Most companies make pricing an after thought.

Most companies also are never able to use pricing as the superpower it actually is.  

I have had the privilege of overseeing revenue management for over $6 billion in revenue across a diverse range of industries during the past decade. Throughout this experience, I've gained a deep understanding of the critical role that pricing plays in business success. 

I'm passionate about sharing my expertise and insights to help organizations harness the power of pricing strategies to improve profitability and overall performance.

Karan Sood

Pricing skills should be pie-shaped.


Most pricing professionals grow deep in only one or two areas.


The ones who rise will build a 4-layer toolkit.

Before we dive in, if this resonates, please like + share so more people in pricing see this.



1) Core Skill - Pricing: This is your foundation.

You need breadth across pricing models AND depth in how pricing actually works across industries. It’s not enough to just know one space.


You should know how to price a widget, a service contract… a subscription… a perpetual license… usage pricing… value-based vs. cost-plus.


Your pricing instinct comes from knowing many models - not just the one in your company. Talk to people outside of your core.



2) Essential Skills - Finance + Industry

Finance is non-negotiable. If you don’t know what’s inside a P&L, you should start now. You should be able to understand:

AR
BOM
payment terms
reserves
accruals
margin math contribution vs. gross…

You should be able to slay a P&L, 7 ways to Sunday.

Industry knowledge is the other essential. Knowing the market, competitors, and the value chain. It will let you speak with authority in any room.



3) Preferred - Soft Skills:

This is where careers are made. Don’t underestimate this. Don’t just be the excel ninja, that is tablestakes. 

Need to grow your Influence.
Be better at executive communication.
Stakeholder management.
Framing difficult conversations.
Reading a room full of execs. 
Know when to be firm and flexible.



4) Desirable - Cross-Functional Knowledge

This is your long-tail advantage. Know other areas of the business like:

Sales and Marketing
Operations
Contracts
Supply chain
Commercial terms
Basic legal understanding
Internal processes


You don’t need to master everything, but knowing how things actually work makes you a far more strategic partner.


Develop this skill set and your impact becomes impossible to ignore.


If you made it this far, please: 

👍🏼Like it or 
♻️share it with everyone
✉️ Send it to a peer.
💾 Save it for yourself

————————
Making conversations like this easier with PricingTribe.

Something pricing. Be a part of PricingTribe.

Stop obsessing over price. Your customers aren’t. More you obsess, more you fear.


Price is just one of the many triggers in a buying decision - and often not the biggest one.

Usually it’s the 3rd or the 4th factor.


Here’s one of my favourite research examples:


Alan Sawyer and Peter Dickson once stood in a supermarket aisle watching people shop.
They noted which items went into the cart… then asked those same shoppers the price of the item they just picked up.


The results?

- Half the shoppers were wrong.
- Most underestimated the price by ~15%.
- One-fifth couldn’t recall the price at all.


If people can’t recall the price of something they literally bought 30 seconds ago, what does that say?

You try, do you remember the price of the last item you purchased ?



It tells you this:

Price matters, but it rarely drives the entire decision. And only 15%~20% of customers are truly price sensitive.


Yet most companies behave like 100% of their customers are price sensitive - and they underprice themselves into the ground.


Yes, there are exceptions like commodities, hyper-competitive categories, and recessionary pressure. But even then, those conditions are temporary.



The fundamentals never change:
- Build a brand.
- Obsess over value.
- Obsess over quality.
- Obsess over delivery.
- Obsess over your customer.


Retail or B2B? Same principles apply.


Price is a signal. Value is the engine.

If this is useful:

✉️ send it to someone 
♻️ Repost it to your network
💾 Save it for the future.


————————-
Building PricingTribe. Ask me anything about the community.

No alternative text description for this image

5 tips I gave the MBA and a Masters Class.


1) You can’t escape pricing. No matter what field you end up weather that’s finance, marketing, or product, you won’t be far from pricing. So empower yourself.


2) Remember nothing will increase profitability for any company you work for like pricing. So when asked for ideas for next year, remember ‘Pricing Optimization’.


3) Whatever pricing decision you make, do it ethically. Remember very fine line between what’s good for profit va what’s ethical and good for customers.


4) Build something. Anything. It has never been easier to build. Build a website, an app, a  newsletter. Whatever gives you an edge. Learn to use loveable and claude !


