The $80M Dealer Reveals the Pricing Tricks First-Time Car Buyers Miss with Dominic Genova

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 29, 2026, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/the-value-was-always-there/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected].  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

Dominic Genova spent 17 years on the factory side at Chrysler and 27 years owning car dealerships. He grew one dealership from a building with no power or water and no sales into a business with 87 employees and $80 million in annual sales of cars, trucks, and service. He rejected the traditional dealership model of commissions, hidden fees, and payment games in favor of transparent, salary-based selling. In this episode, Dominic exposes the pricing tricks hiding behind the "great deal", from payment games to hidden fees, while Mark challenges his sales philosophy from a pricing perspective.  Together, they unpack why the price isn't the price, how a $500 cheaper car can become a $700 worse deal, and why Dominic believes the real product isn't the car. It's taking care of the customer.    Why You Have to Check Out Today's Podcast: See how a $500 "better deal" can become $700 worse once financing enters the picture. Spot the pricing landmines first-time car buyers rarely see coming. Discover how Dominic built an $80M dealership by replacing sales games with trust, transparency, and repeat business.   "I made the buying process, I made our taking care of you a competitive advantage." — Dominic Genova   Topics Covered: 03:00 – The Price Isn't the Price: What Buyers Actually Need to Calculate 05:00 – From No Sales to an $80M Dealership. Hear how Dominic grew a dealership that started with no power, no water, and no sales into an 87-person, $80M business—and why his pricing philosophy focused on bringing customers back instead of maximizing every transaction. 08:30 – How to Build a Sales Team That Actually Cares. Learn why Dominic rejected traditional commission incentives and instead looked for people who genuinely wanted to treat customers well—and how that became part of the dealership's culture. 10:30 – The Buyer Test: How to Tell If a Salesperson Is Sincere 13:00 – Fit the Customer to the Car, Not the Other Way Around. Discover Dominic's "cars are like shoes" philosophy 18:00 – How Dealers Turn a Great Price Into a Worse Deal. Learn how financing and payment tactics can undermine an attractive vehicle price, including Dominic's example of a $20 monthly payment increase that adds $1,200 over a 60-month loan. 20:30 – The Dealer Tricks Buyers Don't Know to Look For. Get a glimpse into the tactics Dominic saw during his career calling on hundreds of dealers, including misleading advertisements, small-print conditions, and additional charges. 23:00 – Why Trust Became Dominic's Real Product. Discover why Dominic viewed his dealership's product as more than cars: "We take care of you." That philosophy helped create repeat customers, referrals, and a reputation that carried throughout the community. 26:00 – The Counterintuitive Profit Strategy: Maximize Satisfaction, Not Price 28:30 – How First-Time Buyers Can Spot a Bad Deal. Learn how to look beyond the advertised price and evaluate the entire deal, rather than assuming the lowest vehicle price automatically means the lowest total cost. 30:00 – Dominic's Final Pricing Advice   Key Takeaways: "So a lot of people go and shop price and then the unethical dealer sticks it to them on something else." — Dominic Genova  "My philosophy was an agricultural philosophy... to get you to come back again and again rather than draining every dime I could when I saw you." — Dominic Genova    Connect with Dominic Genova: LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/dominic-genova-99a12b66/  Website: http://dontbetaken.com/    Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]  

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 22, 2026, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/hidden-problems-hidden-value/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected].  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

