Pricing with Confidence, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 9Rule Nine

Build Your Selling Backbone

You can't capture any price until you have Selling Backbone. We use “Backbone” to mean “something which resists bending.” Even the best price strategy will fail unless salespeople, managers, and senior leaders demonstrate backbone in the selling and negotiating process. Backbone is the “last mile of pricing—the people closest to the customer—the sales force, the commercial team, and the leadership that directs them. Without backbone in the price execution process, firms are condemned to leaving money on the table.

We start with a story that explains every wrinkle of Building Your Selling Backbone. The call came from one of our largest clients. The EVP of sales requested our help in a delicate sales negotiation with a customer they couldn't afford to lose. He wanted our counsel to price the solution, knowing upcoming negotiations with one of its largest customers would be nail-biting. It helped our client capture its largest and most profitable customer.

Some background: The company was a semiconductor manufacturer with a handful of large global competitors that offered related products The products were a mature commodity in a highly price-sensitive market. We understood that their customer—a well-known maker of disk drives—required a growing volume of semiconductors to support drive assembly and the imminent release of a new product.

The first step was to embark on a value hunt. A value hunt is a process to how the selling company ...