December 17, 2025 • 23 mins
In this special episode of Let’s Talk Pricing, PPS President Kevin Mitchell reflects on a year of profound change across the pricing profession. From shifting market dynamics and rising complexity to the growing influence of AI, data, and cross-functional leadership, Kevin explores how pricing roles, expectations, and capabilities are evolving in real time.
Looking ahead, he shares his perspective on what pricing professionals must focus on next—where opportunities are emerging, where risks remain, and how the discipline is positioning itself as a critical driver of enterprise value. Whether you’re early in your pricing career or shaping strategy at the leadership level, this episode offers timely insights into where pricing has been—and where it’s headed.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You're listening to Let's Talk Pricing, your connection to the
voices, stories, and strategies shaping the pricing world.
Each episode, we go beyond theory into the practical,
timely conversations that help you lead with confidence and
drive results. Let's start the show.
Very good day, everyone. It's Kevin Mitchell from
(00:21):
Professional Pricing Society here.
And as we head towards the end of 2025, I want to give the PPS
community, our members worldwideand everyone listening in to our
podcast and our webinars A sincere thanks for your
partnership. And I had the opportunity to
interact with quite a few peopleat the PBS profitable events, be
(00:46):
it in Dallas in the spring or Las Vegas and Barcelona in the
fall. And actually, I'm just getting
back from our Barcelona conference where we had a huge
crowd of very, very engaged pricing professionals and we
talked about a lot of the thingsthat we are addressing in our
daily jobs. I had the great opportunity to
(01:06):
connect with members from aroundthe world and really from my
team and IA Sincerest thanks forbeing with us for a great, great
2025. And as you know, we have a lot
of opportunities and a lot of challenges in the pricing
discipline. And always like to remind us
(01:29):
that no matter where you are in your company, no matter what
your company does, just rememberthat every dollar, every euro,
every yen, everyone, every peso,every rupee, every cent that
comes into your organization hasa pricing decision attached to
it. These decisions might be made by
(01:51):
you and your coworkers. They might be influenced by a
competitor, they may be made by a customer, they might be made
by somebody's gut reaction. It could be a government that
sets a price, or it could be a lot of marketplace figures that
join together to set a price. But someone or something
(02:13):
somewhere is making a pricing decision and that affects every
cent of revenue that comes into our organizations.
And of course we use that for salaries, for bonuses, for
reinvestment in our products andservices, for investments in our
community and lots of other things as well.
And for those of us who have this as a job, that is a very,
(02:36):
very tough job and pricing people, as we know are often
under compensated, under trained, underdeveloped and
under appreciated by those around us, be they inside our
organizations or around us in any other way.
And because of this, I encourageall of us to make sure to take
(02:57):
advantage of all of the tools that are available to us.
We are very lucky to be in a golden age of pricing
literature. They're great pricing books that
come out all of the time. So I'd encourage everyone to
make sure that you are reading what's the latest and what's the
grading and what's the greatest sorry from pricing thought
leaders that are out there. Also of course, our organization
(03:21):
PPS has well over 100 online pricing courses and we offer
dozens of in person CPP workshops that are available for
our members. And we also can offer lots of
webinars, podcast white papers, our articles in our publications
and the other things that PPS offers to our website.
(03:43):
So make sure to take advantage of all of the tools that are
available to you, be they the pricing software optimization
tools, be they the latest AI artificial intelligence tools.
But we do have a lot out there that can help us do our jobs
even better. But it is our job to make sure
that we are staying current and we are making the most advantage
(04:07):
possible out of everything that is there for us in order to deal
with these difficult jobs, in order to continue to thrive and
exceed expectations for our companies, for our careers, for
ourselves, and for everyone around us as well.
And as we come to the end of theyear, this will be old news to
(04:27):
those of you who joined one of the fall profitable conferences.
But I started off our last two conferences with a completely
true story that details that even if you think pricing is a
relatively new thing, even if you were volunt old by someone
in your organization, that you're the new pricing manager.
That in spite of all that, we doreally have a long, long history
(04:53):
of being pricing practitioners, of thinking about pricing and
revenue management and profitable growth and commercial
excellence as a way to improve our businesses.
