All right. And hello and thank you all so
much for tuning into another episode of the Professional
Pricing Society podcast. My name is Terence, and today's
discussion is with a very, very special guest to the Pricing
Society. We have Mr. Kevin Mitchell, he's
the President of PPS and he's with us today.
And we'll be discussing the latest hot topics in pricing
that's expected to take over in 2024.
Kevin, good Sir. How you doing today?
Terrence, thank you so much. I'm doing very well.
Always good to talk with you and looking forward to our
discussion here. But yeah, thanks so much to you
for the great production work and everything that you do for
our organization as well. So very much appreciate it, Sir.
Of course, of course, absolutely.
Thank you for that. Now you, you are somebody who is
fairly plugged into a lot of different pricing professionals
and somebody who facilitates these type of conferences.
There's a lot of different type of topics that may run across
your table as far as what people want to talk about in breakout
sessions, workshops or keynote presentations.
So what do you think? Are some of the hot topics kind
of starting out in the new year? Yeah, that's a very good
question. And in a lot of ways, you're
correct. I mean, my knowledge and our
company's knowledge, we're often a mile wide, but sometimes only
a few inches deep because we talk with everyone, but
sometimes we don't get really, really in depth with a lot of
people. But we are in a position where
we get a good overview of what people are talking about and
some of the things that I'm hearing PPS members worldwide
talk about. One would certainly be we still
have continued economic uncertainty where we don't know
what's going to happen from a global macroeconomic
perspective. We are still depending on your
geography and your industry, still perhaps fearing inflation,
hybrid inflation, deflation, depending on your inputs and
where you are. And basically there are a lot of
things going on with your leading towards a lot of
uncertainty from an economic perspective.
So that's one thing as pricing people that we have to deal
with. Another one is that we have all
discovered that we have huge amounts of data whether or not
it's perfect or imperfect or somewhere in between.
And so data analysis would be another big topic on how we can
take advantage of the information that we do have to
set strategies and tactics going forward.
And of course, when we talk pricing, a lot of that boils
down to monetization. Our companies put forth a lot of
energy and a lot of effort in developing our products, our
goods, our services and so on and so forth.
And often the big issue is how we can take this work and how we
can actually get it into dollars and EUR and yen and 1:00 and all
the other economies that we deal with out there.
So really monetization is always a big effort and also a couple
new topics that we're hearing more and more about in 2024.
One would be around sustainability.
It could be around green efforts, around ecological
efforts, around ESG, environmental, social, social
and governance and other issues around that with looking at new
ways of doing business and some of the new initiatives that are
out there. And I like to warn people when I
talk with our members across the globe and if you're not familiar
with ESG, with green and with sustainability, you will be soon
because these initiatives are coming your way as well.
Depending on your, again, depending on your geography,
your industry, it might be ancient history, it might be
current, but and it might be coming, but it definitely is
coming in one way or another. And Terrence, I think one more
hot topic that everyone is talking about now would be
artificial intelligence overlapping with machine
learning and some of the latest really interesting tools that
are out there as far as AI and what it can do for business
people and what it can do for pricing, revenue management
professionals as a whole. So really we have a lot of
interesting things that are going on now.
There is a lot that is new and of course with our members, your
mileage may vary depending again on where you are in the line of
business that you're in. But what I hear from PPS member
companies globally, these I would say would be the biggest
five or six hot topics that people are talking about right
now. But great question.
And hey, there's a lot going on right now, definitely.
It sounds, it sounds like it's a lot going on right now and it
sounds like also it's it's it varies based on the region like
you mentioned before. But yeah, you're completely
right. Monetization is debatably the
biggest topic because everyone's trying to figure out how to
multiply their revenue. Data analysis, sustainability.
AI is going to be, you know, the topic of the of the, I say of
the future, but it's it's the topic now in preparation for the
future. So I'm glad you made mention of
those. You know when you think about
it, a lot of these topics have a lot to do with team
collaboration and and departments coming together to
make things grow and and multiply and just be more
efficient. Let me ask you this, good Sir.
How can pricing and revenue growth management teams work
more effectively with other departments to maybe achieve
their goals or to reach new milestones?
Yeah. That's a great question because
often there is a little bit of healthy butting of heads and
sometimes there are conflicting goals between revenue growth
management or pricing departments and sales or
marketing or finance or product management.
Sometimes our goals as pricing professionals may be on centered
on margin dollars or on effective price realization or
something like that. But your sales people, their
goals may be purely on volume or primarily on top line growth or
something like that. And those two, there can be a
little bit of healthy conflict. At least we hope it's healthy
conflict between goals like that.
And so when faced with issues like that, when we have to work
effectively with other departments, I try to remind our
member companies and our contacts that really we have to
use our empathy and our sympathy.
We have to talk with people on their terms and we have to
remember that their goals and their strategies may be a little
bit different than our goals and our strategies.
