Bain & Company surveyed the following people – Global Sales Leaders, VPs of Pricing, CEOs, CMOs and other executives – in 1700 companies. The results were very interesting. One that stuck out is: 85% of the respondents believed they could improve their pricing decisions.
Three broad strategies were suggested:
Tailor pricing to individual customers and products
Align frontline sales staff to incentives
Invest in the development of sales and pricing teams with training and tools
Among the companies that excel in all three area, 78% were top performers. Only 18% of companies that excel in none of the three were top performers.
Clearly, to be a Level Five salesperson you need to be able to have substantive pricing discussions. “Companies cannot afford to continue pricing by rules of thumb or by taking a one-size-fits-all approach to pricing across entire segments of their business.”