And I started off our last couple conferences with a story
that around 80 years ago, there was an Indiana Jones
(05:14):
archaeologist type guy in the Tigris Euphrates Valley near
Baghdad who found some 4000 plusyear old stone tablets.
And these tablets had laws. What would happen when the mayor
died? What were the laws around
marriage and divorce? What were the penalties for
certain crimes? But what's of interest to us is
(05:36):
that these 4000 year old tablets, which we call the laws
of Vishnuna, Vishnuna was the town nearest to where they were
found. They included very, very direct,
very thorough information that we today would consider a price
list. For example, it said this is
what you charge for a milk cow, this is what you charge for a
(05:56):
bushel of wheat and so on and soforth.
There. And this was quite a surprise to
us because this predates Hammurabi's code and predates
everything that we thought around when business would have
involved. And I told a joke, and this may
not be true, but I told a joke, that if you look towards the end
(06:17):
of the laws of Ishanuna on those4000 year old 2100 BC stone
tablets, it also had informationabout how when you make a sale,
it's due to your acumen and yourrelationships and your skill as
a salesperson. But whenever you lose a sale,
it's because the price was too high.
And these scribes that set theselaws down on these stone tablets
(06:38):
got everything wrong and should have had a significantly lower
price in order for you to do business.
That part might not be true, butthe part that is true is that
there is a 4000 year old stone tablet with essentially a price
list on it. So what we do goes back a bit
further than we would perhaps think in our normal day-to-day
(06:59):
activities. And I would imagine that
probably not too much changed inthe 1st 3800 or so years since
the 4000 year old price list. But since then we've had of
course an ever increasing way ofthinking about pricing and
(07:20):
increasing emphasis on our duties and everything that we do
as well. So I like to think that pricing
has evolved from being a purely clerical function, you know,
someone actually writing down orchipping into a stone tablet
what the price was for a certaingood or service.
(07:40):
And as we went through the Paul Hunt 5 levels of pricing
excellence, perhaps there was a time when the highest level of
pricing thought was being the so-called policeman enforcing
that our prices did not dip below the cost for a certain
good or service. Of course, from then we evolved
to more of a focus on value or perhaps the outcomes that our
(08:03):
goods and services delivered. We also are applying algorithmic
pricing optimization and lookingat data analysis to figure out
the best strategic price inputs for our goods and services and
much, much more. And of course, pricing is going
to continue to evolve or may have already involved in your
(08:24):
organization to being a senior management function, a strategic
function, basically a Nexus where a lot of different
disciplines within our businesses come together, be
they sales, marketing, finance, operations.
Obviously, pricing when done correctly should have emphasis
and inputs and touch upon all ofthose there.
(08:44):
So as a result of this, we and pricing have to be generalist
with extreme specialist knowledge.
That was a direct quote from someone at one of our
conferences. So as a generalist with extreme
specialist knowledge, you have to take a lot of different
factors into play. We have to think about
macroeconomics, microeconomics as well.
(09:07):
We in our current environment have to think about tariffs and
politics and about fluctuations in raw goods material prices.
Of course, there are always everincreasing competitive dynamics.
There is instant knowledge on all sides, on your customer
side, on your side, on your competition side, and all of
(09:29):
this comes into play which adds really extra dimensions when we
think about the fun things, the game theory things that happen
within pricing jobs and within us as a discipline.
And also one thing that I find very interesting is we are
seeing that more and more Wall Street analysts or analysts on
(09:52):
the Street are taking CEOSCFOS to task if their margins are not
keeping pace with their revenues.
We are seeing a lot more emphasis on profitable revenue
management growth and we're seeing a lot more emphasis on
bottom line results instead of perhaps more of a focus that
(10:14):
existed in the past where your sales figure was the first, last
and only thing that you talked about.
We have figured out that you canincrease sales and you can
increase market share, but to doso profitably is a very tough
job. And that's where our skills as
business people, as generalist with specialist knowledge come
(10:37):
into play. Because to do both of those or
to do the combination of things that fits best with your company
needs, that can be very, very difficult.
