Episode #196: Top Ten Pricing Lessons

We are sorry folks. John Stossel had to cancel because an injury. We wish him a speedy recovery and look forward to having him on in the future.

We decided to discuss a Ron’s Pricing Masterclass that he presented in Melbourne, Australia on May 30, 2018 at the launch of our VeraSage colleagues’ (Liz Harris, John Chisholm, and David Wells) new consulting firm, Innovim.

Ron presented his Top 10 Pricing Lessons, and John wrote a fantastic recap of this presentation, including additional links, etc.

I asked Ed to list his Top 10 Pricing Lessons over these past years, so we will present both of our lists below, along with specific links to prior shows where we covered these topics.

Ron’s Top 10 Pricing Lessons

1. Hourly Billing is a Lousy Customer Experience

2. The Transition from Hourly Billing to Value Pricing Requires Liminal Thinking, see the book Liminal Thinking, by Dave Gray.

3. Strategy and Positioning Dictate Your Pricing Strategy

   1. Episode #23, Interview with Tim Williams, author of Positioning for Professionals

   2. Episode #133, Second Interview with Tim Williams

   3. Episode #128, The Three—and only Three—Pricing Strategies

4. The Value Conversation is the Most Important Skill in Our Business

   1. Episode #30, Crafting the Value Conversation with Dan Morris

   2. Episode #182: How to Have a Value Conversation

   3. Ed’s Blog Post: Without the Conversation, There is no Value Pricing

5. My Five Favorite Key Predictive Indicators, see Episode #110: How to Use Key Predictive Indicators

6. Cost Accounting is Opinion; Cash is Fact

   1. Episode #66: The Death of Standard Cost Accounting

   2. Episode #112: Interview with Dr. Reginald Lee

7. Laughter is Confession, see BBDO Time$hits Video

8. The Best Learning Tool Ever Invented: After Action Reviews

   1. Episode #15: The Best Learning Method Ever Devised: After Action Reviews

   2. Episode #166: Interview with Chris “Elroy” Stricklin, Colonel (Ret), USAF

9. We Need to Embrace Risk, Not Run from It, see Episode #87: Risk is NOT a four-letter word

10. All Transformations are Linguistic, see Episode #6: Interview with Distinguished Professor of Economics, Deirdre McCloskey

Ed’s Top 10 Pricing Lessons

1. Good Fences Make Good Neighbors (Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall”)

   1. Episode #3: The Second Law of Marketing: All Prices are Contextual

   2. Episode #65: How to be a Price Searcher, not a Price Taker

2. Don’t Forget van and von (referring to Peter van Westendorp’s Price Sensitivity Meter Questions, and Barron von Joseph Neinbach Model, see Ron’s book for the latter, Implementing Value Pricing: A Radical Business Model for Professional Firms, see Episode #65: How to be a Price Searcher, not a Price Taker [where we discuss Westendorp’s Price Sensitivity Meter Questions]

3. Bundles, not Line Items, see Episode #3: The Second Law of Marketing: All Prices are Contextual

4. Offer a Guarantee, see Episode #179: The Value Guarantee

5. Business is Not a Zero-Sum Game

   1. Episode #13: Top Ten Business Myths, Part I

   2. Episode #14: Top Ten Business Myths, Part II

6. Without a Value Conversation there is No Value Pricing

   1. Episode #30, Crafting the Value Conversation with Dan Morris

   2. Episode #182: How to Have a Value Conversation

7. Offer Choices

   1. Episode #3: The Second Law of Marketing: All Prices are Contextual

   2. Episode #65: How to be a Price Searcher, not a Price Taker

8. Time is Best Thought of as a Constraint, Not a Resource

   1. Episode #60: Interview with George Gilder

   2. Episode #68: Proper Project Management

   3. Episode #109: Trashing the Timesheet

9. All Value is Subjective and All Prices are Contextual

   1. Episode #2:  The First Law of Marketing: The Value of Value

   2. Episode #3: The Second Law of Marketing: All Prices are Contextual

10. Prices are not Derived from Cost; Prices Justify the Future Expenditure of Costs, see Episode #66: The Death of Standard Cost Accounting