What are your thoughts around changing of skill sets around focus more on data management, data interrogation rather than data manipulation as, you know, certainly from my background when I was back in the day in pricing, it was very much how can you extract data from systems of record? How can you put it into a usable, manageable way? How can you make something of it? It's all about the management of the data rather than the decision process that supports it. >> Yeah, I mean, there's a I think there's a lot in there in what you've just just Um and it's it's kind of challenges for for everybody. Um I mean, cuz we do a lot of work not just in retail but in broader pricing.

and I think where some of those other challenges have shown up, um you maybe if you take kind of the one that's been happening a lot recently is more for SaaS businesses where all of a sudden there's been a big revaluation there where they're we're using seat-based pricing and looking at a consumption-based model. So, you've then got investors, CEOs banging on the door of the CPO or whoever's in charge of it saying, "Why aren't we doing this?" And suddenly there's resource time and everything available to do that. Um the problem is they haven't got the basics figured out. Um so, you know, the simple architectures in there just even to do, you know, make renewals um you know, working up properly. Um so, I think there's probably a lot of companies that want that are very, very interested in harnessing some of the AI stuff, but they're not ready to to do that yet.

and it's all kind of it's expense and it's cost. Um and I think another good example of that I don't know if it's just kind of coincidence, but in the last couple of months um so, we've had a couple of people contact us that's our new pricing hires, our pricing leads in in businesses um and they've been asked to figure stuff out. particular example is even just bringing together a centralized price list management tool. Um so, everything's in one place. Um but they've got several ERP systems. Um they've got a sales team that put sales prices into a CRM that just kind of get then dragged out by various And and they're looking at how do they solve that problem? And if you're looking at a pricing software tool to do you know, is that a pricing software tool problem? Is that an ERP problem?

And you're into the data and then before the data's right, it's it's a it's a big challenge to move on to the next bit. >> Absolutely. And again, this talks back to the complexity of pricing with multiple different owners of it, different data sources with more data And also something you touched upon earlier, the value of pricing to an organization. It It's great that companies are starting to think about how can I monetize differently with changing world, changing data, and so on. How can I monetize differently? But if they don't have the basics behind it, they don't have the tools needed to support some of those changes, and also business price change. Let me go back. If they don't have the tools behind it to help the business process change behind that as well. I'm curious to think about how the future is going to look.

Are we going to see an acceleration suddenly of capabilities within business where pricing and data become more entwined? Are we going to see a slow, gradual change from maybe how businesses were run 10 years ago to where they are now? Just curious, a broad broad Um what are your thoughts? What What do you think is going to happen next in business generally? >> Yeah, I mean I I don't know how good a job I could do of forecasting that um or making any predictions on it. Yeah, it's it's impossible to say, isn't I think you How How do these things get run and and seem to start and go well is um companies start start small. Um they prove something that works. They can show that back internally, and then they can do the next bit. And it's kind of iterative iterative. Um and I think companies that try and do it all at once seem to fall over a bit more quickly. Stuff doesn't get done.

Um and I think budgets for these sorts of things are still tight within this particular niche. You know, there are other areas where I think money gets thrown at it very very easily. Um you know, they can make a lot more progress a lot more quickly. Um but I Yeah, you know, we we've seen with pricing projects how you know, as soon as they get over a certain kind of cost to a business, there are lots of different people involved in that process then. Um you know, that you I think often you don't even know who's who's got some eyes on that and who's making those Um and and things things can stall. Um but yeah, I think you know, where things are very very complicated, you know, we've seen even in the last few weeks, um you know, there must be kind of four or five people that have popped up, um you know, within my network that are that are building things themselves.

Um and whether they've got kind of the credibility and the depth to to solve the problems at kind of the scale of a big retailer, it is is harder to know, all of them are receiving some interest. Um I think it's cuz they're a little bit at a at a lower price point. Um there's the promise of the quicker implementation times, um and and it's them doing the implementation, not kind outsourced elsewhere. but you you you get the feeling that everybody recognizes there's a massive return to be had. Still companies figuring out, you know, what's the best way cost-effective way to do it. >> That's really interesting. And it kind of leads me on to the next piece that I want to talk to you about. Um when I think about where a lot of companies have invested time and money today in tools in their business, we've seen a lot of investment in the execution of a price change.

So, yeah, upgrades of ERP systems, maybe upgrade of your e-commerce systems, these sort of things. A lot of investments gone there to make things more efficient, make prices go live more quickly, so on and so forth. One area we've not seen so much investment is around that whole decision process and tools to support the decision. So, for example, what the price should be, when to change price, what the impact of that price change is. Leading on from this leads me to think about how maybe some pricing tools are set up and are they supporting the decision process or are they following more of a software model? So, we've been talking quite often about the idea of pricing moments. Pricing moments are times in organizations where someone is making a decision to change something in their business. So, for example, it could be a vendor or supplier has increased cost.

Therefore, I now need to go and do something with that based around price. That's a It could be where our competitor has changed the price or an offering. Therefore, pricing now needs to be reevaluated, reassessed. That's a pricing moment. Those pricing moments are all those times when a decision is being made around price, a decision made around the commercial terms. When we think about that and the the the focus of how operating teams work, they're working in those moments. Day in, day out, they're having to deal with these particular challenges at a specific point in time. A lot of software I've seen in the market is often built more around modules and capabilities. You mentioned earlier that they'll have a particular list price that they need to go and change. Or there might be a module for CPQ, a module for contract price, and so on and so forth.