Which is why we have to make sure that we are as prepared as
we can be. And why we make sure to take
advantage of all the tools, the team training options, the
(10:59):
literature, the scientific thought, the pricing
optimization software tools, theAI tools, and everything that we
have out there in order for us to really make sure that we are
doing our jobs as best we can. Let's take a quick break.
This episode of Let's Talk Pricing is brought to you by the
Professional Pricing Society. For over 40 years, PPS has been
(11:23):
the home for pricing professionals looking to sharpen
their skills, stay ahead of market shifts, and connect with
peers who truly understand the discipline.
From live and on demand education to conferences,
research and career resources, PPS supports you at every stage
of your pricing journey. Learn more and join the
globalpricingcommunity@pricingsociety.com.And now, back to the show.
(11:48):
So a lot of the questions that I've gotten from pricing
practitioners around the globe, either at our conferences or in
discussions or emailed questionshave been about with everything
that we're seeing right now, where does that put me and my
department? We have these extreme
externalities with economic uncertainty and we know that
(12:10):
nothing in pricing happens in a vacuum.
I mean one of the fun things about our part of the business
world is the game theory elementof it.
When we move, there likely will be a customer response and a
competitor response and a marketplace response and we have
to think several chess moves ahead in order to encapsulate
all of that. The opposite of that would be
(12:34):
what I and probably you and a lot of our folks were taught in
Econ one O 1, the old microeconomics, perfectly
downward sloping demand curve where if you want to increase
your quantity, you just decreaseyour price and that's it.
And it happens. It happens automatically.
You can run a regression on it, You can do a partial derivative
(12:58):
on it and figure out exactly howmuch you're going to gain extra.
And of course, in a perfect world, that might be the case.
But in our world, with all of these competitive issues, with
all of these externalities, we really see cases where a lot of
us try to drop price in order tostimulate demand and increase
(13:19):
our quantity sold, forgetting that our competitors are
sometimes smart as well and see our moves as well and might do
the same thing. And therefore, we've unwittedly,
unwittingly started a price war and basically hurt our entire
business segment. So we've got to make sure that
we do take game theory and competitive response, customer
(13:41):
response, marketplace response into account with every move
that we make, be it up, down or sideways.
And it's these extra dimensions that come into play within the
pricing discipline that really kind of make what we do very
interesting and kind of fun. And I know that we also have the
(14:02):
extra concern about artificial intelligence, about AI, about
pricing algorithms, about what they do and basically about what
they mean for those of us who are pricing practitioners.
But a lot of us are thinking that we can now use AI and use
(14:23):
the pricing algorithms, use pricing optimization software,
all of these other tools in order to help us make a story
out of our data and in order to prevent some of the mind numbing
grunt work that can go into someof our daily jobs.
And hopefully this will allow usto use more strategic thinking,
(14:43):
to use a higher level of thoughtprocesses there to basically use
these as they should be used as tools in order to elevate us as
professionals and in order to domore, to do things more quickly,
to do them more accurately and basically to improve our
organizations that way. For example, if pricing
(15:05):
optimization, if our data analytics, if AI can tell us,
hey, how come AB and C happened with this move and not XY and Z,
then we can use that to move down the proverbial learning
curve and in order to really be more strategic leaders within
our organizations and to be a resource within our
(15:28):
organizations. When we see things that happen
within, any moves that we make, with any moves that happen
beyond our control, be they a raw material goods price, a
tariff, or anything like that, we can really use our human
intellect in combination with the tools that are out there in
(15:48):
order to get a feel for what is happening now, why did it
happen, and perhaps what might happen in the future.
And how can we best position ourselves in order to take
advantage of that? It's always going to be our job
to be the Nexus between finance,marketing, sales, operations,
(16:10):
all of these other departments. And in order to foster those
connections, if we can use all the tools that we have to be
that great resource, then that is going to make us
indispensable no matter what happens moving forward.
If we can use everything to become more strategic in our
jobs, then that is how we advance in our careers, how we
(16:33):
continue to do better and how wemove our organizations even
forward, even more forward than we have previously.