And those in turn also might be different than the corporation's
overall overall goals and strategies.
And also in addition to use of utilizing these so-called soft
skills, same things from other people's viewpoints, talking
with them on their own terms, understanding how they're
challenged, how they're compensated, what their goals
are, what they're trying to do. We also have to remember that we
have to present data, our thoughts, our strategies in a
way that matches up with what our counterparts are ready to
deal with. For example, if you have a 25
year sales veteran on one hand and a brand new MBA who's a
hotshot financial analyst on the other hand, you probably can't
talk about your pricing data, your RGM revenue growth
management data in the same way to both of those parties.
They have completely different backgrounds, completely
different goals, different experiences and so on and so
forth. There ideally we do want to tie
all of our strategies to the corporation's overall goals and
strategies. But of course there can be some
differences they're in. So always remember that your
sales people know your their products and their sales
stories, their sales territories, I'm sorry, and
their markets far better than you can.
And product managers probably know their product attributes
far better than you do. But as pricing and revenue
management professionals, we have the job of knowing about
all of the supply chain, all of the market conditions, what the
competition is going to do. We have to be familiar with all
of the data and we have to reach a common ground with them where
we describe why certain things should take place, describe why
we feel that certain deals are great or are not great or
somewhere in between. And we also have to remember
that when we come from these different perspectives, we all
have our own viewpoints, and all viewpoints can be correct from
the beholder's perspective. And really, that's when we use
our partnership, our arts and our sciences, our data skills,
but also our negotiation skills to reach decisions that are best
for everyone as best we can. And we also have to keep in
mind, even though we would never say this publicly, but sometimes
we all have the pleasure of dealing with advanced senior
sales people who have 25 years of history, but sometimes that
25 years of history is one year of history that's repeated 25
times over and over again. We should be in the position
where we have broad data, a lot of market insights, a lot of
knowledge of what might happen next.
And also we have to be in a position to put all this
information together in a way that our different counterparts
can understand it, that we can negotiate with them internally
and externally. And hopefully we can all reach
agreements where we're doing the best things for our company, our
employer, moving forward. So we all stay happy and healthy
from a business perspective. That's good.
That's, that's really good. You know that and that's also a
great point presenting data in a certain way that our
counterparts can receive it well.
And how I present data, I mean to my colleague may be
completely and how they receive it may be completely different
depending on how I receive that same data.
So that makes a lot of sense. And then you also mentioned
trust as well. Well, indirectly, I guess I
suppose trusting that whoever we're speaking with as far as
different departments that they actually do have that skill set
and that knowledge to to be able to contribute to the
conversation. And it's in a way that we can
kind of find some sort of common ground that also highlights all
of our strengths, if that makes sense, if I'm saying that
correctly. Definitely.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
It is all of our jobs to make sure that our company continues
to generate good profitable growth because that's how we get
to reinvest in our company and all of our salaries and bonuses
in our product development going forward and in all of our other
efforts there. So from a big corporate
perspective, hopefully we can all see that we should be on the
same team moving forward. Sometimes there is an amount of
stress with conflicting goals there, but we have to be human,
we have to be artists and scientists, and we have to move
forward and be the best team members that we can.
That's the goal at least ideally.
Now let me ask you this as well. You know, when it comes to our
PPS members and the people who subscribe to these knowledgeable
professionals and and really experts in the field, how can
PPS members prepare for something like economic
uncertainty? That's a very tough issue.
And yes, you're correct. That's one thing that we hear a
lot about because we really don't know what's going to
happen next. And I would say the first step
is always don't panic, take a deep breath.
And the second step is once again, don't panic again and
think about it. We've had economic uncertainty
before. We'll have it again and again,
depending on your business and where you are.
It may have been recently, the last time we had situations like
that. It may have been a long time
ago, but others have faced it and have been able to recover,
survive and thrive and move on. And I always think in situations
like this, there are a few things that we can do.
One is that we can all use our contacts inside and outside of
our company to find people who have dealt with this before.
And by that, for example, I mean that during the pandemic, we
really feared hyperinflation and increasing inflation really
across the globe. And for those of us in North
America, Western Europe, a lot of us hit the panic button and
started really, really being very, very concerned about that
to a huge degree where it may have prevented good calm thought
in a lot of cases. And we also have to remember
that what was a crisis for us, if you are from Argentina or
elsewhere in Latin America or Turkey or various places in
Africa, hyperinflation, they would have called that Tuesday.
It would have been no big deal for them because they're
familiar with it and they've done it before.
So they're always people who have faced your issues before.
So seek them out. Get knowledge, network,
benchmark, take a deep breath, think of all the scenarios, get
a range of scenarios. Remember that we have to be game
theorists. We don't do anything in a
vacuum. If we make a move, our markets,
our competitors may make moves also and we have to take that
into account as well. When dealing with economic
uncertainty, we can plan for a number of scenarios.
