10 Ideas for Best Practice Pricing Analytics in B2B
1. Share, Share, Share. If you do not share your pricing analytics internally then it just becomes pretty charts for a small group of people. Pricing analytics is strongest when the insights are actually used for steering and changing the business. Sales people who have actionable insights will do much better than those who do not.
2. Establish a common vocabulary internally for how to measure prices, net prices, pocket prices, discounts etc.
3. Measure pocket price but realize that the (B2B) customer does not always recognize or accept this measure. It is your internal measure.
4. Include as many “pricing” elements as possible;including price, discounts, rebates, lump sums, “customer investment”, favorable terms and much more.
5. Build a proof of concept but make sure your analytics scale.
6. Make analytics repeatable without any discernable effort, otherwise it will not be done. This usually involves professional software packages, not Excel.
7. If your business is operating internationally, make sure your pricing analytics is too.
8. International analytics: make sure you can compare prices and discounts across borders but do not use it as an excuse to force changes to commercial terms on local markets (speak to Stratinis about how this can be achieved).
9. Use more than one pricing KPI. Pocket Price is important for assessing financial performance, but also use KPIs that are relevant for sales people and customers (who do not always look at Pocket Price).
10. Train and communicate internally: if your calculations (e.g. allocation of lump sums) become a black box you lose buy-in from the organization (read: sales) and you have not understood that pricing analytics is about sharing, not safe-guarding.