5) In a world of AI, cherish human connections. Network relentlessly !! I wish I did in univ, I thought that was a chore not worth the effort. I wish I listened…


6) Decide your future role now, don’t leave it for luck for after graduation. If you dream it up, then lot of forces will align to make it happen. 


7) Add people from your future domain now on LinkedIn. Chat, and meet them virtually. What’s the worse that can happen ? You got nothing to loose.


8) Add the 1% extra in your job search effort. That 1% could be finding a referral, messaging the hiring manager, sending a pain letter, sending your portfolio, connecting with an alumni….all these added up or even individually will make you stand out.


9) Cherish your time at the univ with your peers. Some of you will become lifelong friends. As gruesome and challening this time is, you will never be back in school once you are done. This will be it !! 


10) This holiday season use Keepa to save yourself some money on Amazon, buy airline tickets in incongito mode on android :D


Thank you to my alma matter and Dave Bussière  for bringing me back to the same halls and classrooms that I once roamed as a student. It was good to be back !! 


___________________
Building PricingTribe.

I didn’t say that. John did.
John who ? Baba yaga ?
(Had to ! IYKYK)

I love this quote.

Lot of products fall into this bucket. 

Apple, 
Coke, 
P&G, 
lululemon, 
starbucks, 
Air jordans, 
Sonos, 
Dyson,
Disney trips,

List goes on…


But honestly I have no idea about the origin of the author. Anyone has any idea about the John Harrison who said it ? 

——————————-
PricingTribe community is going live soon for Alpha founding cohort.

Starting or stepping into a new pricing role?
Don’t dream big. Dream small.

I know the instinct. You want to take on the biggest, baddest pricing problem.

Trust me - I’ve done it. And I won’t do it again. 

Here is the mistake pricing professionals make in new roles:

They aim for a big win too early when they have 0 credability.


But early in the role is about sustainability, credibility, and momentum. Your first few months should be about small wins.


Fix the things everyone ignored. Simple things like clear the backlog people were too lazy or too scared to touch.


These small wins do the heavy lifting. They show your execution power. The wins are small but so are the losses.



Small becomes smooth. Smooth becomes fast. Fast becomes trust.


And trust is the real skill in pricing. You are not going to go far without it.



Why does this matter?


Pricing is already a cross-discipline battlefield  with Sales, Product, Finance, Ops, Execs. Everyone has an opinion, and none of them match.


When you take on a big pricing overhaul too early, two things happen:


- Time to value increases.
-  Cost to value increases.


That’s when red flags appear. And when big projects fail, the losses get amplified.


The “I told you it wouldn’t work” rhetoric takes over. Your credibility takes a hit.



This is why I always advocate for small execution early on. Frequent, visible, low-risk impact before the big swings.


What do small wins look like?


- Fix clunky approval workflows
- Clean messy price lists
- Delete old SKUs or discount rules
- Tighten discount guardrails
- Run simple PVM or waterfall analyses
- Repair spreadsheets everyone fears
- Schedule 1:1s with Sales
- Shadow a few customer calls


Small actions. Big intent. Bigger impact.


Go small and go far !!
————-
PricingTribe community is live. Slowly onboarding founding members. If you applied, your invite will come soon in coming weeks keep an eye out for ‘PricingTribe’ in your emails.

5 fundamental questions in Pricing: 

1) What value are you creating? Economic/Emotional.

2) Who is it truly for? Your ideal ICP.

3) Why is it worth this price ? WTP.
 
4) What proof do you have that customer agree ? Research.

5) Who inside the company believes in this price enough to defend it? Person of Influence.


You can elasticity-model, price-index, A/B test and competitor-benchmark all day. You can debate pricing ownership till the cows come home. 

But if you answered one of those questions wrong, everything downstream is garbage. 


The real work in pricing is answering those 5 questions — clearly, consistently, and courageously in all rooms. 


This comes from 17 years of defending prices at all levels in all rooms. Its never easy to defend pricing when everyone can be better at pricing than you ! 

-------------
The goal of the PricingTribe community is to help you elevate your pricing effectiveness and bring like minded pricing professionals together.

It's not the CEO's responsibility to price. 

Just like its not their responsibility to create a product, or do marketing or take customer service calls. It's to support the creation of the best outcome. 

