Selling Through Someone Else: How to Use Agile Sales Networks and Partners to Sell More

Chapter 8

Price Strategies in a Multichannel World

Tom Jacobson, Cecilia Nguyen, Tiffany Gilbert, and Julian Short

 

Chapter Summary

• Pricing is a key piece of an Agile Selling strategy: Getting it right can be exceedingly difficult; getting it wrong can be disastrous.
• Mastering not only “setting” the pricing right but also “getting” the price is critical to maximizing value.
• To leverage pricing across multiple channels, companies must address three key areas: (1) segmentation of customers and channel base; (2) setting the pricing strategy and actual prices for each channel; and (3) negotiating for profit as well as value.

Pricing is a key piece of the new B2B sales model and Agile Selling strategy. Getting it right can be exceedingly difficult; getting it wrong can be disastrous. History is littered with examples of pricing decisions that seemed to make sense at the moment but ended up reconditioning the customer base in detrimental ways (the automotive industry's almost mandatory need for incentives and retailers that can't seem to sell to customers without a steep discount are two examples that immediately come to mind). The indirect sales channel presents a number of further complications in presenting the appropriate value proposition to customers and holding the line in negotiations with them to achieve the right balance between sales and profit.

In this chapter we explain how to determine the right pricing structure as part of a new Agile Selling model—the strategies and ...