This book highlights essential concepts, models, and processes that help those responsible for making pricing decisions – whether professionally or privately – to effectively engage in product pricing activities. Novel, straightforward and clearly structured, the Blackblot Market-Value PricingTM Model (MVP Model), introduced in this book, employs a market-value-centric pricing process that offers step-by-step guidance on the managerial decisions that help determine a product’s price. This intentionally succinct, highly readable, and practical book provides practitioners with the knowledge and tools they need in order to approach pricing activities in an organized and efficient manner.
Praise for IMPLEMENTING VALUE PRICING A Radical Business Model for Professional Firms "Ron Baker is the most prolific and best writer when it comes to pricing services. This is a must-read for executives and partners in small to large firms. Ron provides the basics, the advanced ideas, the workbooks, the case studies everything. This is a must-have and a terrific book." Reed K. Holden founder and CEO, Holden Advisors, Corp., Associate Professor, Columbia University www.holdenadvisors.com "We've known through Ron Baker's earlier books that he's not just an extraordinary thinker and truly brilliant writer he's a mover and a shaker on a mission. This is the End of Time! Brilliant." Paul Dunn Chairman, B1G1® www.b1g1.com "Implementing Value Pricing is a powerful blend of theory, strategy, and tactics. Ron Baker's most recent offering is ambitious in scope, exploring topics that include economic theory, customer orientation, value identification, service positioning, and pricing strategy. He weaves all of them together seamlessly, and includes numerous examples to illustrate his primary points. I have applied the knowledge I've gained from his body of work, and the benefits to me and to my customers have been immediate, significant, and ongoing." Brent Uren Principal, Valuation & Business Modeling Ernst & Young® www.ey.com "Ron Baker is a revolutionary. He is on a radical crusade to align the interests of service providers with those of their customers by having lawyers, accountants, and consultants charge based on the value they provide, rather than the effort it takes. Implementing Value Pricing is a manifesto that establishes a clear case for the revolution. It provides detailed guidance that includes not only strategies and tactics, but key predictive indicators for success. It is richly illustrated by the successes of firms that have embraced value-based pricing to make their services not only more cost-effective for their customers, but more profitable as well. The hallmark of a manifesto is an unyielding sense of purpose and a call to action. Let the revolution begin." Robert G. Cross, Chairman and CEO, Revenue Analytics, Inc. Author, Revenue Management: Hard-Core Tactics for Market Domination
A Groundbreaking Pricing Model for the New Business Landscape Why would any customer choose Brand X over Brand Y, regardless of price? In a word: Value. When customers feel they are getting good value from your product or service, they are more than happy to pay more—which is good news for you and your business. Even in today’s global market—with its aggressive competitors, low-cost commodities, savvy consumers, and intangible digital offerings—you can outsell and outperform the rest using Value-Based Pricing. Done correctly, this method of pricing and selling helps you: Understand your customers’ wants and needs Focus on what makes your company different Quantify your differences and build a value-based strategy Communicate your value directly to your customers Now more than ever, it is essential for you to reexamine the reality of the value you offer customers—and this step-by-step program shows you how. Developed by global consultants Harry Macdivitt and Mike Wilkinson, Value-Based Pricing identifies three basic elements of the Value Triad: revenue gain, cost reduction, and emotional contribution. By delivering these core values to your customers—through marketing, selling, negotiation, and pricing—you can expect an increase in profits, productivity, and consumer goodwill. These are the same value-based strategies used by major companies such as Philips, Alstom, Siemens, and Virgin Mobile. And when it comes to today’s more intangible markets—such as consulting services or digital properties like e-books and music files—these value-based strategies are more important than ever. So forget about your old pricing methods based on costs and competition. Once you know your own value—and how to communicate it to others—everybody profits.
Value-based pricing – pricing a product or service according to its value to the customer rather than its cost – is the most effective and profitable pricing strategy. Value First, Then Price is an innovative collection that proposes a quantitative methodology to value pricing and road-tests this methodology through a wide variety of real-life industrial and B2B cases. This book offers a state-of-the art and best practice overview of how leading companies quantify and document value to customers. In doing so, it provides students and researchers with a method by which to draw invaluable data-driven conclusions, and gives sales and marketing managers the theories and best practices they need to quantify the value of their products and services to industrial and B2B purchasers. The 2nd edition of this highly-regarded text has been updated in line with current research and practice, offering three new chapters covering new case studies and best practice examples of quantified value propositions, the future of value quantification, and value quantification for intangibles. With contributions from global industry experts this book combines cutting edge research on value quantification and value quantification capabilities with real-life, practical examples. It is essential reading for postgraduate students in Sales and Marketing with an interest in Pricing Strategy, sales and pricing specialists, as well as business strategists, in both research and practice.
Pricing decisions are among the most important and impactful business decisions that a manager can make. How to Price Effectively: A Guide for Managers and Entrepreneurs introduces the value pricing framework, a structured, versatile, and comprehensive method for making good pricing decisions and executing them. The framework weaves together the latest thinking from academic research journals, proven best practices from the leading pricing experts, and ideas from other fields such as medical decision making, consumer behavior, and organizational psychology. The book discusses what a good pricing decision is, which factors you should consider when making one, the role played by each factor-costs, customer value, reference prices, and the value proposition- and how they work together, the importance of price execution, and how to evaluate the success of pricing decisions. You will also be introduced to a set of useful and straightforward tools to implement the value pricing framework, and study many examples and company case studies that illustrate its nuances. The purpose of How to Price Effectively: A Guide for Managers and Entrepreneurs is to provide you with a comprehensive, practical guide to making, executing, and evaluating pricing decisions.