Thinking about the difference between where teams operate today in those pricing moments and where software has historically been built and focused. You know, this is some of this is the legacy of how it's been built. Have you come across any issues in say the last 6 months where there may be a disconnect between where a company is going in terms of the change they're looking for, a change of the pricing team, and a disconnect then to how they're going to go and execute that? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if we're in the detail of that enough to give um you know, a too good answer.

I know um [snorts] some issues we've seen when people are looking to select um a vendor to help them do this sort of thing is um you know, comment we'll often hear maybe a larger vendor is stuff can come kind of too bundled, um and they can't and I think that the term was you was they can't slice and dice the data how how they would like to. Um and I think trying to get into that then leads into, you know, bespoke building and time and that sort of thing. So, it's a bit like here's an off-the-shelf thing, it does this and it does a lot, maybe some of the stuff that they don't necessarily need or are asking for. Um and sometimes I think s- it seems simpler is better. Um and also being able having a really good idea of why it's giving you the information that it's giving you.

Um so, getting away from that kind of the black box thing um of knowing how the how, you know, these these prices or decisions and are being determined. Um and I think that's why people sometimes get dragged back to doing what they're doing before using Excel because it's it's so simple. I think as soon as it gets too complicated, people don't want to use it. Um and yeah, I think it's still is that biggest the biggest driver is, you know, people have the best systems in the world, but if nobody's using it, then yeah, it's uh it's kind of a waste. >> Absolutely. And I've seen a few cases in the past where companies invested a lot of time and effort bringing in a new pricing tool.

And you go and go back there about 6 months later you find it's being used as a download tool into Excel for people to still carry on doing what they've always been doing in Excel, but with a new data The pricing tool being that new data >> that you you see that there's that challenge for not being able to unbundle the capabilities, not being able to deliver the specific needs and requirements that a customer has. Um this is something we often talk about when we're engaging with customers. What is it they actually need? What do they need to go and solve for? And from my perspective, this is where it ties back to those pricing moments. What are those particular moments where you have friction or challenges in in business today?

So that we can go focus on those, we can focus on how do you solve for those, not here's my offering, take everything and >> and now kind of maybe hope for the best. Yeah, I think you you've got to have um you know, if you're going to implement a um you know, if it's working well on day you know, it sounds like you know, things aren't necessarily going to be working exactly the same in a year, 2 years, or 3 years. Um so, yeah, you know, I often ask people um you know, "Can you give me a couple of examples of really successful implementations on this?" Um and you know, something's been running for a long time, um there's there's not that many of them that you that you feel like they should be doing a little bit better. Um and then people just start talking about changing it, looking at something else, doing it in a different way.

Um so, I think if you don't have someone, some people looking at that and making sure it's still delivering what you need, it can it can quickly not be used the right way, and then you're overpaying for something that um yeah, isn't isn't doing the job that it was doing when you first got it. >> Yeah. Yeah, I've seen a few cases of that myself as well through the years. Um Joe, I want to I want to start wrapping up the conversation a little bit now, maybe. Um conscious of your time, it's valuable and it's important. Uh from my perspective, what I'm starting to see as a trend in the market, and tell me if you disagree with this, if you agree with it, if you have a different perspective, the data complexity piece is maybe being underestimated a bit.

They people are managing data in Excel and other tools, but it's not necessarily really being leveraged to make consistent decisions with, and also transparent repeatable decisions with. And that's one challenge I'm seeing. Another often is that companies have a process, and they want a tool to fit the And so, when they're implementing a new tool, or they're looking to change the pricing team, or changing the skill set, it's focused around what we do today and anchoring what we today do today rather than anchoring on what do we need tomorrow, where is the business is going in the future. Those are my two thoughts around what's happening and then kind of summing up some of the conversations today. What do you think? Do you strongly disagree? Do you think you have a different perspective? What are your thoughts just as we wrap up here?

>> Yeah, I mean I don't think there's anything too controversial or you know it in in that um I think yeah, people often ask, oh, you know, nowadays is there are the skills not available to do these kinds of jobs? you know, whether it's harder to find these people now or was a couple of years ago, I don't not not sure. Um it's more about the commitment of the company to pay for the person they need to do the to do the job um and then and then empowering them to do it. um and seeing it through um and keeping it going. Um I think you know, the difficulties you've described um pretty common across lots of different functions within a business. Um but I think there's definite recognition that yeah, the opportunity here is very much untapped for companies.

Um and yeah, if you get it right, um do it properly, um yeah, that's why the key people keep spending money on it and and keep hiring for it because it's worthwhile. >> I agree. Pricing is incredibly valuable to organizations. Joe, let's wrap up there. Uh appreciate your time. Appreciate you sharing your thoughts and perspectives on what's happening in the marketplace from your view, from where you see things Great to catch up and uh yeah, let's keep in touch and catch up again, too. >> Great. Thanks a lot, Ian. >> Thanks, Joe. Bye.