“price for profits, innovate for growth”

"For pricing to be “strategic” it must first be focused on achieving an objective. The problem is that many firms often have multiple and conflicting objectives. I remember one CEO standing in front of a sales force saying he wanted to grow revenue, profits, and market share. This company was in a highly-competitive mature business, and here’s the point: you can’t do all three with price alone. It was no wonder they weren’t making a profit. The first action is to make the objective reasonable, given customer and market conditions. Focus pricing on one thing, hence my mantra: “price for profits, innovate for growth.”
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The basis for pricing to be “strategic” requires a good understanding of:

• how the products and associated services differ from competitors

• what that difference is worth to customers

• how competitors are likely to react

• the products and services costs

• the ability to return profits to a company"

Trecho retirado de "The Actions for Strategic Pricing"

Para suportar a subida na escala de valor

Recomendamos a subida na escala de valor, com o consequente aumento do preço praticado.
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Claro que não basta melhorar a oferta e subir o preço. Os clientes, sobretudo no B2B, têm uma grande relutância em optar por uma oferta com um preço mais alto:

"The conceptual framework we have proposed and tested for understanding customer managers’ purchase of higher-value, higher-price offerings in business markets is comprised of two constructs: ambiguity about superior value and consequences of obtaining superior value.[Moi ici: Bom para continuar esta série sobre o T-TIP]
...
[Moi ici: Acerca do "ambiguity about superior value"] Providing some value evidence supporting the value estimate from the value analysis significantly increases customer managers’ purchase intentions for the higher-value, higher-price offerings, ... Whether this value evidence comes in the form of a reference list containing some respected competitors that the customers are able to contact or confirming pilot program results from one of the customer’s own plants, it appears to allay customer managers’ concerns about whether they will realize the stated value.
...
[Moi ici: Acerca de "consequences of obtaining superior value"] Conversely, customer managers in the lowering-total-cost-of-ownership condition have significantly higher purchase intentions than do those in the stay-within-the-budget condition for higher-value, higher-price offerings"

Para os fabricantes reter ainda:

"The scenarios established that the customer managers themselves had participated in the value analysis to establish the worth in monetary terms of each offering. Few suppliers in practice make the commitment to persuasively demonstrate and document the value of their offerings relative to the next-best alternatives
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Suppliers should conduct pilot programs with beta-test customers to understand the value delivered by new or enhanced offerings. The results of the pilot programs, when they are carefully designed and monitored, enable the supplier to document the actual value in monetary terms that the beta customers receive. Customers may be willing to cooperate in documenting the costs savings or greater value in exchange for supplier assistance in the data gathering and analysis as well as earlier access to these offerings.
...
Suppliers then can use the documented results to create reference customer lists and value case histories. Our finding that reference lists of respected competitors were as effective as confirming pilot program findings in persuading customer managers to have higher purchase intentions for higher-value, higher-price offerings suggests this two-stage strategy"

Trechos retirados de "'Purchasing Higher-Value, Higher-Price Offerings in Business Markets'", Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, 17: 1, 29 — 61, 2010

Acerca do pricing

• Generic Drug Regulation and Pharmaceutical Price-Jacking
• My Product Deserves its Price and Other Fallacies
• What Is Price Anchoring? (And Should You Do It?)
• 3 Pricing Strategy Examples Using Decision Science
• Greedy Pharmaceutical CEO Raises Drug Price From $13.50 To $750, Just Because
• Competitive pricing is about getting smarter, not cheaper
• 16 Pricing Page Tips That Will Drive More Sales

Truque de pricing?

Quando li o título "Carnaval de Ovar: Camarotes de luxo a 2.500 euros", a minha veia cínico-irónica no Twitter concluiu que era urgente por cá um Syriza.
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Contudo, depois, numa segunda análise, após a leitura do texto, interroguei-me se não estaria perante um interessante truque de pricing, para estabelecer uma linha de referência para a contextualização de outros preços do evento.
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BTW, julgo que não deveriam ter revelado o número previsto de camarotes que podem instalar.

"focus on selling more effectively."

"Some prospects don’t understand how paying more can cost them less. [Moi ici: O truque do value based pricing, pensar no ciclo de vida que inclui o pós-compra. E se o comprador não chega lá, é tarefa do consultor de compra demonstrar as contas e abrir a mente do comprador para esse mundo] You are faced with a choice. You can either more effectively sell the value you create, or you can eliminate price as an objection. It’s easier to lower your price than it is to sell better. [Moi ici: Demasiado fácil e, quando não se investe na actividade comercial, quando não se trabalham os argumentos, quando não se focaliza nos clientes-alvo, ... é inevitável a erosão do desconto]
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This is how sales organizations, salespeople, and whole industries are commoditized. If you have chosen low price as your strategy, then you need to compete by eliminating costs and providing the lowest price in all cases. But if you have decided to sell the additional value you create, the value that makes you different, then you need to focus on selling more effectively.
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Reducing your price to increase your revenue is one way to go about increased sales. But that choice comes with reduced margins. You may indeed end up increasing your sales and selling more while building a far less profitable, and less valuable business. And you might also build a business that doesn’t make a difference in the end."

