Building a Value-centric Pricing Team

Whether you’re a startup or and established Fortune 500 company you’re always growing. As you grow, however, you'll find you need additional people to handle specialized jobs. These will someday include a chief financial officer and vice president of operations, among others. But one of the most important specializations in which you're likely to need to hire is pricing. This makes sense because pricing is an important part of rolling out new products and services. Adding a pricing professional to your team will improve your existing sales and are essential parts of growing your company.

Evaluating Your Pricing Team

Maybe your pricing team is fine the way it is. How can you tell? Evaluating your current pricing team is an important step in the process of deciding whether and how to grow it. If your existing pricing team is fine, you still might need some additional training or perhaps a revamped compensation package. On the other hand, your team may need to grow by a few heads, or you may choose to stay the same size but have different people filling the pricing positions. Maybe you don’t even have a pricing manager, and have discovered  now is the perfect time to bring one on board.

Step one in evaluating your pricing team is to decide what you want it to do for you. It won't require a lot of thought for you to come up with a good description of what you want your pricing manager to do.

Measuring Pricing Productivity

In a nutshell, this is the job of a pricing professional:

• Ensuring existing pricing structures have not matured or are stale dated.
• Ensuring “Money is not being left on the table” Reviewing customer interaction and conducting market research to ensure that that the price of each goods and service equals the customers perceived value. i.e. If 70% of Starbucks customers request a skinny latte perhaps a premium should be charged.
• Last but not the least, increasing profit margins. This could be achieved by providing the sales force with tools with which to provide accurate pricing and reduce excessive discounting.

If you’re looking for someone to look after any of these tasks, then you need to start the process of hiring a pricing professional.

Hiring A Pricing Professional

Adding a pricing professional can result in steadily increasing sales by helping your company stay on top of market trends and insure that you are offering competitive pricing for your products or services. This can free you up to spend time and energy on other tasks.

Pricing managers aren't just the people responsible for helping build your bottom line accurately. A pricing manager determines pricing schemes for a company’s products and services. This includes coordinating with production departments to learn how much they cost to make, as well as working with staff in marketing on appropriate campaigns and promotions. When you have new products to roll out, these are the professionals you will turn to.

To hire the right pricing manager for the job, you have to understand and be able to describe what the job is. That means clarifying exactly what the position requires. Do you want someone who is more stats oriented or someone with a leader mentality? Matching your company's needs to your new hire is the first step in getting a good pricing manager.

Given the fact that pricing professionals work in the finance and marketing arena, and most likely have an MBA, its important for you to make a very good offer for their services. Pricing professionals are rare, and are well-paid professionals. For all potential new hires, explain precisely what the compensation plan is. In addition, clarify your performance expectations, any training you will offer, and any tools you will provide. You should also provide candidates with a thumbnail description of the market and the competition. Then you will know that you've explained the opportunity accurately to anyone who's interested.

Don't stop by describing your needs. Imagine the ideal pricing manager for the job, including his or her personality, experience, energy level, reputation and abilities. You may not find someone exactly like that, but if you don't know what you want, the odds of making a bad-hiring decision are high.

Only now should you actually start looking for a pricing manager. But before dashing out a three-line ad and calling the classified department of your local newspaper, consider some other options:

Look internally. You may have technical, support, operations or administrative people who would

and could successfully move into sales. Post the ad on a bulletin board and see what happens.

Ask for employee referrals. Chances are your existing employees know the kind of people who would be happy working for you. They may be able to suggest some people for you to contact.

Network with suppliers, customers, colleagues, advisors and social contacts. This can be
cheaper, faster and more reliable than advertising to the general public.

Check with professional associations. They may have job lines to help members find employees.

Try online advertising. The speed, freshness and search ability of online job banks make them attractive options for both candidates and employers.

Check with your local college. You may be able to hire a recent graduate who's enthusiastic, effective and less expensive than a seasoned professional.

Contact Pricing Recruiters. Headhunters specializing in pricing personnel aren't cheap, but when labour markets are tight, it may be worth the cost to find a solid pricing professional. Consider using temporary and staffing services. Temporary and staffing services can provide you with sales and marketing personnel on a temporary, temp-to-perm, or permanent direct-hire basis.

Visit us at www.pricingrecruiters.com to find out how we can assist in your search for the perfect pricing candidate!