Too many people suggest CEO's role should be the final approver or should own pricing or team should roll up to CEO (good luck with that one). Maybe in niche cases, smaller companies. In most cases they won't have the bandwidth or the org structure to support it. 

CEO's role in pricing in opinion is to empower and to signal.  


Empowerment: 
To create the right atmosphere for pricing to thrive. Making sure product, finance, marketing and pricing are collaborating at the right phases in the right way. Making sure meaningful discussions are having, and right questions are getting asked. 

Even a simple questions like: 

- Has pricing seen this product ? 
- How will we communicate value ? 
- At what stage do we revaluate pricing ?
- What are the pricing KPI to monitor ? 
- Can product-finance-marketing bring aligned reco ? 

Those questions alone will arm teams with a lot of meaningful info and create space for dialogues. 

Signaling:
Second important part is "Signaling", internally and externally. 

If you watch closely, the best CEO's during annual and quarterly reports will communicate their pricing intent. What they intend to do on price. This allows them to signal where they are headed, and where they would like the customers to follow: 

External Simple signals like: 

- We are not going to compete on price. 
- We are going for aggressive market capture
- We are launching new value products
- Costs are rising, we may take price up

Those signals express pricing intent, to be read by the market and customers. It limits price wars often when executed correctly. Look at companies like Pepsi, Coke, Unilever, P&G, Ikea, McDonald's, etc and look up analyst transcripts. 

If you are looking to build pricing confidence, yes make it your mission to get alignment from CEO but don't make it your mission to have your roles roll up to CEO's. Well intentioned as it may be, you are better off being a better collaborator for the CEO. 

If you want to talk to other like minded pricing professionals on topics like this, the place to be 'PricingTribe Community'. Now slowly letting people in.

#Pricing Giving Wednesday Again !
Last time we made at least 8 connections. 
That's 7 more than my target. 

Help like this can be life changing. 

I still have an inbox full of people looking for new roles or candidates. 

You know where those roles exist. 

Some of you are hiring. 
Some of you have connections there.
Some of you have employee referrals.
Some of you have career advice. 

Here is a snippet what I have: 

- I-Hsuan  is hiring for a pricing analyst in US

- Umesh is looking for pricing candidates in India.

- Sahima is looking for 2 smart pricing specialists in UK

- Jonathan is hiring for a commercial finance and pricing analyst in Georgia US

- Other Jonathan is looking for a very smart SAAS Monetization Sr. manager

 

These roles have 100's of applicants. But I can help you get front of line. You just have to ask ! 


If you are looking for a role, tell me so I can make a connection. If you know of a role tell me, I have a inbox full of people looking for roles.  

Tell me openly here or privately in inbox. 


♻️ Repost it to your network
📧 Forward it to someone 
💾 Save it for the future. 

PS: Also, while you are here Steven Forth, and Mark Stiving and I are going on a webinar tomorrow to discuss the state of pricing in Q3. What happened ? What is happening to compute cost, what is happening with credit models, vibe coding...  

Join us or access recording. Link in comments later. 

-------------
Building PricingTribe. Founding members invite going out soon.

It was such an amazing day ! To walk the halls again with students who are currently going through the program, was a powerful reminder of the power of giving back to the very place that set us and me for success. If it wasn’t for Odette, I would have never started my career in pricing as a co-op and transformer it into something inpactful 17 years later. 

I wish this cohort of business students all the best for success in the program and in the career. My inbox and my network is always available.

It was an incredible full-circle moment as Karan Sood, an esteemed Odette MBA alumnus, returned to present to the current MBA cohort on Pricing Strategy! 

We are so thankful to Dave Bussière for arranging this visit and bringing Karan all the way from Toronto to share his expert knowledge on using pricing as a key lever for profit. Hearing directly from an alumnus who followed a path similar to ours is truly inspiring. Thank you, Karan, for investing your time in us!

#OdetteSchoolofBusiness #AlumniSuccess #PricingStrategy #BusinessInsights

#PricingTribe Community update. 
Behind the scenes.


Here is what goes behind the scenes of launching a community. So many things you learn were outside of my wheelhouse. 


- Creating the PricingTribe web front end

- Creating a robust backend to capture info

- Creating workflows to capture application

- Creating product offer, recreating it, and then again

- Creating all design elements from scratch

- Selecting a platform, only to scratch it

- Creating banners, layouts, visuals

- Creating meeting and event cadence

- Learning to use a community platform

- Selecting founding and beta members from 170+ applications

- Creating groups of people with similar goals. 