So I would encourage all of us to remember that yes, if you
have a pricing job, maybe that job is part strategy, part
commercial excellence, part sales, part finance, part
(16:53):
marketing and we might as well go ahead and add part senior
management because sometimes we have to train people up the org
chart as well. Again, going back to being
specialist but with very generalist knowledge or I got
that reverse to being generalistbut with very specialized
knowledge. Maybe it would work the other
way as well also. And another concern with PPS
(17:19):
members worldwide is what is going to happen with the pricing
community as far as job growth, as far as positions, what's
going to happen with my daily duties.
And of course, there is going tobe a lot of change with
everything that's going on from a macro environment, from a
tools environment. But the only thing that has been
(17:43):
consistent with our jobs has been changed.
It just might be now that changeis perhaps more accelerated than
it was previously. So we all know that there are a
lot of people who do what we would call pricing as a task,
but these people may not have the word pricing in their job
titles. And some of the things that
(18:04):
we've talked about, it could be profitable revenue growth
management, it could be commercial excellence.
You could be on a product team, a customer success team, a
senior management role, a marketintelligence role, a data role.
But in all of these different types of roles, obviously what
we think of as the job, the taskof the important duty of pricing
(18:28):
is central to a lot of those. And going back to what I said
earlier, every, every piece of revenue that comes into your
organization definitely has a pricing decision attached to it.
So make sure that you can get others on board.
Make sure that you can explain your rationalizations for yes,
(18:50):
no or yes and or no, but and also make sure that really we
are central to the organization as we can be in order to hear
what's going on with every otherdifferent department.
What we're hearing from sales about customer reactions, what
we're hearing from our finance and marketing and operations
(19:12):
people about other things that are going on as well.
So I am convinced that there will always be pricing jobs,
hopefully a lot of them hopefully well compensated, well
trained, well respected ones as well.
But in some cases as we go up the org chart and as we advance
within our careers, I would encourage us to think more
(19:34):
strategically and perhaps take into account and consider jobs
that might have pricing at the center but might not have the
word pricing within them somewhere.
So those jobs are out there. Also, sometimes I've seen a lot
of CPPS and senior pricing leaders essentially write their
own job descriptions that might be pricing plus pricing and
(19:57):
pricing with and so on and so forth there.
Let's take a quick break. This episode of Let's Talk
Pricing is brought to you by theProfessional Pricing Society.
For over 40 years, PPS has been the home for pricing
professionals looking to sharpentheir skills, stay ahead of
market shifts, and connect with peers who truly understand the
discipline. From live and on demand
(20:19):
education to conferences, research and career resources,
PPS supports you at every stage of your pricing journey.
Learn more and join the globalpricingcommunity@pricingsociety.com.
And now, back to the show. As always, we in this community
have to be prepared for what's coming next.
(20:41):
So I believe there's going to bea lot more focus, a lot more
emphasis on the bottom line results and how we deal with all
of this economic uncertainty, how we deal with all of these
challenges, how we use AI and use analytics and use algorithms
as tools in order to free us up for quicker and perhaps bigger
(21:03):
changes in our organizations when needed and strategic
thought as well. So I of course would hope that
we as pricing professionals are always seen as a resource, as a
place to get information, as a place to understand what's going
on from a business wide perspective.
(21:24):
Not just a particular sales unitperspective or a particular
product perspective, but from a big and a big sample size so to
speak of what's going on within our companies.
And of course, I'm very lucky. I get to travel around the world
(21:45):
and my team and I do conferencesall over and we talk to people
from all over and pricing peoplewith all the challenges that
we've had. We do amazing things in our
organization. Business being business.
In a lot of cases, our organizations will ask us to
continue to do more and more andthat's OK.
(22:05):
That is just a fact of business life.
That is one of the things that just happens, and that's where I
encourage all of us to move downthose learning curves.
To use AI, to use pricing optimization software, to use
the literature that's out there,to use me and my team, for your
team training dates, to use others out there that are
(22:26):
thought leaders, to network, to benchmark, to make sure that you
have use of everything that can help you do these jobs even
better. And with that, I want to thank
the PPS member community. I look forward to seeing
everyone in 2026. You'll see a lot more
information from my team about some initiatives that are coming
(22:48):
out around senior leadership, around advanced training.
