Is your product a commodity? Is it really? Or, do your customers cry commodity during negotiations to get you to decrease your price? Watch the video below and listen as Adele McLean talks about how you can get out from under this tough negotiation tactic and avoid the commodity trap.
Topics: value, sales, procurement
The Buyer-Seller Gap is getting its share of press these days. Even HBR is in on the fun, having tabulated seven daunting reasons why salespeople can’t close the deal. It gets worse: only about 55% of us make quota. I wonder if accountants are as bombarded with data about how badly they perform.
Topics: Selling with Backbone, actionable insights, value, sales, value selling
One of the first things that first responders do when they start to treat a trauma victim is to find out where the victim is bleeding. Second, they determine which of those injuries is most life threatening.
Topics: Selling with Backbone, actionable insights, buying center, value selling, revenue
Are you sick of hearing about the need to protect your premium high value offerings and stop discounting? Well, you may be sick of hearing it, but it's true.
Topics: Negotiating with Backbone, value selling
Generally speaking, as a seller to a seller, we know that big sales opportunities are both a blessing and a curse. While they offer the opportunity for “quota busting” years, they also carry a heavy spotlight and the pressure that comes along with it. This pressure churns our emotions, generating angst in even the most tenured sales pros. How do you deal with the stress?
Topics: Negotiating with Backbone, value selling
When Holden Advisors started almost 2 decades ago, our practice was rooted in B2B pricing. Reed Holden, our founder, co-authored the book that became the industry’s standard academic and practical pricing reference.
Topics: value, b2b pricing, pricing
The business world is full of great ideas that don’t get adopted. Some require too many resources, some are too expensive, and others don’t fit within an organization’s strategy. Then there are the millions and millions of ideas that fit within a budget, aren’t too hard to execute and perfectly align with an organization’s goals … and still aren’t adopted. Why not? People fear change.
A recent article on pricing power referenced the example of Martin Shkreli’s Turing Pharmaceutical decision to raise the price of Daraprim by 5000%. Shkreli famously purchased the rights to an older off-patent drug used to treat infection in AIDS patients and dramatically raised the price – a demonstration of pricing power. The following controversy caught up with Shkreli, who gloated that he didn’t raise the price enough. Investigators couldn’t jail him for the Daraprim price, but digging found other dirt and he was sentenced to seven years for fraud related to his former hedge fund.
Topics: Pricing with Confidence, Setting Price
The following article is my reaction to a blog from a friend, Steve Haggett at Iron Mountain. He responded to an article from our Patrick McCullough about some of the pricing abuses in the pharmaceutical industry.
Topics: Pricing with Confidence, Setting Price
Do you think your sales team effectively sells the value that you provide to your customers? And how would you measure that, anyway?
Topics: Negotiating with Backbone, value selling