Selling Price Structure and Revenue System Changes to Your Sales Team
Selling Price Structure and Revenue System Changes to Your Sales Team
Stratinis
Apr 1, 2016
Companies selling in B2B are always looking for ways to improve their pricing. This often involves changing the price structure. Here are 10 good ideas to help selling such changes to your sales team:
- Change Management is not an empty consultancy concept. It is working with stakeholders to get price changes well understood and ideally accepted in the organization. Involve those stakeholders in the reasons and logic of the price structure change.
- Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate: No successful price change has ever come 100% from the pricing team.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate: make sure to communicate to the sales team the reasons and the benefits of the price change.
- Complex price structures can be good, as they may allow for easier future price increases or less international price comparison. However accept the responsibility, as a pricing team, that this should be explainable to the sales team. Allow sufficient time to train properly in the pricing logic.
- Practice value arguments: Very often sales people react negatively to pricing “systems” where they feel the result (the final price paid) is unsellable to the customers. A thorough value argumentation training will make them feel equipped to tackle the changes.
- Consider running a pilot in a channel or segment that can be isolated from the rest. A successful pilot will go a long way towards convincing sales people that the customers will not just reject the changes.
- Assess any impacts on sales bonuses ahead of communicating changes. If sales people fear for their bonuses because of the change, your chances of success are very slim. Work with sales leadership and possibly HR to ensure buy-in from the sales team.
- International: Do not force the same logic on all countries. It is highly unlikely they do business the same way. Allow for different price structures in individual countries or regions.
- International: Identify (or create) Key Performance Indicators that you want to follow globally, and then make sure these KPIs can be tracked, despite price structures can be different.
- Simulate price structures before, on and after for all significant key accounts / channels / segments. Not only will it show you where your new pricing logic may have flaws, but it will also be a helpful tool for the sales people to share with their customers.
At Stratinis we add value to your business through our pricing software. Learn more on our website.