Holden Advisors Blog

The purpose of "big data" is to give managers a clearer vision of something so they can make decisions about products, pricing and distribution. In pricing, it is generally around how customers buy.  It uses statistical techniques to group customers into definable segments and helps you figure out how to sell to those segments.

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!

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.

In the previous three articles in the series What Gets Measured Gets Done, we discussed some basic reporting that every pricing and/or sales operations team should use to drive improved profits for the business. In this last article of the series, we are going to talk about uncovering the drivers of discounting and the effectiveness of an organization's profit improvement initiatives using a combination of waterfall analysis and Pareto analysis.