O que é que a sua empresa faz para vender melhor?

Trechos retirados de "Why You Cannot Match Your Competitor’s Price"

O trabalho que se devia iniciar hoje (parte II)

"9 Ways to Stand Out Among Lower Cost Competitors (Without Lowering Prices)":

"“When prices can’t be lowered, focus on the ways you’re ahead of your competitors in terms of quality. Clients care about price, but they care more about the quality of what they’re getting for their money. Customer service is also a key point.
...
“As our market becomes more competitive, we increased prices to help us tell the story of how we are different. When our prices were lower, it was harder to tell a compelling story.
...
“Competition is the ugly truth of business and sometimes it can get nasty. If a competitor is undercutting your price, then you need to react by further positioning your offerings as more valuable than others in the market. It is all about keeping your company on its own path. Racing to the bottom against someone setting the pace can easily end up with your business crashing and burning.”
...
“If you focus on price alone, you’ll never win the war. Focus on the value your product will bring your customers and why your product is what they need to become more profitable."

Muita gente que lê textos com este tipo de mensagem torce o nariz e reage como em 1992 reagi ao ler o artigo de Marn e Rosiello na HBR.
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Seguir estes conselhos sem ter iniciado um prévio trabalho de diferenciação não é muito saudável.
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Quando é que a sua empresa vai iniciar o seu trabalho para a grande viagem da diferenciação?

Pricing

Coisas interessantes que se aprendem:

"price consulting started in the 1980s when Hermann Simon, a former professor of economics in Germany, challenged the traditional method of "cost-plus pricing," which is pricing something according to the cost of acquiring it."

Hermann Simon é um velho conhecido deste blogue. Um alemão, não admira pois que:

"First, Germany’s superior export performance has nothing to do with labor cost competitiveness. Demand for Germany’s exports has not been sensitive to changes in the cost of labor, as we show and as other studies (including ones by IMF, World Bank and ECB economists) confirm. German firms do not compete on “costs” but on factors other than price: things like product design, quality, high-tech content, and reliability."

Trecho inicial retirado de "How Stores Manipulate Prices So You'll Spend More"

O que fariam?

Esta semana, em conversa numa empresa, um comercial contou-me que tinha apresentado uma proposta com três preços a um potencial cliente:

• um preço superior para uma matéria-prima topo de gama;
• um preço médio para uma matéria-prima boa mas sem escolha da nata;
• um preço mais baixo para uma matéria-prima com qualidade mais fraca.

O comercial pressentiu que tinha hipótese de ganhar a encomenda e fazer um novo cliente. Foi então que descobriu que o fornecedor habitual, para não perder o cliente, aceitou baixar o preço em cerca de 20%.
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O que fariam na sequência deste caso, se estivessem na posição do comercial?
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Recordar:

• "Nascer 10 vezes";
• ""Volume is Vanity, Profit is Sanity""

Manter marcação cerrada de visitas, para manter oportunidade para apresentar novas propostas?

Chamar a atenção do cliente para quanto o fornecedor habitual tem ganho, por falta de concorrência?

Acerca do value-based pricing

"1. Price based upon your value, not your cost.
...
The costs do not determine the price, [Moi ici: À atenção dos ministros da saúde que acham que os medicamentos devem ter um preço baseado na transparência dos custos] let alone the value. It is precisely the opposite; that is, the price determines the costs that can be profitably invested in to make a product desirable for the customer, at an acceptable profit for the seller.”
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In other words, the price is dictated by what the consumer is willing to pay. Period. And the costs to provide that good or service dictate how much or even whether the supplier provides them.
...
2. All services are not created equal
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At its core, value pricing asserts that price is a subjective, not objective, measure of value. Your price should reflect what your customer is willing to pay – or said differently, the benefit they perceive. But, do all customers perceive value the same way?
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Depending on your industry, the answer is probably “no.”
...
3. Don’t underprice yourself.
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Your price is a signal of your value. The lower your price, the lower your perceived value.
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4. Provide your customers with options…
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5. …but don’t provide too many options.
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If a business provides its customers with too many options, they run the risk of paralyzing the customer with indecision."

