Research increasingly shows that price is rarely the deciding factor in B2B buying decisions. Across manufacturing, software, services, and recurring commercial relationships, what drives selection and renewal is not price—but confidence, credibility, and perceived value. What if everything you believe about pricing is wrong? How Are We Telling Our Stories? “This is such a competitive market, we need to price to win.” It hurts my ears every time I hear it. Imagine hearing tha

Article written by Ryan Walter of Jennings Executive Search https://www.jenningsexec.com/   Misconceptions that lead to underinvestment or misalignment We’ve worked with companies where pricing was buried under sales ops. Others where it sat in finance, but had no access to customers. And still others where pricing was a strategic function— on paper — but never staffed, supported, or taken seriously. In nearly every case, the issue wasn’t bad intent. It was a fundamental misu

Article written by Ryan Walter of Jennings Executive Search https://www.jenningsexec.com/ What years in orchestras taught me about the leadership qualities strong pricing teams rely on Pricing leaders are often handed a strange assignment. You are accountable for outcomes without owning most of the inputs. You are expected to bring clarity to functions that all hear different versions of the same market. And on top of that, you are told to lead people who do not report to yo

Article written by Ryan Walter of Jennings Executive Search https://www.jenningsexec.com/ The Pricing Career Ladder — From Analyst to VP and Beyond Common career trajectories, how responsibilities evolve, and where pricing leaders go next Most pricing professionals didn’t grow up dreaming of pricing. They started in finance, ops, sales, product — or, in some cases, outside the business world entirely. I came from a classical music background. While playing in the Dallas Opera

Article written by Ryan Walter of Jennings Executive Search https://www.jenningsexec.com/ Traits , skills, and behaviors that set top performers apart Pricing is one of the most misunderstood leadership roles in a business. It touches every function — but rarely owns any of them. It’s technical, but not purely analytical. Strategic, but operationally messy. High-stakes, but often under-resourced. And that makes it hard to hire for. We’ve placed hundreds of pricing leaders. Th

Michael Hammer used to tell a story about an engineer walking across the quad who finds a talking frog. The frog says, “If you kiss me, I’ll turn into a fairy princess and be your girlfriend for life.” The engineer picks up the frog, puts it in his pocket, and keeps walking. The frog wriggles and insists, “Hey, kiss me! I’ll be your girlfriend for life.” The engineer pulls it out, looks at it, and says, “I don’t think you understand. I’m an engineer. What would I do with a gi

Article written by Ryan Walter of Jennings Executive Search https://www.jenningsexec.com/ Motivators beyond compensation — impact, visibility, and tooling It’s easy to assume that pricing professionals want the same things as anyone else: fair pay, a solid team, and a path to grow. And they do. But if that’s all you offer, you’ll still lose good people. In the conversations we have daily — across roles, industries, and career stages — the same themes come up again and again.

I have a confession to make. In the past, I have held the bias that accountability is the primary problem as to why we see so much bad pricing in industrial companies.  By bad, I mean proliferation of dangerous cost-plus pricing models, a lack of discipline with regards to controlling discounting. After all, when everyone owns pricing, no one owns it. And because the products are complex, the competitor pricing lacks transparency, and we rely heavily upon engineering configur

Executives and pricers aren’t just miscommunicating. They fail twice: they don’t talk often enough, and when they finally do, neither side speaks in a language the other can act on.

When EBITDA strategy matters, most pricers hand C-suites the perfect excuse to ignore them—by becoming a pricing stereotype.

Clarity beats catchphrases — especially when millions in EBITDA are at stake

Most companies wait too long to hire someone in pricing. They add analysts, hand off pieces to sales ops or finance, lean on consultants — and tell themselves it's "working well enough for now."

Written by Brendan Hodge — professional pricer, founder of PricingEvolution, contributing editor at The Pillar, novelist, and blogger. Read more of his work on Pricing Evolution: https://www.pricing-evolution.com/ I apologize for the slow posting here. I left one company and started work at another, and also had quite a bit going on in my family life, and one thing that suffered was finding the time to do writing and podcasting. My new job is as the head of pricing at a compa

Pricing Leaders -- a term that contains within it a beautiful contradiction

Chief Pricing Officer, Really? Is That A Thing? The answer: Yes -- and it's growing fast.

MYTHBUSTER: What a Chief Pricing Officer actually does