Steven Forth is a principal at PatternMind and co-author of Pricing for the Agent Economy, with deep expertise in pricing strategy, scenario planning, and the emerging agent economy.  In this episode, he brings a different way of thinking about AI pricing: instead of trying to predict one future, build strategies that can survive several possible futures. Mark challenges Steven throughout the conversation, particularly around value attribution and credit pricing, creating a fascinating debate about whether outcome-based pricing is truly scalable, whether credits will survive, and what AI buyers may demand next.   Why You Have to Check Out Today's Podcast: Learn how scenario planning can help you prepare for multiple AI pricing futures instead of betting on one forecast. Discover how value attribution and credit adoption create four possible paths for AI pricing—and what each means for your business. Understand why credits, outcome-based pricing, and fungibility could reshape how buyers and vendors exchange value in the agent economy.   "Rather than thinking about, how are you going to predict what's going to happen? It's, what are the early indicators? What are the early warning system you can put in place?"  — Steven Forth   Topics Covered: 01:15 – Why Forecasting Isn't Enough for AI Pricing. Steven explains why traditional linear forecasts assume one future while scenario planning prepares for multiple possible futures—especially when major uncertainties could fundamentally change the market. 04:00 – The Critical Uncertainties You Need to Track. Learn why identifying uncertainties isn't enough—you need to watch for early evidence and warning signals showing which future is beginning to emerge. 05:30 – What COVID Taught Steven About Agile Scenario Planning. Steven shares how the pandemic exposed the limits of traditional scenario planning and led to a faster approach focused on cycling through critical uncertainties as conditions change. 08:00 – Why AI Makes Agile Scenario Planning More Important. With generative AI moving rapidly and no one knowing exactly how the market will evolve, Steven explains why businesses need to remain open to a wider range of possible futures. 09:30 – Will AI Software Still Be Differentiated? Steven explores whether generative AI will wash out software differentiation and whether large language models themselves will eventually converge. 12:00 – The Credit Fungibility Question. Discover why buyers may want credits that work across ecosystems while platform companies could benefit from making credits transferable—and why smaller vendors may resist. 14:00 – Why Buyers, Platforms, and Niche Vendors Want Different Things. Steven breaks down the competing incentives of buyers, ecosystem platforms, and focused vendors and explains why the future of credits may depend on which group has the most power. 16:00 – The 4 Possible Futures for AI Pricing. Steven introduces the two critical uncertainties—value attribution and credit adoption—and shows how combining them creates four distinct pricing futures. 18:00 – From "Blind Faith Credits" to the Outcome Rush. Explore what happens when buyers resist credits and value attribution remains difficult versus a future where outcome-based pricing becomes easier and more scalable. 20:00 – What Niche Vendors Should Do in Each Scenario. Steven explains how pricing strategy changes depending on which future emerges—and why companies that can move fastest toward outcome-based pricing could dominate their markets. 22:00 – The Three Hurdles to Outcome-Based Pricing. Learn why outcome pricing requires agreement on the outcome, the ability to determine who contributed to the value, and enough predictability to make the economics work. 24:00 – Mark Challenges the Value Attribution Problem. Mark argues that pricing metrics already solve one form of attribution, while Steven clarifies the harder question: who actually contributed to the economic value created for the buyer? 26:00 – Can AI Actually Claim the Economic Outcome? The conversation explores why customer support resolution is a promising niche case for outcome pricing—but why multi-agent value attribution remains an open question. 28:00 – Why Credits Are Really a Pricing Currency. Mark argues that credits function like a company's internal currency, while Steven points out that credits can support multiple pricing metrics and flexible consumption. 30:00 – Will Buyers Eventually Reject Credits? Mark challenges whether buyers actually want credits, while Steven suggests the more important question may be which vendors figure out how to move beyond them first. 32:00 – The Pricing Advice AI Leaders Need in 2026. Steven's final advice: understand how your buyers are using AI to make purchasing decisions—or risk making critical pricing mistakes.   Key Takeaways: "The future is not set. And that there is more than one possible future. And that different futures could emerge in different parts of the market." — Steven Forth "We have to be open to a fairly wide range of different futures and agile scenario planning I think is a better way to do that." — Steven Forth "If your strategy is only viable on one scenario, you're accepting a lot of risk into your organization that you don't need to." — Steven Forth   People / Resources Mentioned: Michael Mansard & Wolfgang Ulaga — Steven's co-authors on Pricing for the Agent Economy. Shell — Mentioned in Steven's discussion of traditional scenario planning. Rotterdam — Steven references the city's scenario-planning approach, where major infrastructure investments were designed to remain viable across multiple scenarios. Lovable & Perplexity — Examples of companies using credit-based pricing and the different ways buyers have responded to those models. Salesforce, SAP, Oracle & Microsoft — Discussed as ecosystem platforms that may have incentives to make credits fungible within their ecosystems. Scenarios for Pricing in the Agent Economy — Steven's Substack article that provides the framework discussed in this episode.   Connect with Steven Forth: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenforth/  Substack: Search for Steven Forth on Substack https://pricinginnovation.substack.com/  for his writing on pricing, scenario planning, and the agent economy. Email: [email protected]   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]  