- Creating onboarding workflows etc...


List goes on and on... 


All so that members can have the best experience inside the community once they enter. Because I want to create a space that speaks to pricing professionals and built for them..  Community should revolve around the pricing professionals looking for transformation.. Its a place for them !


Founding members are getting the invites today. These members will help test out the process and systems for the rest of the members coming in soon in January. Everyone will be notified about application status soon. 


Ask me anything about the community..

-----------
Building PricingTribe.

#pricingtribe. How do you solve for this ?

In the end, the primary obstacle to deal success isn’t customer’s lack of appreciation for the “supplier’s value”; it’s customer’s inability to establish broad-based agreement on what they’re trying to solve.

Excerpt from ‘The Framemaking Sale’ by Brent Adamson and @karl schmidt .



Sometimes it’s not the value delivered, but more clarity on the customer side on what kind of value needs to be delivered.


————————
Building Pricingtribe.

Why is credit bases pricing confusing ?
Can Vibe coding really help pricing ? If how ? 
Compute cost is rising, so should your price ? 

Lots of questions. 

Luckily we have • Mark Stiving, Ph.D. . and Steven Forth  and this good looking man !!Available to answer today.


Last change to register for webinar/recording: 


We are covering the biggest shifts hitting pricing teams right now:


- Token and credit based pricing in AI
- Vibe coding
- The major pricing moves in Q3
• The rising cost of compute

If pricing feels like it is changing faster than ever, that is because it is.


This session gets you caught up in under an hour.

We go live today at 12 noon EST. 

Last chance to register:

https://lnkd.in/gVszQyuw

Dell Technologies

Lead Product Manager for managed services integrated with multiple 3rd parties:
•	First customer booked 6 months after soft launch of colocation capability
•	Formed a product team to launch a new managed colocation service.  This managed service has booked several multi-year deals.
•	Leading the product team in optimizing the sales motion and service delivery to grow sales year over year.
•	Negotiated resale contracts with 3rd party service providers for a one-stop managed service experience for customers

Principal Product Manager

Defined as-a-Service (XaaS) offers for servers and storage.  Developed managed colocation services from incubation to launch.  Led an extensive virtual team across Services, Products, Marketing, and Sales.
The colocation services platform delivers managed services integrated with 3rd party colocation providers.

Zerto

Led the software roadmap for Zerto’s continuous data protection platform used by Cloud Service Providers and enterprises.
•	Delivered new features twice yearly to protect virtualized workloads in VMware, Hyper-V, Azure and AWS environments.
•	Managed strategic and technical partner relationships in support of $100M+ annual revenues.
•	Established technical standards for software release management, product security, product documentation, and customer experience management resulting in customer growth with minimal product team growth.
•	Developed customer focused benchmarking documentation for optimizing product performance.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Drove the roadmap for all storage integrations with VMware vCenter and vRealize Suite.  Managed the Software Defined Storage product lines that are used in Cloud-based 
networks, enterprises and small/medium businesses.  
- Successfully transitioned a legacy product line to Agile development methodologies while launching a new product
- Managed six product releases to completion in two years
- Developed 700 person sales community by training seminars, webinars and wikis
- Drove usability improvements based on user experience that reduced installation time and simplified daily operations.
- Led go-to-market strategies for a freeware product that generates 50+ weekly leads

World Wide Product Manager

Cisco

As cross-functional team leader of engineering and product managers, integrated acquired companies into Cisco’s engineering division.  
• Created consistent product and service offers across the engineering teams while maintaining productivity of the acquired engineering teams
• Generated $150M in incremental bookings by implementing a new software customization process 
• Developed offer strategies including new capabilities for usage billing, software subscriptions and licensing which automated all the business transactions.
• Defined and executed go-to-market strategy for the $700M IP Video business, leading to repeatable transactions and multi-year deal management guidelines
• Brought software release process into compliance for SOX, ISO and Open Source while supporting Agile development practices

Senior Product Manager

Managed the product lifecycle of the legacy Edge Router product line. Migrated global installed base to next generation Edge Router product line with compelling features and marketing programs. 
•	Developed revenue share arrangement with partners to generate $20M in incremental bookings
•	Grew market share while migrating customers to next generation product
•	Created and executed end-of-life plan with pricing strategies, trade-in programs and competitive differentiation

Sr Manager, Product Managment

Led team of 12 product managers in product lifecycle and go-to-market for two softswitch product lines.
• Grew revenue from zero to $100M+ per year by delivering software releases to match customer needs
• Launched a user group with 100+ active customer participants which resulted in rapid feature delivery from exposing the engineering team to customers

Senior Manager Product Management

Alcatel

Led team of 35 product managers and product marketing experts in the Signaling Transfer Point product line. Generated $120M annually from global service providers.