And of course, we will have profitable conferences and even
more online training and team training options for you and for
your coworkers coming up. But with that, very, very happy
holidays to everyone. Please reach out to me if you
have any questions or if there'sanything that my team and I can
(23:10):
do. And here's to a great 2026 to
come. Thank you so much.
You're listening to Let's Talk Pricing, your connection to the
voices, stories, and strategies shaping the pricing world.
Each episode, we go beyond theory into the practical,
timely conversations that help you lead with confidence and
drive results. Let's start the show.
Very good day, everyone. It's Kevin Mitchell from
(00:21):
Professional Pricing Society here.
And as we head towards the end of 2025, I want to give the PPS
community, our members worldwideand everyone listening in to our
podcast and our webinars A sincere thanks for your
partnership. And I had the opportunity to
interact with quite a few peopleat the PBS profitable events, be
(00:46):
it in Dallas in the spring or Las Vegas and Barcelona in the
fall. And actually, I'm just getting
back from our Barcelona conference where we had a huge
crowd of very, very engaged pricing professionals and we
talked about a lot of the thingsthat we are addressing in our
daily jobs. I had the great opportunity to
(01:06):
connect with members from aroundthe world and really from my
team and IA Sincerest thanks forbeing with us for a great, great
2025. And as you know, we have a lot
of opportunities and a lot of challenges in the pricing
discipline. And always like to remind us
(01:29):
that no matter where you are in your company, no matter what
your company does, just rememberthat every dollar, every euro,
every yen, everyone, every peso,every rupee, every cent that
comes into your organization hasa pricing decision attached to
it. These decisions might be made by
(01:51):
you and your coworkers. They might be influenced by a
competitor, they may be made by a customer, they might be made
by somebody's gut reaction. It could be a government that
sets a price, or it could be a lot of marketplace figures that
join together to set a price. But someone or something
(02:13):
somewhere is making a pricing decision and that affects every
cent of revenue that comes into our organizations.
And of course we use that for salaries, for bonuses, for
reinvestment in our products andservices, for investments in our
community and lots of other things as well.
And for those of us who have this as a job, that is a very,
(02:36):
very tough job and pricing people, as we know are often
under compensated, under trained, underdeveloped and
under appreciated by those around us, be they inside our
organizations or around us in any other way.
And because of this, I encourageall of us to make sure to take
(02:57):
advantage of all of the tools that are available to us.
We are very lucky to be in a golden age of pricing
literature. They're great pricing books that
come out all of the time. So I'd encourage everyone to
make sure that you are reading what's the latest and what's the
grading and what's the greatest sorry from pricing thought
leaders that are out there. Also of course, our organization
(03:21):
PPS has well over 100 online pricing courses and we offer
dozens of in person CPP workshops that are available for
our members. And we also can offer lots of
webinars, podcast white papers, our articles in our publications
and the other things that PPS offers to our website.
(03:43):
So make sure to take advantage of all of the tools that are
available to you, be they the pricing software optimization
tools, be they the latest AI artificial intelligence tools.
But we do have a lot out there that can help us do our jobs
even better. But it is our job to make sure
that we are staying current and we are making the most advantage
(04:07):
possible out of everything that is there for us in order to deal
with these difficult jobs, in order to continue to thrive and
exceed expectations for our companies, for our careers, for
ourselves, and for everyone around us as well.
And as we come to the end of theyear, this will be old news to
(04:27):
those of you who joined one of the fall profitable conferences.
But I started off our last two conferences with a completely
true story that details that even if you think pricing is a
relatively new thing, even if you were volunt old by someone
in your organization, that you're the new pricing manager.
That in spite of all that, we doreally have a long, long history
(04:53):
of being pricing practitioners, of thinking about pricing and
revenue management and profitable growth and commercial
excellence as a way to improve our businesses.
And I started off our last couple conferences with a story
that around 80 years ago, there was an Indiana Jones
(05:14):
archaeologist type guy in the Tigris Euphrates Valley near
Baghdad who found some 4000 plusyear old stone tablets.
