Holden Advisors Blog

The 'last mile' is a colloquial phrase widely used in the telecommunications to refer to the portion of the network chain that physically reaches the end-user's premises. This connectivity is critical; it is the link to their paying customers and allows them to receive revenue for their entire network. Without the connection there are no customers, no revenue.

Ask any salesperson what their most valuable asset is, and they will answer instantly—my time. Great sales people are really stingy about this scarce asset, always asking “Is this the best use of my time?” before they engage with a prospect, set up a sales call, or respond to an RFP. In sales terms, they qualify the opportunity before they invest their time. Right on!

Lately, we've had a lot of conversations with businesses that are ramping up "strategic pricing". They've adopted more systematic approaches to pricing and have taken responsibility for setting prices away from salespeople. This transitions price away from the team worried about closing a sale to specialized pricing people who are worried about generating profits that meet company goals. That's terrific. Well, it might be terrific for some, but it's not terrific for the sales force that is struggling with this new pressure and, like many sales forces, now calls the pricing people the "sales prevention" department.

When is a price war, not a price war?

For over a decade, athletic titan Nike declined to partner with Amazon, America’s largest online retailer. Nike held out, wanting to carefully control brand messaging while enjoying higher margins through its distribution network of brick and mortar stores. On June 29^th, Nike conceded by confirming a deal with Amazon to sell and distribute apparel and footwear.

With astonishing speed, Uber has disrupted the taxicab industry. Others have looked at their success and dreamed of emulation. The strategy often touted for Uber’s success is surge pricing; charging higher prices at times of high demand. Surge pricing is an example of dynamic pricing, where the price fluctuates depending on one or more factors, like the demand for ride service.

This is a story of a highly specialized drug, Ilaris, which is sold by Novartis for $16,000 a dose or $64,000 a year. They sell to under 10,000 patients a year. Novartis discovered that the drug may also have a beneficial impact on heart attack survivors. There are 615,000 survivors a year, 246,000 of whom would benefit from the use of the drug.

Mayuresh Saravanakumar lays out his framework in the video below for creating a simple approach to pricing analytics success:  Identify, attack, and monitor.

We meet and work with sales managers all over the globe and a question we are asked frequently is, “Why can’t my sellers close the deal?”  It is an important question to consider, but we must first establish a few assumptions.