Senior Director, Marketing

DSC Communications

- Led software quality improvements while delivering revenue generating features.  Managed a diverse team of 200+ with annual budget of $15 million and annual product revenues of $100 million.

Senior Director of Software Development

Principal Product Manager @ Dell | Managed Services and Cloud Product Management | Author of Product Management IRL

As the Lead Product Manager at Dell Technologies, my focus is on pioneering managed services that seamlessly integrate with third-party providers.  My expertise in defining XaaS offers and developing managed services from incubation to market introduction has been instrumental in sales growth and service delivery. Collaborating with an extensive virtual team, I've negotiated key contracts and empowered a product team dedicated to year-over-year growth, all rooted in a deep understanding of software product management and networking.

Amy Mitchell

After 150 weeks of writing about product management…
the biggest surprise isn’t the articles.
It’s what product managers have taught me.
 
Three years ago, I started writing to share what I knew.
Today, this newsletter reflects what product managers are actually working through.
 
To mark week 150, I pulled back the curtain on:
• The most-read themes of the year
• How each article actually comes together
• The topics I intentionally don’t cover
• What I’m focusing on next

🔗 https://lnkd.in/g_9iw4kc

Product Management Work Today by Amy Mitchell

I recently hit a stretch of product work where almost nothing was clear
fuzzy intent, 
shifting expectations, 
lots of noise. 

I kept trying to choose the “right” option… and it only made things worse.

Then I remembered something I’ve learned (and relearned) over years of product manager work:
  - Ambiguous work isn’t an options problem.
  - It’s a systems problem.

When I stop hunting for the perfect option and instead build a simple system to shape the problem, I get traction again. The work starts moving. I start moving.

I wrote down the 6-part system I now use when I feel stuck in ambiguity.

🔗 https://lnkd.in/gPVDxTs5 
.

System to Handle Ambiguous Work by Amy Mitchell

Another function combines into product. Elena Verna brings us reasons to embrace brand in your product. 
 
Brand+Product = caring about how your product makes people feel.
 
My 3 favorite reasons brand is a product job:

1️⃣ Your product is the brand
          - Your product is the user's first touchpoint
 
2️⃣ User generated content and reviews outweigh traditional product visibility
           - Your product reputation is going to be seen before any marketing campaigns
 
3️⃣ Think about how your product makes people feel
            - People talk about products that feel different
 
"Brand isn’t a marketing exercise anymore. It’s a product responsibility."

Open article: Brand… a Product job now? by elenaverna.com

Learning from an AI-first CPO. If you want to stop sprinkling AI around your product, Rina Alexin's interview with Aleks Bass, CPO at Typeform, breaks down what AI-first means.
 
3 changes to be AI-first:
 
1️⃣ Procurement is your new best friend
       - POC (Proof of concept) procurement to test multiple solutions in parallel safely
 
2️⃣ Clarity + Observability = Control
       - Every team has a clear AI strategy
       - Every initiative must be measurable
 
3️⃣ Speed from experiments to outcomes
       - AI becomes a quiet multiplier instead of a headline
 
"The best AI for product managers is the kind that disappears into better outcomes."

Open article: How to Build an AI-First Organization: Lessons from Typeform’s CPO, Aleks Bass by productside.com

How to Build an AI-First Organization: Lessons from Typeform’s CPO, Aleks Bass

I’ve seen smart teams get stuck in the same debate for weeks.

It’s rarely about who’s right. It’s about what kind of decision everyone’s really making.

When you recognize the layers, the emotion starts to make sense. 
And progress follows.

Thank you to Isaac Goldfarb for asking how to recognize layered decisions.
🔗 https://lnkd.in/gCRPX3xs

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The Battle

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