What CEOs Get Wrong About Pricing Teams

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 misunderstanding of what pricing teams do, what they need, and what they’re capable of when positioned well.

This article outlines the most common misconceptions we hear from CEOs — and what needs to shift to make pricing a driver of value, not just a reporting function.

Misconception 1: Pricing is Just a Set of Tools

Many CEOs assume that if the company has a CPQ system, dashboards, and a discounting policy in place, the pricing job is covered. But tools don’t solve pricing. They scale it — once the strategy, logic, and structure are in place.

We’ve seen companies with world-class systems still struggle to enforce pricing discipline. Not because they picked the wrong platform, but because no one owned the logic behind it. Without someone to design, test, and refine how pricing actually works in the business, tools just automate noise.

Misconception 2: Pricing Lives in the Data

Another common view is that pricing is mostly about reporting — margin dashboards, discount tracking, elasticity models and the like. And while analytics is a core piece of pricing, it’s not the whole job.

Pricing teams also manage policy. They partner with sales. They translate strategy into field guidance. They enforce controls. And they get pulled into exception handling, training, deal reviews, and annual planning — all of which sit outside the realm of “reporting.”

Companies that see pricing as a pure analytics function tend to under-resource it. They assume one analyst with Excel and Power BI is enough — and then wonder why margin improvement stalls.

Misconception 3: Pricing Is a Barrier to Sales Velocity

Speed matters. But we’ve seen CEOs treat pricing discipline as friction — a delay to be minimized — instead of leverage to be protected.

When done well, pricing doesn’t slow down the business. It accelerates the right behavior. A strong pricing team builds guardrails that enable reps to move faster — with better deals, fewer escalations, and more predictable outcomes.

The friction shows up when pricing is unclear, inconsistent, or underpowered. But it also shows up when sales leadership doesn’t buy into the pricing strategy — or doesn’t enforce it. In some cases, the pricing team needs to adjust flawed logic. But more often, it’s a sales management issue disguised as a pricing problem.

Misconception 4: Pricing Is Tactical

We’ve heard more than one CEO say they “need someone to clean up the pricing,” as if it’s a formatting issue.

The reality is, pricing sits upstream of revenue. It determines how value is packaged, communicated, and captured. Treating it like a back-office cleanup job misses the strategic upside — and often leads to hires who can’t influence the business or scale the function.

What Pricing Needs to Work

When pricing functions thrive, they usually have four things in place:

• A clear charter — what pricing owns, where it partners, and how it’s measured

• Executive sponsorship — not just approval, but access

• Systems that embed pricing strategy — not just automate quotes or mirror sales workflows

• Talent — people who’ve been hired to influence, not just execute

  
  

Without those, even great pricing leaders will struggle — and CEOs will assume the function

“isn’t strategic,” when the real issue is that it’s been mispositioned.

Final Thought

Pricing isn’t a plug-in. It’s a commercial capability. And like any capability, it only performs when leadership defines it, supports it, and gives it room to operate.

If you’ve invested in pricing and haven’t seen the return, the problem might not be the team. It might be the assumptions built into how you’re using them.