Why Knowing How Your Customers Perceive a Price is as Important as the Price Itself with Valerie Howard

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:  Understanding why continually aligning your pricing to what customers’ value is a never-ending journey   Discover the importance of knowing what appeals to the customer and how they perceive your price when optimizing your price and value offer  Learn how to leverage AI-powered pricing strategies to take your customer engagement to the next level    Valerie Howard is the Solution Strategy Director at PROS. She manages the go-to-market strategy for the PROS pricing solution portfolio.   In this episode, Valerie shares her insights on how to use data science to optimize price in today’s world of personalization and digital selling, how to leverage the benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and why knowing what appeals to the customer and how they perceive a price is as important as the price itself.     “When it comes to pricing, we've got to constantly invest in that. There's no end goal there, it's a constant journey of evolution to continually aligning your pricing to what customers’ value and a better understanding of what they value.”  - Valerie Howard Increase Your Pricing Knowledge: Become a Champions of Value INSIDER!  To sign up go to insider.championsofvalue.com. Use the promo code 'INSIDERNOW'  to take advantage of our special $5 offer for the first month.   Topics Covered:    02:36 — Backstory of how Valerie got into pricing and the socio-economic behavior lessons related to pricing she learned while working with Continental Airlines  04:35 — What she does at PROS, how she manages the pricing solution portfolio of their airline clients  08:00 —  How does cross-selling work with the solution that PROS offers  08:47 —  All about price optimization and price governance: How this helps in the price execution across all channels and regions for PROS airline clients  09:56  — Personalization and Digital Selling defined: how they differ from each other  15:11  — The infrastructures of digital selling   18:59  — All about dynamic pricing and how it works   20:46 —  Valerie on the  importance of knowing what appeals to the customer and how they perceive your price when optimizing your price and value offer  22:35 —  Where do price segmentation and  dynamic pricing come into play with regards to a speaker's of ‘fee integrity’  23:26 —  Discussion around price variation and price segmentation techniques in the medical service industry    Key Takeaways:    “When it comes to personalization, I think what we always hear is that customers really want their buyers to understand them, really want to understand their needs at a personalized level. I think pricing gives us a unique way to better understand, ‘Do they really value this?’  Because if they’re not willing to pay for it, then maybe, it is not something they are valuing so much.” - Valerie Howard    “When it comes to digital selling, there is a relationship to personalization there, too. It's easier for us to purchase in a self-served way. What are the different ways businesses are tuning in to their customers and making it easier for them to purchase? -- It’s  by understanding them so well that they don’t even have to be present and don’t have a sales rep holding their hand through the whole purchase process.” - Valerie Howard    Resources:  PROS  Continental Airlines  Hanover Research    Connect with Valerie Howard:  LinkedIn  E: [email protected]    Connect with Mark Stiving:      Email: [email protected] LinkedIn Twitter