One of the background conversations at the Professional Pricing Society’s Fall Conference was ‘what do we mean when we say '“pricing optimization”?’ There are several ways to interpret this common term. What do pricing professionals mean?

Market dynamics can change in a recession and a change in market dynamics can motivate a change in pricing strategy. Market dynamics differ by segment and customers can change segments with a recession. Prepare for 2023. Think through how a change in market dynamics could require changes to your pricing strategy.

The Professional Pricing Society had its Fall Conference in San Francisco October 20 and 21. Here are some of the key themes and some memorable quotes.

Some are predicting a recession in 2023. With recessions, one often sees market consolidation. The number of potential customers, or the number of pricing units, or both, can decline. This has implications for both pricing and growth models. Leaders need to be prepared to respond.

As you plan pricing actions for 2023, take into account more than one scenario. Two of the critical uncertainties are around interest rates and economic growth. These combine to call different value drivers to the top of a buyer’s mind. The relative importance of different value drivers for target segments has a big impact on pricing strategy and execution.

Innovation is a core capability for companies as they adapt to the changing economy. Pricing experts could make a big contribution to directing innovation towards creating differentiated value but they seldom do so. To really engage with innovation leaders, pricing experts need to understand the various innovation frameworks and add value to them.

Growth demands that both trust and value are well realized by your customer. Customers are expecting value to be delivered to them and the Service-Led Growth model can drive higher, sustainable, and predictable growth (revenues). This is especially true when customer centricity relies on the synergy between expertise, platforms, and insight to drive the business relationship that in turn drives monetization. The SLG model can be a more powerful way to increase and accelerate value delivered as customer relationships mature over time.

Some companies think that price increases will be easy in 2023, given the expectations created by inflation. They are wrong. Inflation is different in different industries and in some cases inflation makes it harder to raise prices as people become more cost conscious. Ibbaka can show you if and how you should raise prices.

While on medical leave, I had a chance to take a step back and think about emerging issues and best practices in pricing. I put down some of these thoughts in a series of posts on LinkedIn: Pricing Generic AI, Pricing Microservices, Organizing Value Drivers, Integrating Pricing Models, The 4Cs of Pricing. I also shared some thoughts on design from my stay in hospital.

According to SaaStr, more than 50% of SaaS companies plan to raise prices in 2023. A price change is a good chance to realign price and value and to adjust packaging. Do SaaS companies know how to do this? Here are 5 Key Steps.

B2B companies now have a consistent method for their sales teams to assist their buyers in making a case for investment. Customer Value Management (CVM) has provided our customers with a solid foundation for increasing revenue faster in the future.

Product-Led Growth (PLG) and Sales Led-Growth (SLG) are the 2 dominant growth models. In fact, they are often complementary. Can the same pricing model be used to support both growth models? Well, 'it depends.' We look at when and how to leverage a pricing model across PLG and SLG.

Fixing poor sales or pricing performance doesn’t have to be hard! Many of these challenges ultimately are centered around understanding the customers biggest pains, and the real value of solving those problems. In this article, we help you take a methodical look at why sales teams lose deals and what to do about it.

Inflation and a possible recession. Many companies are circling the wagons and shifting to survival mode. This means different things for different companies, but in all cases, pricing should be at the center of the board conversation. Here are 5 Questions that boards should be asking CEOs about pricing.

Introducing Ibbaka Valio - a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution for Customer Value Management and Price Optimization. With Ibbaka Valio, companies drive revenue growth by increasing average deal size between 50% and 100%.

Over the past 6 months, we have seen many companies shift their focus from ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) to growing NDR (Net Dollar Retention - also known as Net Revenue Retention). How do you use the value and pricing levers to grow NDR?

Usage-Based Pricing is a hot topic. It fits well with Product-Led Growth (PLG) and is a critical step on the way to Outcome-Based Pricing. Ibbaka and OpenView Venture Partners have been documenting what you need to do before, during, and after you introduce Usage-Based Pricing.

Usage-Based Pricing uses a measure of usage as a pricing metric. It is often combined with other pricing metrics to create a hybrid pricing model. Research has found that companies who include a usage-based metric grow faster. A well designed usage-based pricing metric connects price to value.

Gerry Smith is one of the people who has shaped how we think about pricing. This post covers the 4Cs of pricing: Customer Value, Customer Willingness to Pay, Competition and Costs. The 4Cs interact with each other and we tease out some of the ways this happens.

B2B SaaS companies are waking up to the importance of pricing. There is a lot of work going into building pricing excellence. But what does pricing excellence mean? And how do you build it? The foundation of pricing excellence is being able to design and execute on a superior pricing model. In this post, we look at the 5 most important characteristics.