Pricing and Value Selling: The Art of Asking Your Clients the Right Questions with Barry Edney

Barry Edney started his pricing career in Sposea, a digital pricing and consultancy company aiming to drive profitability by simplifying price data optimization, management and execution. It was in May 2021 when he started his own consulting firm called Burning Issues Consulting, where they help businesses deliver better top-line and margin results by focusing on where change needs to happen quickly – the burning issues. In this episode, Barry talks about the importance of knowing the right questions to ask the right people so you can sell value the way your customers need it in their business.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: The importance of asking the right people the right questions in order to know what your clients really value; Why you should focus on value selling and avoid benefit selling; Why it’s a must for you to make sure that what you’re selling are the products that are giving you the big margin   “Focus on the margin drivers. If you have to be really cautious on your costs, focus on your products that generate your highest margin, and manage the rest of your portfolio for cash.” – Barry Edney   Topics Covered: 01:00 – How Barry got into pricing 03:21 – Considering the cost to serve in relation to delivering value 04:18 – One product, different audiences, and different levels of value 06:44 – Perceived value vs. intrinsic value 08:05 – Not knowing what your customers really value + asking the right questions 13:40 – Examples of open-ended questions 15:31 – Why you should avoid benefit selling 17:48 – Creating, communicating, and capturing value: Thinking about solving problems vs. building features 22:26 – Barry’s piece of pricing advice for the listeners   Key Takeaways: “When you start measuring the value that you deliver, it is so much easier to articulate it to your clients.” – Barry Edney “The value has to be presented in a different way. There has to be a different value or a different aspect of the value you can deliver.” – Barry Edney   People / Resources Mentioned: Sposea: https://www.sposea.com/ Burning Issues Pricing Consulting: https://www.burningissuesconsulting.com/ AkzoNobel: https://www.akzonobel.com/   Connect with Barry Edney: Email: [email protected]; [email protected] Website: https://www.burningissuesconsulting.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barryedney/   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: [email protected]