And these tablets had laws. What would happen when the mayor
died? What were the laws around
marriage and divorce? What were the penalties for
certain crimes? But what's of interest to us is
(05:36):
that these 4000 year old tablets, which we call the laws
of Vishnuna, Vishnuna was the town nearest to where they were
found. They included very, very direct,
very thorough information that we today would consider a price
list. For example, it said this is
what you charge for a milk cow, this is what you charge for a
(05:56):
bushel of wheat and so on and soforth.
There. And this was quite a surprise to
us because this predates Hammurabi's code and predates
everything that we thought around when business would have
involved. And I told a joke, and this may
not be true, but I told a joke, that if you look towards the end
(06:17):
of the laws of Ishanuna on those4000 year old 2100 BC stone
tablets, it also had informationabout how when you make a sale,
it's due to your acumen and yourrelationships and your skill as
a salesperson. But whenever you lose a sale,
it's because the price was too high.
And these scribes that set theselaws down on these stone tablets
(06:38):
got everything wrong and should have had a significantly lower
price in order for you to do business.
That part might not be true, butthe part that is true is that
there is a 4000 year old stone tablet with essentially a price
list on it. So what we do goes back a bit
further than we would perhaps think in our normal day-to-day
(06:59):
activities. And I would imagine that
probably not too much changed inthe 1st 3800 or so years since
the 4000 year old price list. But since then we've had of
course an ever increasing way ofthinking about pricing and
(07:20):
increasing emphasis on our duties and everything that we do
as well. So I like to think that pricing
has evolved from being a purely clerical function, you know,
someone actually writing down orchipping into a stone tablet
what the price was for a certaingood or service.
(07:40):
And as we went through the Paul Hunt 5 levels of pricing
excellence, perhaps there was a time when the highest level of
pricing thought was being the so-called policeman enforcing
that our prices did not dip below the cost for a certain
good or service. Of course, from then we evolved
to more of a focus on value or perhaps the outcomes that our
(08:03):
goods and services delivered. We also are applying algorithmic
pricing optimization and lookingat data analysis to figure out
the best strategic price inputs for our goods and services and
much, much more. And of course, pricing is going
to continue to evolve or may have already involved in your
(08:24):
organization to being a senior management function, a strategic
function, basically a Nexus where a lot of different
disciplines within our businesses come together, be
they sales, marketing, finance, operations.
Obviously, pricing when done correctly should have emphasis
and inputs and touch upon all ofthose there.
(08:44):
So as a result of this, we and pricing have to be generalist
with extreme specialist knowledge.
That was a direct quote from someone at one of our
conferences. So as a generalist with extreme
specialist knowledge, you have to take a lot of different
factors into play. We have to think about
macroeconomics, microeconomics as well.
(09:07):
We in our current environment have to think about tariffs and
politics and about fluctuations in raw goods material prices.
Of course, there are always everincreasing competitive dynamics.
There is instant knowledge on all sides, on your customer
side, on your side, on your competition side, and all of
(09:29):
this comes into play which adds really extra dimensions when we
think about the fun things, the game theory things that happen
within pricing jobs and within us as a discipline.
And also one thing that I find very interesting is we are
seeing that more and more Wall Street analysts or analysts on
(09:52):
the Street are taking CEOSCFOS to task if their margins are not
keeping pace with their revenues.
We are seeing a lot more emphasis on profitable revenue
management growth and we're seeing a lot more emphasis on
bottom line results instead of perhaps more of a focus that
(10:14):
existed in the past where your sales figure was the first, last
and only thing that you talked about.
We have figured out that you canincrease sales and you can
increase market share, but to doso profitably is a very tough
job. And that's where our skills as
business people, as generalist with specialist knowledge come
(10:37):
into play. Because to do both of those or
to do the combination of things that fits best with your company
needs, that can be very, very difficult.
Which is why we have to make sure that we are as prepared as
we can be. And why we make sure to take
advantage of all the tools, the team training options, the
(10:59):
literature, the scientific thought, the pricing
optimization software tools, theAI tools, and everything that we
have out there in order for us to really make sure that we are
doing our jobs as best we can. Let's take a quick break.
