Making the Most of Regional Pricing Meetings

Our recent article, “Can Distribution Pricing Managers Work Remotely?,” was clearly a hit. So far it has been the most viewed article of the last four weeks. Several of our subscribers reached out to us to comment that although remote work provides the advantage of flexibility and location independence, certain elements of pricing management could be enhanced through face-to-face interactions. This includes brainstorming sessions or strategic discussions that can often benefit from the dynamism and immediacy of in-person communication. Striking an optimal balance between remote and on-site work can bolster effective decision-making and foster a cooperative atmosphere among pricing managers and their teams.

Many pricing managers find that traveling to branch locations allows them to better understand the markets they serve, build relationships with sales reps and branch managers, provide training, assess various channels in a geography, set better pricing standards and ensure that strategic pricing elements that benefit both sales and profit are implemented.

As one of our readers wrote: “As a pricing director, understanding the business and grappling with the sales rep and customer-facing issues related to pricing is a significant portion of your role. I work remotely, but to establish trust and gain influence, I believe you have to blend meaningful in-person interactions with the flexibility of remote work.”

Gaining a Better Understanding of Local Markets

When you travel to a branch location, you gain a new understanding of the various local market dynamics and how they change in different regions. You can observe firsthand various sales and customer situations that affect pricing and purchasing patterns, including local differences, cultural influences, different seasonal needs, different customer segmentation definitions and many other factors that affect your pricing decisions.

Customer preferences can vary widely in each branch location. Each branch has a unique customer base, different demographic profiles, different economic drivers and income statistics. When you interact directly with top customers and local sales reps, you gain a valuable insight into what really drives buying behavior. This helps you design custom-tailored pricing matrices based on local customer needs and preferences.

You also can insight into the local competitive landscape. At the risk of alienating some of our sales managers in our audience – bear with us – pricing managers don’t always trust direct feedback from individual reps. This isn’t an indictment of sales reps, it’s simply the case that 90% of the feedback a pricing manager gets from sales reps sounds like, “the price is too high.” Spending time directly with reps face-to-face builds trust and collaboration. It can be too easy to blame reps for pricing overrides if you don’t get a flavor for the local competition and customer profiles. By visiting a branch location, you can get information about competitor’s pricing strategies, promotional activities, product offerings and strengths. This gives you a much more targeted approach to pricing for each branch. Pricing managers also benefit by having direct interactions with the sales team. Your reps are on the front lines of your business and it is valuable to see them in action with customers. You can get real-time feedback on customer reactions to pricing changes, competitor activities and emerging trends. (Editor’s note: If competitive pricing is of particular interest to you, please see our article, Tips for Understanding Your Competitors’ Prices and Staying Ahead of Your Competition.)

Providing Training and Guidance

Even though web conferencing tools have made huge strides in the last few years, nothing beats face-to-face meetings for training and guidance.

Introducing new pricing models and strategies always goes better in person. You may take pricing concepts for granted because you work with them daily, but for most people the finer points of pricing can be difficult to learn. Sales reps may not feel comfortable asking questions on large web meetings, but in the familiarity of their own branch location they may be willing to chime in. You can walk the local team through the analytics and rationale behind your pricing strategies, field questions and work together to understand the broader context and significance of having a reliable pricing model. Getting buy in with local reps and fostering a sense of ownership and commitment to profit goals is the most important thing you can do to reduce overrides.

You may also be using some advanced price optimization solutions and during your training sessions you can review how to use various pricing, CRM, CPQ and analytics software effectively. Don’t think you can just rely on online tutorials and help files. You need to demonstrate the power of your software to your branch employees directly, live and be able to answer questions in real time. You can show branch managers and their reps how to get data, interpret results and apply analytics in ways that boost margins and close rates. In turn, you’ll hear various tips and tricks that reps have learned in the field which will give you new ideas on how to use those same tools.

Some pricing mangers even work with sales and branch leadership to conduct workshops and role-play training to teach negotiation skills around pricing. Negotiation is a critical aspect of sales and profit optimization, and many modern software suites provide real-time pricing guidance that can help. Combining pricing insights and better customer segmentation with sales training around handling difficult pricing conversations and objections can help raise close rates.

How to Make the Most of Your Visit

Any time you get a chance to visit local branch locations, you want to make the most of your visit. Here are some tips.

1. Preparation: Do your homework before leaving. You have a lot of analytics at your fingertips, but you can also call the branch manager for insight about local market dynamics, strong competitors and pricing input before you get there. You can also do some web research around local economic conditions and customer trends. If you use distribution CRM software, you can look closely at buying trends and close rates. Finally, make sure you circulate a detailed agenda for your meetings so that people in the branch locations can prepare as well.
2. Data presentation: People respond to data. You want to be able to demonstrate that there is no guesswork involved in your pricing strategy and that the company is following data-driven insights. Prepare easy to understand slides to show the impact of pricing changes, differences to profit levels, differences in performance between top reps and top branches and insights into how different customer and product segments perform.
3. Collaborative approach: Make it clear from the beginning that you are seeking feedback and new ideas. This is a team effort. You aren’t there to dictate pricing and scold them for overrides. You want direct interaction with them and their customers so that you can make their jobs easier.
4. Practice your training: It isn’t easy to demonstrate technology. Create repeatable scenarios and practice your demos before you get to the location. You want to show them how easy it is to use the software, explore pricing and use negotiation tools so you don’t want to get hung up over tech issues or functions while you’re live.
5. Goal Setting: Don’t leave without setting up an action plan with goals. Make the goals easy and achievable. Hitting a simple goal builds momentum so make it fair. Pick one area for the next 90 days such as volume, revenue, override reduction or profit margins. Make sure that the goals are in line with both the corporate goals and the local goals of the branch manager.
6. Follow-up: The most important part of your visit happens after the visit. Follow up with the sales reps to make sure the remember and understand what you discussed. They may be shy about reaching out, so be proactive and ask them if they need help with the software or have any questions or other ideas. Put regular check-ins on your calendar and schedule monthly performance review with your branches or tune-up training sessions online.

Traveling to branch locations is an important aspect of the job for many pricing managers. You gain a deeper understanding of your markets and build stronger relationships with sales reps and branch managers. It gives you a platform for training as well to generate new ideas from the field. Most importantly, it helps to ensure that your pricing strategies are advantageous to both sales goals and profit goals building collaboration and improving performance.