Podcast with Craig Zawada: Is Your Pricing Strategy Costing You Business?
As business owners, it’s difficult not to focus on pricing, with questions constantly going through our minds. Are we charging enough? Too little? When should we raise our prices? Are we competitively priced? Have we given customers a reason to pay our prices? Should we bundle? Are we targeting the right customers? Pricing questions and issues seem to consume a lot of our time each day.
On today’s edition of the podcast I speak with Craig Zawada who is Chief Visionary Officer at PROS, which is an organization that applies the latest technology to help customers drive incremental sales growth and profit. Craig is also the co-author of a book called The Price Advantage which some people call one of the most pragmatic books available on pricing strategy.
Craig and I talk about the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to pricing, what factors you should look at to determine where your pricing might need to be adjusted up and down, how to use technology to move the needle, and also how important timing is when it comes to pricing. Craig shares that “Either companies don’t spend enough time on pricing or they spend it in the wrong way.”
I know you’re going to love this discussion, and you’re going to learn a ton from Craig Zawada on this edition of the podcast!
Listen to this episode and discover:
- That buyers want to see a fair price online or they are going to go somewhere else.
- Why the need to focus on pricing has changed in the last 2-3 years.
- The importance of responding to your customers when it comes to quote rate.
- Why buyers prefer algorithm setting price as opposed to negotiating with a human sales person.
- And so much more…
Episode Overview
Craig is responsible for creating and articulating the vision for how PROS uses big data and the latest technology to help companies drive incremental sales growth and profit improvement. He also works with new and existing customers to define the implementation path for these solutions to help them outperform in their respective industries. Prior to joining PROS, he was a partner and leader in the Marketing & Sales Practice at McKinsey & Company.
In this episode, Crag talks about:
- Why online pricing and quoting is so important.
- What you can do to get a handle on all of this when you don’t even know you have a problem.
- Why you should know what the differentiators are in your business.
- Things that you can do today that would make a huge impact to get a handle on pricing strategy.
- Why you should DEFINITELY be the person to quote first!
“A lot of companies have this idea that everyone wants to shop and get the lowest price, in most cases they’re not.” Craig says, “Buyers purchase more than 50% of the time from the company that quotes first.”