This episode of Let's Talk Pricing is brought to you by the
Professional Pricing Society. For over 40 years, PPS has been
(11:23):
the home for pricing professionals looking to sharpen
their skills, stay ahead of market shifts, and connect with
peers who truly understand the discipline.
From live and on demand education to conferences,
research and career resources, PPS supports you at every stage
of your pricing journey. Learn more and join the
globalpricingcommunity@pricingsociety.com.And now, back to the show.
(11:48):
So a lot of the questions that I've gotten from pricing
practitioners around the globe, either at our conferences or in
discussions or emailed questionshave been about with everything
that we're seeing right now, where does that put me and my
department? We have these extreme
externalities with economic uncertainty and we know that
(12:10):
nothing in pricing happens in a vacuum.
I mean one of the fun things about our part of the business
world is the game theory elementof it.
When we move, there likely will be a customer response and a
competitor response and a marketplace response and we have
to think several chess moves ahead in order to encapsulate
all of that. The opposite of that would be
(12:34):
what I and probably you and a lot of our folks were taught in
Econ one O 1, the old microeconomics, perfectly
downward sloping demand curve where if you want to increase
your quantity, you just decreaseyour price and that's it.
And it happens. It happens automatically.
You can run a regression on it, You can do a partial derivative
(12:58):
on it and figure out exactly howmuch you're going to gain extra.
And of course, in a perfect world, that might be the case.
But in our world, with all of these competitive issues, with
all of these externalities, we really see cases where a lot of
us try to drop price in order tostimulate demand and increase
(13:19):
our quantity sold, forgetting that our competitors are
sometimes smart as well and see our moves as well and might do
the same thing. And therefore, we've unwittedly,
unwittingly started a price war and basically hurt our entire
business segment. So we've got to make sure that
we do take game theory and competitive response, customer
(13:41):
response, marketplace response into account with every move
that we make, be it up, down or sideways.
And it's these extra dimensions that come into play within the
pricing discipline that really kind of make what we do very
interesting and kind of fun. And I know that we also have the
(14:02):
extra concern about artificial intelligence, about AI, about
pricing algorithms, about what they do and basically about what
they mean for those of us who are pricing practitioners.
But a lot of us are thinking that we can now use AI and use
(14:23):
the pricing algorithms, use pricing optimization software,
all of these other tools in order to help us make a story
out of our data and in order to prevent some of the mind numbing
grunt work that can go into someof our daily jobs.
And hopefully this will allow usto use more strategic thinking,
(14:43):
to use a higher level of thoughtprocesses there to basically use
these as they should be used as tools in order to elevate us as
professionals and in order to domore, to do things more quickly,
to do them more accurately and basically to improve our
organizations that way. For example, if pricing
(15:05):
optimization, if our data analytics, if AI can tell us,
hey, how come AB and C happened with this move and not XY and Z,
then we can use that to move down the proverbial learning
curve and in order to really be more strategic leaders within
our organizations and to be a resource within our
(15:28):
organizations. When we see things that happen
within, any moves that we make, with any moves that happen
beyond our control, be they a raw material goods price, a
tariff, or anything like that, we can really use our human
intellect in combination with the tools that are out there in
(15:48):
order to get a feel for what is happening now, why did it
happen, and perhaps what might happen in the future.
And how can we best position ourselves in order to take
advantage of that? It's always going to be our job
to be the Nexus between finance,marketing, sales, operations,
(16:10):
all of these other departments. And in order to foster those
connections, if we can use all the tools that we have to be
that great resource, then that is going to make us
indispensable no matter what happens moving forward.
If we can use everything to become more strategic in our
jobs, then that is how we advance in our careers, how we
(16:33):
continue to do better and how wemove our organizations even
forward, even more forward than we have previously.
So I would encourage all of us to remember that yes, if you
have a pricing job, maybe that job is part strategy, part
commercial excellence, part sales, part finance, part
(16:53):
marketing and we might as well go ahead and add part senior
management because sometimes we have to train people up the org
chart as well. Again, going back to being
specialist but with very generalist knowledge or I got
that reverse to being generalistbut with very specialized
knowledge. Maybe it would work the other
way as well also. And another concern with PPS
(17:19):
members worldwide is what is going to happen with the pricing
community as far as job growth, as far as positions, what's
going to happen with my daily duties.
