Finally, Someone Who Owns Pricing: What the Chief Pricing Officer Actually Does

"We're losing too many deals. Lower our prices to gain optimal volume."

This belief shows up in conference rooms with mathematical certainty. Revenue down? Cut prices. Lost deals? Price more aggressively. Win-loss analysis showing price as the top objection? Invest in AI to cut our product costs and prices.

It makes perfect sense. Lower price, higher volume. Basic economics we all learned in school.

It's also wrong. This Economics 101 mythology ignores the complex reality of B2B pricing. The CPO owns busting these myths and delivering the nuanced value that pricing actually requires.

The CPO Owns Myth-Busting

The Chief Pricing Officer provides dedicated ownership of challenging pricing folklore that would otherwise go unchecked across the organization.

Finance leaders are responsible for demonstrating outcomes like revenue and cost, but aren't responsible for questioning behavioral economics. Sales leaders own revenue and volumes but are unlikely to own client portfolio and profitability concerns. Product leaders optimize features and efficiency but don't own customer value versus cost-plus pricing options.

The CPO owns calling out the backwards economics. When the smallest clients get the biggest discounts while high-volume customers pay full price, the CPO has the authority and expertise to reverse this value-destroying pattern. This nearly predictable reality—shocking to executives but just another beautiful contradiction in the life of a CPO—remains hidden because no function owns it. They also bring the measurement discipline to quantify exactly how much value is being lost through misaligned discounting.

The CPO owns challenging the "losing on price" mythology. When teams assume price objections mean prices are too high, the CPO digs deeper to reveal value communication failures, relationship gaps, or qualification problems. They can prove these alternative explanations by measuring what actually happened in lost deals—often showing that most were awarded to incumbents or those who articulated a stronger value story. "Lost on price" in most cases is a convenient excuse, usually pointing to something deeper.

The CPO owns exposing the AI trap. When companies invest millions in product features while sales teams can't articulate basic value propositions, the CPO shows how technology advancement without value stories drives prices down, not up. They can measure the correlation between AI investment and margin erosion to prove this counterintuitive reality.

The CPO owns questioning the silver bullet syndrome. When teams seek optimal pricing solutions without fundamental disciplines in place, the CPO redirects false enthusiasm toward "what works"—quick wins through simple disciplines like setting clear policies and reducing the wild variations typically found across the organization.

How the CPO Delivers Nuanced Value

Portfolio Reality Check: When leadership wants to cut prices for volume, the CPO presents portfolio analysis revealing that 50-70% of customers already consume disproportionate resources while contributing minimal profit. They own showing that the volume problem isn't price—it's customer selection. The measurement discipline they bring can quantify exactly which relationships destroy value and which create it.

Value Story Development: When sales teams default to price discussions, the CPO owns building the communication frameworks that make price secondary. They develop the positioning that transforms commodity conversations into value conversations—and can measure whether new approaches actually improve win rates and margins.

Incentive Realignment: When compensation structures reward volume over margin, the CPO owns redesigning incentives that align behaviors with profitable growth. They ensure what people get paid for matches what the company actually needs, while measuring whether new incentives deliver the intended behavioral changes.

Market Signal Reading: When competitors raise prices, the CPO owns interpreting this as market confidence rather than desperation. They provide the economic foresight that guides strategic responses instead of reactive discounting—and track whether their strategic recommendations actually improve market position.

The Nuanced Expertise Nobody Else Owns

What makes the CPO's myth-busting valuable is their specialized expertise in pricing's complex realities.

B2B Psychology: They understand that in negotiated sales, customers don't buy on price alone. Delivery guarantees, technical support quality, implementation timelines, risk mitigation, and relationship strength often matter more than cost comparisons.

Value Distribution: They know that pricing success isn't about finding optimal price points—it's about ensuring value flows to the relationships that deserve it while protecting margins from those that don't.

Competitive Dynamics: They understand that price cuts rarely deliver promised volume increases because they signal weakness, erode positioning, and often trigger competitive responses that nullify any advantage.

Long-term Consequences: They see how today's pricing decisions affect tomorrow's market position, customer expectations, and organizational capabilities.

This nuanced expertise requires over 20 years of experience. No amount of AI can replicate the pattern recognition that comes from navigating organizational dynamics, market cycles, and competitive responses across different companies and industries. The CPO's value isn't just knowledge—it's decades of knowing better.

Why This Ownership Matters

Without someone dedicated to challenging pricing folklore, organizations default to Economics 101 thinking because it feels logical and provides immediate action when revenue disappoints.

Each functional leader operates within their expertise but lacks the authority or responsibility to challenge cross-functional pricing assumptions. The mythology persists because no one owns replacing it with nuanced reality.

Finance sees margin pressure and assumes volume will solve it. Sales sees deal losses and assumes price is the problem. Product sees feature improvements and efficiency gains and assumes they should translate into lower prices, especially in a cost-plus pricing environment.

The CPO owns showing why these assumptions often fail and providing the alternative approaches that actually work.

The Connective Tissue

Beyond myth-busting, the CPO owns coordinating the organizational changes needed to implement nuanced pricing approaches.

Cross-Functional Translation: When sales wants flexibility and finance wants predictability, the CPO owns finding solutions that honor both constraints while advancing pricing strategy.

System Integration: When pricing strategies require changes to compensation, CRM systems, or reporting structures, the CPO owns coordinating these modifications across functions.

Cultural Navigation: When teams resist moving beyond familiar pricing approaches, the CPO owns building momentum through quick wins that demonstrate alternative methods.

Ongoing Discipline: When market conditions change, the CPO owns the continuous monitoring and adjustment that pricing requires.

The Fractional Advantage

For mid-sized companies, accessing this myth-busting expertise doesn't require full-time overhead. The fractional Chief Pricing Officer model provides dedicated ownership of pricing reality when organizations need it most.

Pricing folklore is persistent but episodic in its damage. Companies need focused myth-busting when making strategic decisions, facing competitive pressure, or seeing revenue disappointment. They don't need someone challenging assumptions 40 hours per week.

The fractional model works because it provides the authority and expertise needed to own pricing reality while matching the natural rhythm of when folklore becomes dangerous.

The Value of Pricing Reality

The Chief Pricing Officer represents dedicated ownership of pricing's nuanced reality in organizations conditioned by Economics 101 mythology.

They don't manage pricing—they own transforming how organizations think about pricing. They challenge the folklore that persists because it's simple, seemingly logical, and fits within traditional functional boundaries.

They own ensuring that pricing decisions reflect B2B complexity rather than textbook simplicity.

For mid-sized companies ready to move beyond pricing mythology, the CPO provides what's been missing: someone whose job is to own delivering pricing reality.

Finally.

Disclaimer: The stories and insights shared in this blog are based on my personal experiences and conversations throughout my career. While some content reflects recent events, they are drawn from a broad range of interactions with professionals across professional services, including friends and colleagues from various organizations, and do not specifically refer to or represent any single employer, past or present. Identities have been anonymized, and quotes may be paraphrased or combined for clarity and storytelling purposes. This post is a personal endeavor and does not reflect the views or proprietary information of any employer.