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 15, 2026, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/the-case-for-token-based-pricing/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected].  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

Manu Mehra is Head of AMER Industries Strategic Deal Pricing at Databricks, with more than 12 years of experience across pricing, product, cloud, and AI, including Google Cloud and Thermo Fisher Scientific. He brings a practical perspective on how AI is changing the way companies think about outcomes, value, platforms, and pricing models. In this episode, Manu explains why traditional pricing models don't neatly fit AI, why outcome-based pricing is compelling but difficult to standardize, and how companies can turn platforms into solutions around specific business problems.  Mark challenges him throughout the conversation, especially on the attribution problem: if AI creates the value, how do you know AI actually caused it?   Why You Have to Check Out Today's Podcast: Learn why AI is pushing pricing toward outcomes. Discover how platforms become solutions customers will pay more for. Understand the attribution and standardization challenges behind AI pricing.   "Pricing cannot be an afterthought. It has to be integrated within the product roadmap." — Manu Mehra   Topics Covered: 01:15 – How an accidental pricing analytics role led Manu to a career spanning product, cloud, AI, sales, finance, and strategic deal pricing. 03:30 – Why Pricing Has to Start With the Product. Why integrating pricing into the product roadmap can create value before launch instead of scrambling for cost-plus pricing afterward. 05:30 – Why AI Breaks Traditional Pricing Models. Why subscription, license, and consumption models don't fully fit AI when thousands of customers can pursue completely different outcomes 08:00 – The Hardest Problem With Outcome-Based Pricing. Why AI outcomes are difficult to standardize across billing, finance, legal, and revenue recognition—and why 10,000 customers could mean 10,000 different outcomes 11:00 – What Actually Counts as an AI Outcome? Manu uses a QBR example where AI can automate 95% of the SQL work, turning hours and effort saved into a measurable form of value. 13:30 – The Attribution Problem: Did AI Really Create the Value? Mark and Manu debate how to determine whether AI actually caused increased revenue, lower costs, or other gains—or simply helped the business get there faster. 16:00 – Platform vs. Solution: What Are You Really Selling? Why a broad platform can have wildly different value depending on the customer's use case—and how platforms can become solutions by solving specific business problems. 19:00 – How to Turn Products Into Business Solutions. Manu explains how compute, data, and AI layers can be combined into packaged solutions instead of being sold as isolated products. 21:30 – How Customer Segmentation Makes AI Pricing Scalable. Why identifying recurring customer patterns can help companies map different business problems to repeatable combinations of SKUs instead of creating a custom solution for every customer. 24:00 – Why AI Companies Use Credits. How credits can create cost predictability, manage backend costs, and give customers flexibility across different AI capabilities. 27:00 – When Credits Make Sense—and When They Don't. Why platform customers may value the flexibility of credits while digital-native customers who already know exactly what they want may have less need for them. 30:00 – The Pricing Advice Manu Wants Leaders to Hear. Why pricing should never be an afterthought and why the industry is moving from cost-plus toward value-based and outcome-based pricing.   Key Takeaways: "The reason is, even though you might be a platform organization or you're selling a platform, but end of the day, you're still trying to solve a customer problem." — Manu Mehra "The tricky thing with outcome is it's very hard to standardize it." — Manu Mehra "Pricing needs to be integrated during the product roadmap." — Manu Mehra   Connect with Manu Mehra: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manumehra1/   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]  

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 8, 2026, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/stop-measuring-wtp-start-shaping-it/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected].  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

