Ep 71 | Manufacturers Must Get Nimbler – But How?

“Well, if the other side just did their job better, we’d be in much better shape.” Any B2B sellers or marketers heard this one before? Maybe you’ve said it? At some point in your career, you’ve likely experienced the tension between sales and marketing, two departments that in theory should always be on the same team.  Our guest today, Aggregate Insights CEO Brady Jensen, explains how the two sides become misaligned, how to prevent or stop the blame game, and what sales-marketing harmony looks like in practice. Brady shared what he’s learned from years of primary source research on how to bridge the contentious gap. Get Aggregate Insights’ free win/loss handbook here.   www.zilliant.com   

Dr. Rainer Schlamp, partner at EbelHofer Consultants, joins us to dissect an industry that often flies under the radar, but is essential to our everyday lives. The sanitary products industry is a complex and vibrant ecosystem weaving together producers, wholesalers, retail stores, contractors, and web shop consumers.    Often products are bundled and sold together as a total solution to fit architectural design specifications and must be priced as such. Rainer and host Barrett Thompson discuss why value-based pricing is essential in this industry, how to factor value into a solution sale, and the challenges facing commercial leaders charged with setting and updating price in an evolving digital commerce landscape.    Learn more about EbelHofer Consultants here   www.zilliant.com   

“For me, the strange thing is companies are investing in transformation in all dimensions of their business, but barely in the one that has the biggest profit impact – pricing,” says Sebastian Wrobel, cofounder and managing director of PricingWorks on today’s episode.   Sebastian and host Barrett Thompson explore how smart B2B organizations include pricing transformation in their digital transformation journeys and have a frank discussion on what “transformation” actually means.   “In some companies, what they call ‘transformation’ really isn't a transformation,” says Barrett. “It's more like just a technology upgrade, something more like maintenance, and the bigger promise of transformation isn't really achieved…They ought to be doing better things, not just the same practices embodied in a different tool set.”   Find PricingWorks customer success stories here.   www.zilliant.com  

Profitability and customer experience are important. That’s about as noncontroversial a statement as you can make in B2B. So, pricing – which is perhaps the biggest driver of both – should be at the heart of every B2B company, right?    “That is quite a controversial statement whenever I make it,” said Karan Sood, pricing expert and today’s guest on B2B Reimagined. “When I show people my spider chart of how pricing is the heart of the organization, some people are very supportive and some people are like, ‘You're smoking something.’ But I do believe pricing is at the heart of the organization.”   Karan and host Barrett Thompson examine the distance between pricing’s theoretical strategic value and the reality - its common lack of organizational influence - through the lens of four pricing paradoxes:   Pricing should be considered first in a new campaign or product launch, but it often comes last. Pricing teams should be forward-looking, but most toil in the past (last quarter’s profitability, what went wrong?). Pricing should lead the organization in data-driven capabilities, but it’s usually one of the last adopters. Pricing should have visibility to the C-suite, but it’s relegated to the back office.   Listen as we diagnose the reasons behind these disconnects and prescribe immediate actions pricing leaders can take to expand their influence, based on real-world examples. www.zilliant.com

What should come first: pricing technology or pricing strategy? Our guest today, PwC Partner Ron Otocki, makes a strong case for why the two should go hand-in-hand. Ron leans on his vast experience guiding companies through digital transformations to explain how pricing fits into larger transformative projects, and how the most successful pricing initiatives mix strategy and the right tools from the very start. “When you're in an enterprise environment, it's easy to essentially ask for investment in a tool and say that's going to be the solution. It's much harder to say, ‘Well, I'm going to implement a tool, but I also have to implement a culture change and implement role changes.’ That's the harder stuff, but it’s so critical to have those two go hand-in-hand; otherwise you're only doing 50% of what you need to do.” Listen to learn how to marry strategy with technology in your pricing and digital transformation initiatives. Past PwC episodes: Pricing in Times of Inflation | Revenue Growth Management in B2B www.zilliant.com 

In the subscription economy, a company’s product takes a backseat to its subscriber. What does this mean for a company’s go-to-market strategy? For starters, value-added services and customer support become paramount.  In your everyday life, you most likely subscribe to various streaming services or office software tools. But subscription and usage-based models are expanding far beyond the consumer realm, becoming more and more popular in traditional B2B spaces.  Dan Balcauski, founder and chief pricing officer of Product Tranquility, joins the show to explain why this shift is happening, the ramifications for the B2B world, benefits versus risks, best practices, and much more. Visit: https://www.producttranquility.com/  www.zilliant.com

Read enough headlines about generative AI and you will start to mull some big questions: Is it the next big paradigm shift? Is it a grave threat to the modern workforce? Can it be smarter than me? “It’s about a six-month-old puppy at this point,” says Lou Simon, vice president of Uptima Elevate and our guest on today’s show. However, like a puppy, Lou expects generative AI tools like ChatGPT to learn and grow very quickly. He and host Barrett Thompson share ideas on what that evolution will look like for B2B companies, and how generative AI can combine with purpose-built AI platforms like Zilliant and other best-of-breed technologies to create something even bigger. Attend MindShare 2023 on June 7-9 to catch Lou’s breakout session, “Stitching Technology Together for Industry Innovation.”   www.zilliant.com

Price changes and churn threats occur throughout the customer journey. How your organization handles them determines how your customers will react: either positively or negatively. Do they stick with you and buy now? Or go elsewhere without a word? It’s up to you.  This friendly debate between two passionate CX experts – Zilliant Sr. Director of Alliances, North America Karl Helfner and industry expert Frank Borovsky – is a must-listen for commercial leaders looking to enhance the customer experience. Hear how pricing and sales leaders can team with their CX counterparts to improve customer attitudes and behavior with real-time pricing optimization and revenue operations and intelligence.   Listen to Frank Borovsky’s other appearance on B2B Reimagined: Episode 69 Read Frank’s CX-focused blog series on Zilliant’s site: Critical Calculations for Customer Experience in 2023   www.zilliant.com   

Logik.io CEO Chris Shutts returns to the show, this time to connect with Pascal Yammine, chief executive officer of Zilliant. They discuss the transformational digital shift occurring in industries like traditional manufacturing, high-tech, software, and business services, driven by customer demand for self-service product discovery and buying.  Drawing on recent conversations with customers and prospects, Chris and Pascal paint a vision for a headless, end-to-end commerce and pricing solution that goes far beyond traditional CPQ: bringing flexible, frictionless, and profitable sales motions to life. Listen to Chris’ first B2B Reimagined appearance: How to “Consumerize” B2B Manufacturing www.zilliant.com   

“When people talk about the death of the channel, the death of distribution, I just sit back and go, ‘Hold my beer – give me a whiteboard and I will explain to you how wrong you are.’”   Channelnomics CEO Larry Walsh is our guest today for a wide-ranging discussion on what the channel is and why it matters for B2B companies.   He shared how the pandemic exposed both the vitality of the channel and the perils of neglecting it, how the channel serves as a salve to a recession, why talk of a “new normal” may be misleading, and much, much more.   Read the Channelnomics whitepapers discussed in the episode here: Recession Survival Guide | Distribution as a Recession Countermeasure   www.zilliant.com