And of course, there is going tobe a lot of change with
everything that's going on from a macro environment, from a
tools environment. But the only thing that has been
(17:43):
consistent with our jobs has been changed.
It just might be now that changeis perhaps more accelerated than
it was previously. So we all know that there are a
lot of people who do what we would call pricing as a task,
but these people may not have the word pricing in their job
titles. And some of the things that
(18:04):
we've talked about, it could be profitable revenue growth
management, it could be commercial excellence.
You could be on a product team, a customer success team, a
senior management role, a marketintelligence role, a data role.
But in all of these different types of roles, obviously what
we think of as the job, the taskof the important duty of pricing
(18:28):
is central to a lot of those. And going back to what I said
earlier, every, every piece of revenue that comes into your
organization definitely has a pricing decision attached to it.
So make sure that you can get others on board.
Make sure that you can explain your rationalizations for yes,
(18:50):
no or yes and or no, but and also make sure that really we
are central to the organization as we can be in order to hear
what's going on with every otherdifferent department.
What we're hearing from sales about customer reactions, what
we're hearing from our finance and marketing and operations
(19:12):
people about other things that are going on as well.
So I am convinced that there will always be pricing jobs,
hopefully a lot of them hopefully well compensated, well
trained, well respected ones as well.
But in some cases as we go up the org chart and as we advance
within our careers, I would encourage us to think more
(19:34):
strategically and perhaps take into account and consider jobs
that might have pricing at the center but might not have the
word pricing within them somewhere.
So those jobs are out there. Also, sometimes I've seen a lot
of CPPS and senior pricing leaders essentially write their
own job descriptions that might be pricing plus pricing and
(19:57):
pricing with and so on and so forth there.
Let's take a quick break. This episode of Let's Talk
Pricing is brought to you by theProfessional Pricing Society.
For over 40 years, PPS has been the home for pricing
professionals looking to sharpentheir skills, stay ahead of
market shifts, and connect with peers who truly understand the
discipline. From live and on demand
(20:19):
education to conferences, research and career resources,
PPS supports you at every stage of your pricing journey.
Learn more and join the globalpricingcommunity@pricingsociety.com.
And now, back to the show. As always, we in this community
have to be prepared for what's coming next.
(20:41):
So I believe there's going to bea lot more focus, a lot more
emphasis on the bottom line results and how we deal with all
of this economic uncertainty, how we deal with all of these
challenges, how we use AI and use analytics and use algorithms
as tools in order to free us up for quicker and perhaps bigger
(21:03):
changes in our organizations when needed and strategic
thought as well. So I of course would hope that
we as pricing professionals are always seen as a resource, as a
place to get information, as a place to understand what's going
on from a business wide perspective.
(21:24):
Not just a particular sales unitperspective or a particular
product perspective, but from a big and a big sample size so to
speak of what's going on within our companies.
And of course, I'm very lucky. I get to travel around the world
(21:45):
and my team and I do conferencesall over and we talk to people
from all over and pricing peoplewith all the challenges that
we've had. We do amazing things in our
organization. Business being business.
In a lot of cases, our organizations will ask us to
continue to do more and more andthat's OK.
(22:05):
That is just a fact of business life.
That is one of the things that just happens, and that's where I
encourage all of us to move downthose learning curves.
To use AI, to use pricing optimization software, to use
the literature that's out there,to use me and my team, for your
team training dates, to use others out there that are
(22:26):
thought leaders, to network, to benchmark, to make sure that you
have use of everything that can help you do these jobs even
better. And with that, I want to thank
the PPS member community. I look forward to seeing
everyone in 2026. You'll see a lot more
information from my team about some initiatives that are coming
(22:48):
out around senior leadership, around advanced training.
And of course, we will have profitable conferences and even
more online training and team training options for you and for
your coworkers coming up. But with that, very, very happy
holidays to everyone. Please reach out to me if you
have any questions or if there'sanything that my team and I can
(23:10):
do. And here's to a great 2026 to
come. Thank you so much.
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