It’s often said that many of the best solutions are created out of necessity…and the “pricing enablement” approach is no exception.
Having bought into the idea that pricing improvement requires control over all pricing decisions, many pricing leaders have set about trying to wrest control away from salespeople in the field. And in most cases, it would be an understatement to say that they encountered a great deal of opposition.
Growing extremely weary of banging their heads against this wall of organizational resistance and making very little progress, some of these leaders eventually took a step back and asked, “Well…what can we do?”
Thus, the pricing enablement approach was discovered, almost by accident.
And it worked. In fact, it worked so well that those who’ve employed it would choose to do so again, deliberately—even if they were given the opportunity to take full control over all pricing decisions. We think that speaks volumes about the “accidental benefits” of this approach; which include:
- It requires far less change management and political pain.
- Salespeople retain a lot of flexibility in the crucial “last mile”.
- It promotes collaboration and ownership among all parties.
- As a systemic process, it’s much more scalable and repeatable.
- The approach is effective in nearly any situation or structure.
- Stellar results and improvements can be achieved in less time.
- The market/peers become the arbiter in pricing decisions.
Regardless of how it came to be, we see pricing enablement as being a new best practice for pricing improvement in B2B environments. Whether it’s being driven from a traditional pricing department or through a Pricing Center of Excellence…or even by a single pricing “czar” charged with a seemingly impossible task…we believe that this approach is far more effective and realistic than the alternatives.
Indeed, the best solutions are often borne out of necessity…and some are even discovered by accident.
Profitable Pricing Enablement
In this on-demand webinar, you'll learn about the new "best practice" of leveraging data and technology to distribute pricing authority and control, without sacrificing improved pricing performance.
Delivering Answers to the Point of Sale
While the promise of data-driven decisions in sales is compelling, it’s rarely realistic. This tutorial reveals a more effective approach for getting salespeople to use data and analytics to make better pricing decisions.
Building a Pricing Center of Excellence
Experts have long argued that centralized pricing is the ideal model for driving performance improvement. But these days, companies are finding success taking a different approach---the Pricing Center of Excellence.
