Holden Advisors Blog

At Holden Advisors, we believe a value-based approach is the best way to set a fair price for your products and services. But data-driven pricing, when done right, will lift your profit margins in the short term. Here’s the story of how hunting down hidden data turned profits around for one company.

Is it possible to double your price and not lose any customers? Yep.

We live in a time of abundant choice, and our customers expect options. Providing customers with a large variety of products and features is a compelling way to sell more. But, as companies grow and diversify, it can be difficult to capture the monetary value generated by the long tail of these products using traditional product management tools and data. An example of these traditional methods includes simple gross margin and product costing techniques derived from accounting systems. These conventional accounting data sets fail to account for the value of diversification and the actual cost of complexity.

Given all the disruption and change this year, challenging your commercial organization’s go-to-market strategy is a totally reasonable endeavor. The big questions are:

We have received many requests from companies wondering if it is a good idea to increase prices to offset declining sales during the pandemic. While the answer is generally no, it is important to recognize how buyers are changing their behavior and how the pandemic is causing disruption. So I thought it was wise to spend a few minutes reviewing the importance of understanding your distinct customer groups to bring clarity during economic chaos.

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.

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. 

Investors have long heralded pricing power as one of the best predictors of a company’s long-term financial success. Warren Buffett’s famous quote from 2010 captures the sentiment.

In what has become a common occurrence over the past 15 years or so, Amazon announced it was entering a new business last week – retail grocery stores. Well, yes, they technically are in this business already with their purchase of Whole Foods in 2017, but they see an opportunity to extend their reach beyond the more upscale customer. Then there’s Amazon Go – the cashier-less stores that are being rolled out in urban areas. They also have the food delivery business, which is a combination of Whole Foods products and others, although it has had mixed results so far. The grocery business isn’t really a new business at all.