Our last discussion with Greg Preuer, the Pricing Director for a multibillion dollar lighting manufacturer, was all about building better relationships with the sales team. Along the way, however, Greg happened to mention the internal training program that all of his pricing analysts go through. And as a result, we heard from a number of PricingBrew Journal subscribers who were eager to learn more about it.
So by popular demand, Greg graciously agreed to a follow up interview. And in Developing Pricing People Into Business Leaders, Greg provides much more insight into the intense, 48-week training program that each of his team members must complete.
Yes, you read that right—a 48-week training program.
From my vantage point here at PricingBrew, I can say that a 48-week internal training program is definitely an outlier. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find something so rigorous in any area of business, let alone pricing.
But as Greg explains the program in greater detail and talks about the management philosophies behind it, you begin to understand that he is doing much more than simply teaching people how to look at prices:
We want to make sure that our pricing analysts know how to make a decision the same way the very best CEOs on the planet do.
When we hire somebody, we spend a lot of time teaching them how to profitability grow a business. We make them responsible for a very specific chunk of business. And their job is to take that chunk, make it bigger, and make more money.
I’m really focused on being a net exporter of talent. I go out and recruit people, turn them into pricing analysts, and then I aggressively market them and encourage them to go into other areas—product management, finance, sourcing, Six Sigma, sales.
We really take a lot of pride in how many people we export and promote out.
Internally, Greg’s training program is referred to as Pricing University. But after hearing about everything the program covers and what it teaches people to be able to accomplish and achieve, I think you’ll agree that the name is a bit understated.