Trechos retirados de "Everything You Need to Know About Value-Based Pricing"

Pricing, pricing e pricing...

Tantas e tantas vezes já escrevemos aqui no blogue sobre o péssimo hábito dos empresários portugueses deixarem dinheiro em cima da mesa.
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Outro tema que costumamos repetir aqui no blogue é o de desmistificar a qualidade de gestão dos empresários portugueses, são humanos como os outros. Os outros cometem o mesmo tipo de erros.
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Este artigo "Pricing for Profits: Three Simple Rules to Price your Product", escrito para empreendedores na área digital, além de dar bons conselhos aplicáveis para as PMEs portuguesas, faz referência a um artigo de 2003, "Pricing new products", com um dado interessante:

"How much should you charge for a new product? Charge too much and it won't sell—a problem that can be fixed relatively easily by reducing the price. Charging too little is far more dangerous: a company not only forgoes significant revenues and profits but also fixes the product's market value position at a low level. And as companies have found time and again, once prices hit the market it is difficult, even impossible, to raise them. In our experience, 80 to 90 percent of all poorly chosen prices are too low.
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Companies consistently undercharge for products despite spending millions or even billions of dollars to develop or acquire them."

Esse número não é o preço (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.
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Não é pelos nossos lindos olhos que o re-shoring se está a fazer:

"A recent study by Aon Risk Solutions found that, on average, the percentage of global companies reporting a loss of income due to a supply chain disruption increased from 28% in 2011 to 42% in 2013."

E ainda vai crescer muito mais:

"A recent MIT Scale Network study found that even many large companies are unable to create contingency rules and procedures for operations during a complex, high-risk event. In fact, approximately 60% of the surveyed managers either do not actively work on supply chain risk management or do not consider their company’s risk management practices effective."

Pense nisto, pense em como poderá estimar estes valores, para que na próxima negociação deixe menos dinheiro em cima da mesa

Trechos retirados de "Creating More Resilient Supply Chains"

Acerca do preço

Muito bom este "What Business Owners Don’t Know About Price….."

"For starters, they do not understand how elastic price is. Only a small percentage of buyers of anything make a small percentage of their decisions sole or predominately based on cheapest price. If more did, the Yugo’d be the car you see on the road most; no clothing store would exist but Wal-Mart.
...
Second, they do not understand people buy at different price levels. Yes, obviously, there is a Wal-Mart customer, probably in every category (although it is a big mistake to think Wal-Mart’s chief attraction to its customers is lowest price. It isn’t. It’s more complicated and clever than that. It has more to do with the social and entertainment experience.)  But there is also a Nieman-Marcus customer, in every category. You can get a steak dinner at Dennys, you can get a steak dinner at Mortons. You can sleep at a Marriott Courtyard or a full service Marriott. Or a Ritz Carlton. You pick your own clientele, so if you wish, you can certainly pick those for whom price is low on the totem pole.
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Third, they try to compete on price. My preaching on this has been consistent for over 20 years: if you can’t be THE cheapest, there’s no benefit in being almost the cheapest.
...
If you’re in a commodity business –get out. I mean: reinvent. Find another basis to compete on.
...
Fifth, they live in fear. Any business decision made out of fear is a bad decision. Most business owners needlessly under-price, raise prices too little too late, and ignore opportunities to sell premium priced versions of their products and services entirely out of fear.  Price paid is a result of target market selected, value built, value proposition presented, salesmanship, credibility, celebrity, brand, buying experience and many other factors. It actually has very little to do with objectively measured intrinsic value.
...
This dramatic difference between intrinsic, objective value and perceived value exists in every business, industry, profession, city and town. There’s always somebody successfully selling at prices or fees dramatically higher than everyone else, with a difference far greater than the objective difference that exists in the quality, competence or delivery. If one can, so can you."

Quem é que está encarregado do valor?

Comecei a minha leitura de "Innovation in Pricing", editado por Andreas Hinterhuber e Stephan Liozu, a partir do quarto capítulo, "Who is in charge of value?" escrito a duas mãos, pelo grande Ronald Baker e por Stephan Liozu:
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Começo por registar um conjunto de citações. A primeira de Marx de 1865:

"A commodity has a value, because it is a crystallization of social labour. The greatness of its value, or its relative value, depends upon the greater or less amount of that social substance contained in it; that is to say, on the relative mass of labour necessary for its production. The relative values of commodities are, therefore, determined by the respective quantities or amounts of labour, worked up, realized, fixed in them. The correlative quantities of commodities which can be produced in the same time of labour are equal."

