When we first interviewed Mark Burton, the co-founder of Holden Advisors and co-author of Pricing with Confidence: 10 Ways to Stop Leaving Money on the Table, he introduced us to the concept of the Embedded Pricing Organization. Representing the next evolution of the pricing department, this transformative approach generated a lot of interest from our subscribers and ever since, they’ve been eager to learn more.
Well, we finally caught up with Mark for a follow-up discussion!
In Breaking Out of Your Pricing Silo, Mark graciously shares his latest thinking about next-level pricing functions, discusses some recent examples and client cases, and offers practical advice for pricing practitioners and pricing teams who are looking to have an even greater impact…on their companies and their careers.
I typically take a lot of notes during a meaty discussion like this. After all, I’m learning new things right along with our subscribers. But after this interview with Mark, I noticed that I had circled—and underlined—one particular passage in my notes.
As we were discussing some of the capabilities that pricing departments need to enhance if they really want to affect positive change in their organizations, Mark highlighted a key capability that we don’t tend to associate with pricing:
It often comes down to empathy—looking at your peers in the organization and recognizing that they’re doing their level-best, often in spite of challenging political pressures, and conflicting incentives and objectives. Once you begin to really understand how others view their role and what it is they’re faced with day-to-day, then you have a basis for crafting solutions that everyone can get behind.
Empathy. You certainly won’t find it on a drop-down menu in your analytics package. But as Mark points out in the interview, it’s a capability that can make the difference between sitting in your pricing silo, creating pricing strategies that never get implemented, and developing realistic solutions that actually generate results.