George Boretos is the founder and CEO of FutureUp, where he helps companies uncover hidden revenue and margin opportunities through AI, predictive analytics, and pricing science. In this episode, he explains why AI can't simply tell you what to charge, how machine learning can uncover pricing opportunities, and why competitor pricing data can sometimes make your model worse.   Why You Have to Check Out Today's Podcast: Learn where AI actually helps pricing from price optimization and segmentation to uncovering underpriced customers. See why more data isn't always better.  Discover what your sales data can reveal about willingness to pay, price variation, and hidden revenue opportunities.   "Don't use AI to actually get specific pricing directions and price point suggestions. Don't follow it blindly." — George Boretos    Topics Covered: 00:00 – Why "What Price Should I Charge?" Is the Wrong AI Prompt. Why general-purpose AI lacks the context and pricing intelligence to set your price. 03:30 – Where AI Can Actually Improve Pricing. How AI can support optimization, segmentation, packaging, and tiering. 06:30 – Why There's No Single "Right" Price. Why pricing requires different methods for different businesses. 09:00 – The Pricing Data AI Needs. Why transaction volume isn't enough without price variation. 12:00 – What Win/Loss Data Reveals. How won and lost deals can reveal win probability and market exposure. 14:30 – Finding Customers You're Undercharging. How price differences can uncover segments and pricing patterns. 17:30 – When Competitor Data Hurts Your Model. Why adding competitor pricing data can actually make a model worse. 20:30 – Why Market Indicators Can Matter More. How market trends can sometimes explain pricing better than competitors. 23:00 – Why Companies Ignore Pricing. Why simply caring about pricing can unlock major margin opportunities. 25:00 – Pricing Strategy vs. Execution. Why the best pricing strategy still needs strong execution to work.   Key Takeaways: "Use AI as a tool... Don't use it to actually get specific directions, specific price point suggestions." — George Boretos  "Pricing is a great differentiator. It can move mountains, it can increase margins, revenue, everything." — George Boretos    Connect with George Boretos: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgeboretos/   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]  

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on June 1, 2026, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/the-business-case-nobody-built/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at [email protected].  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

What happens when a former client returns for a live pricing coaching session? Mark Richman, CEO of Skeleton Key, shares how applying Mark Stiving's value-selling principles helped increase his close rate from 35% to 70% by focusing on customer outcomes instead of pitching solutions. Now, he returns to the hot seat to workshop his toughest pricing challenges in real time—from buyers who can't quantify value to outcome-based pricing and pricing for emotional outcomes.  This isn't another pricing interview; it's a front-row seat to a CEO getting his sales strategy challenged, refined, and rebuilt in real time.    Why You Have to Check Out Today's Podcast: Steal the framework that helped transform a 35% win rate into 70% — without changing his product. Find out why your prospects' "solution" is often the biggest obstacle to closing the deal. Watch Mark Stiving challenges Mark Richman's sales strategy and uncover the hidden pricing opportunities he almost missed.    "That willingness to not talk about what we do and that focus on why the client's there in the first place and how you can really help them achieve the outcome they want has transformed the way I sell. I went from about a 35% close rate to a 60 to 70% close rate."  — Mark Richman   Topics Covered: 01:30 – A Live Pricing Coaching Session Begins. Mark Richman returns to the hot seat as Mark Stiving coaches him through real pricing and sales challenges. 03:10 – Why Nobody Cares About Your Product. Mark Stiving explains why buyers purchase outcomes, while Richman shares how this mindset transformed his sales process. 05:15 – From 35% to 70% Win Rates. Mark Richman reveals the conversation shift that doubled his close rate, and Mark explains why it works. 08:45 – When Buyers Ask for the Wrong Solution. Mark Richman shares a real AI sales conversation, and Mark shows how to uncover the real problem instead. 16:20 – Pricing Emotional Outcomes. Can you charge for less stress and more time? Mark and Mark Richman debate when emotional value is enough. 19:15 – The Customers You Should Walk Away From. Mark explains why buyers who can't define success are often impossible to serve well. 27:40 – Finding the Right Pricing Metric. Mark shares alternatives to outcome pricing that let your revenue grow alongside your customers' success. 30:50 – The Pricing Opportunity Richman Almost Missed. A regulatory deadline becomes a lesson from Mark on willingness to pay and pricing confidence. 36:10 – The Biggest Lesson from the Coaching Session. Mark shares one pricing experiment every business should try, while Richman explains the sales lesson that changed everything.   Key Takeaways: "You're not exploiting the customer by charging for value. The only question is whether the customer believes the price is fair." — Mark Stiving "What matters isn't your hourly rate. What matters is whether it's a fair exchange for the value you're creating." — Mark Richman "Raise your prices. Win fewer deals at higher prices and make more money." — Mark Stiving "Helping clients uncover the value of solving the right problem changed everything about how I sell." — Mark Richman   Connect with Mark Richman: Website: https://skeletonkey.com Email: [email protected] Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrichman/   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]