Isto está impregnado na sociedade como uma verdade axiomática que serve de suporte a toda uma geração de políticas.
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Outra citação, num sentido diferente é:

"Value is ... nothing inherent in goods, no property of them. Value is a judgment economizing men make about the importance of the goods at their disposal for the maintenance of their lives and well-being. Hence value does not exist outside the consciousness of men .... [T]he value of goods.. is entirely subjective in nature." (Ebenstein)

Outra citação:

"The value of goods arises from their relationship to our needs, and is not inherent in the goods themselves .... Objectification of the value of which is entirely subjective in nature, has nevertheless contributed very greatly to confusion about the basic principles of our science .... The importance that goods have for us and which we call value is merely imputed." (Menger 1873)

Outra citação:

"By the late nineteenth century, however, economists had given up on the notion that it is primarily labour which determines the value of goods .... This new understanding marked a revolution in the development of economics. It is also a sobering reminder of how long it can take for even highly intelligent people to get rid of a misconception whose fallacy then seems obvious in retrospect. It is not costs which create value; it is value which causes purchasers to be willing to repay the costs incurred in the production of what they want." (Sowell 2004)

Este último sublinhado devia fazer parte das leituras diárias de qualquer economista...
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E terminamos com uma famosa questão levantada por Drucker  em 1973:

"The final question needed in order to come to grips with business purpose and business mission is: 'What is value to the customer?' It may be the most important question. Yet it is the one least often asked. One reason is that managers are quite sure that they know the answer. Value is what they, in their business, define as quality. But this is almost always the wrong definition. The customer never buys a product. By definition the customer buys the satisfaction of a want. He buys value."

E, para terminar esta primeira parte, uma questão que todas as empresas deviam fazer e sobre a qual deviam reflectir:

"since price is determined by value - and now that we have explored in detail the subject theory of value, we have a better undestanding of this concept - shouldn't someone within the company be in charge of comprehending, communicating and capturing value? Al businesses talk about value, and all agree it is essential to create, and constantly add to, but who is in charge of it?
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No customer buys costs. efforts or activities, yet many businesses continue to price on a cost-plus basis. The customer wants to see the baby, not hear about the labour pains."

Quem é que está encarregado, na sua empresa, de compreender, comunicar e capturar valor?

Coisas que a tríade nunca lhe dirá

"The cost of providing your product or service tells you the lowest price you can charge, but it does not tell you the right price.
...
Do not be tempted to take your costs and simply add a percentage for profit. You will be leaving money on the table but, more importantly, you will be sending the wrong signals to your customers.
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If all you value about your product is the ingredients that go into it, you will signal to your customers that there is little reason to buy from you, except to save themselves the trouble of putting the ingredients together on their own. To give your customers something to believe in, a reason to buy from you as well as a reason to pay attention to the experience of consuming your product or service - and to make a profit that is worth the time and passion you put into your business - you must find a way to charge a price based on the value you give to your customer, and not the cost you incur in doing it."

Trecho retirado de "The Psichology of price" de Leigh Caldwell.

"Why Segmentation Matters" (parte II)

Parte I.

"If your sales representatives are providing these high cost services to all customers without regard for return on sales, (Moi ici: "Return on sales", a base para a construção de uma curva de Stobachoff. Já a fez para a sua empresa?) then you are losing money. To that end, segmentation could benefit by determining which customers value the programs and are willing to pay for your services and which ones believe these programs are less useful. (Moi ici: E a sua segmentação, em que bases é feita? Geografia? Come on!!!)
...
Without a proper understanding of the segmented structure of the market, a pricing decision that is important and facing uncertainty may miss its mark. Understanding what makes your customers different from one another based on what they value is the required ingredient (Moi ici: O que é que eles valorizam e procuram? Qual o verdadeiro jo-to-be-done que está em causa?) for a successful needs-based segmentation that leads to more profitable pricing.
...
When it comes to pricing, segments based on value will be more productive.
...
Start with a good segmentation plan to identify customer value before thinking about setting price (Moi ici: Esta é para nós Paulo!))
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The goal of segmentation is to identify what matters most to your target segments. One of the first steps is identifying your target segments based on the segment clusters that the database presents.
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Establishing your segment offerings first before determining your price provides the sales force with the knowledge they need for a flexible and profitable negotiation.
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Emphasize the importance of adhering to your price fences to avoid adding free extras that increase the cost to serve and dilute the integrity of your price fences.
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To execute a value-based segmentation plan, tie it to a profitable sales strategy that distinguishes between profitable and unprofitable customers."

