Product Chats Podcast

Prices and pricing strategies are everywhere. And sometimes we can learn the most valuable pricing lessons in some of the most interesting places. In this podcast, Mark Stiving, Pragmatic Marketing instructor and pricing expert, tells us some of the strangest examples of pricing he's seen in his travels and how you can apply these same techniques to your own products and companies. If you've got an example of a strange but true pricing strategy that you've seen, we'd love to hear it. Email us and we may feature it on a future episode of Pragmatic Live. And don't forget to check out Mark's blog for more great pricing tips and information.

What if a secret sauce for winning more business was available? Would you use it? It turns out there is one: win/loss analysis. Ellen Naylor, a pioneer in competitive intelligence and win/loss analysis, and the author of Win/Loss Analysis: How to Capture and Keep the Business You Want, shares her tips and tricks for increasing your company’s positive outcomes using win/loss success. For more on win/loss analysis, be sure to read Competitive Intelligence Gathering Through Win/Loss and visit Ellen Naylor’s website. And check out when our courses will be in your area.

We welcome back Emily Hossellman, director of marketing at Centercode, to answer questions posed by participants in September’s popular webinar How Beta Testing Can Give Your Product a Competitive Edge.  If you’d like to learn how to dramatically increase participation in your company’s beta tests, read Emily’s eBook Reaching 90% Beta Test Participation. And be sure to check out when our courses are coming to your area.

Personas are more than personality profiles filled with statistics and demographics. By capturing their problems, aspirations, goals and emotions, great market-driven personas tell an engaging story that rallies your business behind your product’s market. They help sales have the right conversations, encourage marketing to craft the best messaging, and product to have features that influence the buying decision. In this week’s podcast, taken from Johnathan Lucky’s webinar, we’re going to dig into how to build and implement personas within your organization.   Watch the webinar and/or get the slides here.

Today’s multi-generational workplace presents unique challenges for leaders, especially since work style and expectations often differ by gender and generation. In this week’s podcast, Tracey Wilen, Ph.D., discusses her research on how gender and generation factor into perspectives on work, leadership and the use of technology and how we can all work together to create productive and healthy work environments. You can learn more about Tracey’s work at TraceyWilen.com. And be sure to check out when our courses are coming to your area.

Think of all the things that impact your topline: pricing, discounts, incentives, etc. When was the last time you looked at these parts collectively to ensure you were optimizing overall revenue management? In this podcast, Chanan Greenberg, vice president and general manager at Model N, a Silicon Valley-based software company that delivers revenue management solutions for high-tech and life-science companies, shows you how to holistically examine the processes that impact revenue so that you don’t leave money on the table.

What can an entrepreneur teach product managers about pricing and selling their products? Turns out quite a bit. In this podcast, Pragmatic Marketing instructor Mark Stiving interviews Sean Murphy of SKMurphy, a consultancy that has worked with hundreds of technology startups in Silicon Valley on product planning and introduction. They discuss the art of pricing new products--how you move from beta to early adopter to sustainable pricing models--as well as how to get your salesforce onboard with selling your new products.   Got a question for us? A topic you’d like to hear discussed? Feedback? Email us at experts@pragmaticmarketing.com.

In football, when a play is called, everyone immediately knows their role and how they contribute to the team’s success. Neil Baron, lifelong New England Patriots fan and founder of Baron Strategic Partners, discusses how you can pick and execute winning product plays so your product team will make an impact on senior- level customers. Neil explains how the concept of a play can also apply to selling business outcomes to the C-suite. To request a copy of Neil’s original PPT presentation, email him at nbaron@baronstrategic.com. And for even more on the topic, be sure to check out Neil’s article Delivering Differentiated Customer Value. 

In this week’s podcast, Mark Stiving, Pragmatic Marketing instructor extraordinaire and world-renowned pricing expert, tells us how we can effectively price ourselves using the same techniques and tools we use to price our products. That’s right, you can take the concepts such as, “will I” or “which one,” “value-based pricing” and “willingness to pay” to maximize how much you earn in your career. Listen now.   Curious how your price compares to that of your peers? Check our Annual Product Management and Marketing Survey.

Organizations are only as good as the talent they employ, yet finding that talent can be a massive challenge. And although there may be plenty of qualified candidates, what if they don’t have that indescribable quality you’re looking for? What if instead you find it somewhere unexpected? Greg Adams-Woodford and Kaili Barone have worked together at two companies over a span of eight years, first at Pearson, and more recently at the New York Stock Exchange. Greg and Kaili discuss how they met, and the challenges they faced once Greg identified Kaili—the girl in procurement who had no product management experience—as someone he wanted to add to his product team. For more on the topic, check out Diamonds in the Rough. And be sure to check out when our courses are coming to your area.