The world’s foremost expert on pricing strategy shows how this mysterious process works and how to maximize value through pricing to company and customer. In all walks of life, we constantly make decisions about whether something is worth our money or our time, or try to convince others to part with their money or their time. Price is the place where value and money meet. From the global release of the latest electronic gadget to the bewildering gyrations of oil futures to markdowns at the bargain store, price is the most powerful and pervasive economic force in our day-to-day lives and one of the least understood. The recipe for successful pricing often sounds like an exotic cocktail, with equal parts psychology, economics, strategy, tools and incentives stirred up together, usually with just enough math to sour the taste. That leads managers to water down the drink with hunches and rules of thumb, or leave out the parts with which they don’t feel comfortable. While this makes for a sweeter drink, it often lacks the punch to have an impact on the customer or on the business. It doesn’t have to be that way, though, as Hermann Simon illustrates through dozens of stories collected over four decades in the trenches and behind the scenes. A world-renowned speaker on pricing and a trusted advisor to Fortune 500 executives, Simon’s lifelong journey has taken him from rural farmers’ markets, to a distinguished academic career, to a long second career as an entrepreneur and management consultant to companies large and small throughout the world. Along the way, he has learned from Nobel Prize winners and leading management gurus, and helped countless managers and executives use pricing as a way to create new markets, grow their businesses and gain a sustained competitive advantage. He also learned some tough personal lessons about value, how people perceive it, and how people profit from it. In this engaging and practical narrative, Simon leaves nothing out of the pricing cocktail, but still makes it go down smoothly and leaves you wanting to learn more and do more—as a consumer or as a business person. You will never look at pricing the same way again.
A REVOLUTIONARY NEW PERSPECTIVE ON HOW PRICING REALLY WORKS “Contextual Pricing delivers a knock-out punch to complacent and low-return pricing approaches. . . . This book is full of intriguing, fresh insights which will expand your perspective on what is possible in maximizing revenue from your company’s products and services.” —Mark Greatrex, Chief Marketing Officer, Cox Communications, and former SVP, Global Still Beverages, The Coca Cola Company “To effectively price, managers must understand market context—the frame of reference for buyers. Context is far more important than the usual measures of price variation. I strongly recommend this readable and useful book to any business leader who suspects his or her company is falling short of achievable revenues.” —Dave Calhoun, Chairman and CEO, Nielsen Company, and former Vice Chairman, General Electric Company About the Book: A few leading companies have jettisoned ideas about pricing that other companies believe are indispensible. The result has been superior performance against competitors who persist in a simplistic 1990s belief in “value.” Contextual Pricing describes how buyers are influenced by comparison points and contextual messages more than by actual price levels. Identical products can sell at radically different prices to the same target customer—if context is strategically managed. This fact is how Procter & Gamble, GE, Coca-Cola Company, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and others make sure they get the best possible price. The use of context is changing the way companies price and sell in the new global economy. This readable and market-tested book describes the contextual pricing perspective, how it is being used in B2B and B2C markets, and how you can make the shift to contextual pricing in your own business. Whether you’re a CEO, P&L manager marketing director, sales manager, or entrepreneur, Contextual Pricing shows you how to: Understand how your customer will make buying decisions and the role of pricing in those decisions Establish better, more intuitive prices using context Develop contextual pricing strategies that defeat competitor pricing—how contextual pricing can be the antidote to destructive price wars Harmonize your pricing with branding, product development and channel strategies Increase your profits with proven pricing tools, such as scientific bundling, tiering, branding, upsell “hooks” and more Through its illuminating case-by-case studies, Contextual Pricing delivers a wide range of pricing techniques and customer insights that you won’t find anywhere else. You’ll learn how to avoid common pitfalls when raising or lowering prices and discover how you can compete in traditional or emerging digital marketplaces—and beat the competition through superior tactics, not through lower margins. When you know the secrets of Contextual Pricing, you can name your price, drive your sales, increase your profits, and own your success.
In Smart Pricing: How Google, Priceline and Leading Businesses Use Pricing Innovation for Profitability, Wharton professors and renowned pricing experts Jagmohan Raju and Z. John Zhang draw on examples from high tech to low tech, from consumer markets to business markets, and from U.S. to abroad, to tell the stories of how innovative pricing strategies can help companies create and capture value as well as customers. They teach the pricing principles behind those innovative ideas and practices. Smart Pricing introduces many innovative approaches to pricing, as well as the research and insights that went into their creation. Filled with illustrative examples from the business world, readers will learn about restaurants where customers set the price, how Google and other high-tech firms have used pricing to remake whole industries, how executives in China successfully start and fight price wars to conquer new markets. Smart Pricing goes well beyond familiar approaches like cost-plus, buyer-based pricing, or competition-based pricing, and puts a wide variety of pricing mechanisms at your disposal. This book helps you understand them, choose them, and use them to win.
Learn how to price creative work with confidence. Win more bids. Make more money. When it comes to pricing their work, far too many freelance designers and agencies merely guess what to charge their clients. As a result, profitable projects have as much to do with luck as they do anything else. In The Psychology of Graphic Design Pricing, you'll learn how to take luck out of the equation by calculating the cost to produce your work, understanding its market value, and extracting your client's budget. These three variables are used in a pricing spectrum, empowering you to price your work with confidence and profitability in every project opportunity. This book will teach you how to calculate your production costs, understand market value, extract your client's budget, bid with the right project price, and increase your profitability.