O poder do contexto

Ontem, ao final da tarde comecei a ler "Contextual Pricing - The Death of List Price and the New Market REality" de Rob Docters, John Hanson, Cecilia Nguyen e Michael Barzelay.
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Fiz logo a relação com o postal da manhã "Por vezes, o truque estratégico não é mudar a oferta, é mudar de prateleira".

"The common sense observation, and the point of this book, is that the other things associated with each offer - the market - environment - changed, not the product. Product and value did not change, only the context.
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For companies focused on profitability, the key justification for focus on context is that almost always the leverageable differences in price among different buying contexts is far greater than differences between products and competitors.(Moi ici: O exemplo da gasolina que está a 1,559 €/litro na auto-estrada e a 1,469 €/litro no Pingo Doce cá do sítio)
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While it may seem strange to focus more on buying occasion and the customer mind-set than on your particular product, context is what makes for reliable pricing. Product value is only one driver of price. For the best pricing, look to context as much as to your product offer.
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The message here is that clinging to the idea that your company's product has an essential value is wrong. Value is not a concept compatible to diverse markets and a changing world."

Alguma coisa não bate certo

Percebemos que alguma coisa não bate certo quando multinacional respeitada premeia colaborador, por aplicar a relação da oferta-procura.
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Desconfio que foram surpreendidos pelos resultados que se podiam prever a partir do gráfico de Marn e Rosiello:

Sendo a multinacional de origem alemã, fico a pensar na forma como definem os preços que praticam... aposto que à boa maneira clássica, o preço é o resultado de uma equação onde se somam os custos a uma margem. Aposto que não têm interiorizado que o preço tem tudo a ver com o valor e nada, ou pouco, a ver com o custo.
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Assim que me mandarem o Youtube onde o premiado explica o que fez colocarei aqui a história toda

É a mentalidade de incumbente monopolista, ou protegido pelo Estado

"George Lucas as predicting that one day a cinema ticket will cost $150. Mr. Lucas and (and Mr. Spielberg) believe that the movie industry will, over time, concentrate on big budget productions and these will cost more to see in the cinema. Indeed, one senior equity analyst at Morningstar is quoted as saying, ‘differentiated pricing according to the movie’s budget makes economic sense.’”
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“I think this is the sentence that caught my colleague’s eye: He and I teach a class on pricing. In it, we emphasize the simple point that fixed costs are irrelevant for deciding the price. If I could repeat this FACT in large, friendly letters like the warning on the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I would. So, the idea that a movie’s budget should determine its price is not merely wrong but risible.”

Depois de ler este texto, sobre a inexistência de relação entre custos e preços, encontrei este artigo "Santos Silva: “Há um grande espaço para aumentar a receita pública”" ... é a mentalidade de incumbente monopolista, ou protegido pelo Estado.
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Trecho inicial retirado de "A Gentle, Cinematic Reminder That Prices Are Based on Value, Not Cost"

Pricing e a criação de valor

Uma das minhas paixões que mais se tem reforçado nos últimos meses é a do pricing. Cada vez mais sinto que se trata de uma ferramenta fundamental para um futuro mais risonho para as PMEs portuguesas.
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O objectivo é contrariar ainda mais os senhores da UTAO, o objectivo é deixar cada vez menos dinheiro em cima da mesa.
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Para os que se preparam para concordar comigo e afirmar que os empresários portugueses são uns ignorantes e os piores do mundo aqui vai:

"“Fewer than 5 percent of Fortune 500 companies have a full-time function dedicated to pricing, according to data from the professional pricing society.” Moreover, McKinsey & Company estimates that fewer than 15 percent of companies do systematic pricing research. As article authors Andreas Hinterhuber and Stephan Liozu note, “This neglect is puzzling, as numerous studies have confirmed that pricing has a substantial and immediate effect on company profitability…. [In fact,] small variations in price can raise or lower profitability by as much as 20 percent or 50 percent.”"

O truque passa por uma das minhas outras paixões, a criação de valor:

"“Instead of asking, ‘How can we realize higher prices despite intense competition?’ customer value-based pricing asks, ‘How can we create additional customer value and increase customer willingness to pay, despite intense competition?’”"

Trecho retirado de "Do You Even Have a Pricing Strategy?"

O que é que a sua empresa faz para o acelerar?

"If the customers come to better understand value and willing to pay price for it,  you two would be crazy not to provide that value at a price that lets you capture your fair share of value created."

"Come to better understand value" ... como é que se consegue acelerar este processo? O que é que a sua empresa faz para o acelerar?
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Estou-me a lembrar daquele anúncio televisivo em que alguém a parece a exemplificar como é que se deve actuar para desmaquilhar e tonificar a pele.

Trecho retirado daqui.