From Pricing Analyst to Strategic Advisor: Why Technical Excellence Isn’t Enough

Many pricing professionals don’t struggle because their analysis is wrong — they struggle because their insights don’t travel.

In the first new episode of 2026, Kevin Mitchell sits down with Claire Wang, pricing strategist and influence expert, to explore the shift from technical excellence to strategic influence.

Pricing teams are often analytically strong. They build rigorous models, validate assumptions, and produce sound recommendations. Yet too often, those recommendations stall — not because they lack logic, but because they fail to gain buy-in across functions and decision-makers.

Claire shares why influence is not persuasion or authority — but a skill rooted in relevance, translation, clarity, and consistency. Drawing from her upcoming book The Price of Influence, she explains:

• Why technically correct recommendations often fail to land

• What separates an analyst from a strategic advisor

• How pricing professionals can influence decisions without formal authority

• Why influence, like pricing, depends on perceived value

• What high-performing pricing leaders will need in increasingly complex organizations

If you’ve ever felt that your pricing insights deserved more traction than they received, this episode will challenge how you think about influence — and show you that it’s a learnable capability, not a personality trait.