It's very interesting because in a way we have to be
forward-looking and backward looking at the same time.
And I remember talking with a few very, very smart people at
one of our events, Terrence. And at the height of the
pandemic, when everyone was talking about inflation, I
remember talking with a group who said right now we need to
put plans in place for potential stagnation or deflation because
the inflation was already here and things can be cyclical at a
certain level. And so you've got to consider
all of the opportunities there. And you don't want to panic, but
you also don't don't want to be very late to the party.
You want to be able to move with agility, with forethought and
also with the knowledge that our moves do not happen in a vacuum.
Any move we take, there may be a competitive response, a market
response, and we have to take that into account and be willing
to adjust our plans based on that as well.
So we have interesting challenges.
We have some great opportunities there, but we have survived
economic uncertainty before. We will survive it again and
seek out people who have knowledge about it.
Remember your game plans, remember your corporate goals,
and remember to be able to plan for a few different scenarios
along a spectrum there. And also again the game theory.
Remember that your move may generate another move from
somebody else and so on and so forth.
And we don't want a big domino effect leading to basically a
price war or anything like that because our whole industry may
lose in a situation like that. So don't panic, think, seek out
knowledge, think about the competitive response and act
accordingly. Act quickly, but not in a
panicked fashion. I think that's probably the best
way that we can all deal with uncertainty and remember the
lessons from before and take that into account as we move
forward as well. That's.
That's good. You know that that can almost
translate just to life advice. Yeah.
Don't, don't. Pirates is, you know, pricing
his life in a lot of ways. Price.
We're telling you. Quotes, but yeah, there are some
parallels there. Mm hmm.
OK, that's good. Now, now Speaking of, you know,
something like uncertainty or economic uncertainty, there's
this little thing that's starting to take over called
artificial intelligence. Now my question is, in your
opinion, what effects will AI have on people's jobs moving
forward? Because it is starting to kind
of take over and it's, you know, just like the we had machines
that started to build a car is a lot quicker than the assembly
line. So a lot of people in the
assembly line that worked those jobs didn't have a job anymore.
Same thing with I guess the keyboard and the typewriter or
whatever the case is. So now it's artificial
intelligence and now you see across the board a lot of these
companies are starting to lay off a lot of these tech roles
and things of that nature. What you know or just generally
in pricing, how will it have an effect on people's jobs moving
forward? Yeah, it's a very interesting
topic. And AI is a tool, so we have to
remember that. And in a lot of cases, if you've
been around for a little while, as I have, as you can tell by
the three Gray hairs that I have, we've heard kind of over
and over again how certain new tools, new things, new machines
and so on and so forth are just going to wipe out large amounts
of jobs. And really kind of what happens
is they usually involve a shipping of jobs but not really
wiping out jobs. Of course, no one is building
Model T's anymore. But when the Model T came out,
people were like, oh, that's just going to kill entire
industries. And it really means for a shift,
you know, if you are in one of these areas where a new tool
basically means a huge change, then you have to become familiar
with the tool, of course, and think about what's next.
And jobs will change. There are some jobs that will go
away with every new, with every new tool, with every new
advancement. But really, if you look about it
from a holistic perspective, really it means a shifting of
those jobs more than the whole type of job going away.
We are still basically looking at things where if a lot of
manufacturing is done with robotics and with machinery, we
still have jobs there. They're just a lot different
than they are. We don't have people actually on
assembly lines in various parts of the world like we used to,
but we still have jobs for those people.
They just may be different jobs. So a healthy amount of concern
is definitely valid. Jobs will change.
I do believe that from a big picture perspective, this will
be like any other tool that will advances from a business
perspective, from a human perspective.
But there are those shifts that can happen along the way.
I remember hearing that when the Internet was taking off, it was
just going to kill all of our jobs.
We were going to work 4 hours a week.
All the information would be right there.
There would be no need for people to do research or
anything like that. And of course that.
Did not, was not the case. I'm sure if you're from a
generation when personal computers and typewriters came
about, well, yeah, for stenographers or for people who
wrote in longhand, that job went away.
But basically, if they were able to train and able to work with
computers, the job was still there, it was just in a
different function using the tool.
And I remember hearing from a few people at our events, I
think it was Kavia. I can't remember Kavia's last
name, but others had said no, AI.
AI won't replace us directly as pricing people, but an
individual who is familiar with AI and who uses AI and these
other tools in machine learning may have a big advantage over
someone who is not familiar with the tools.
So I've also heard people say that you can think of AI right
now as a bright but impressionable teenager.
It knows a lot about what's going on today.
It may come up with some great pie in the sky, plans for
tomorrow. It may hallucinate.
It may have these hallucinations.
Whether or not there's a bug or a feature probably depends on
your job function. But AI itself has not LED your
company through a tough negotiation.
It hasn't had the to manage the internal challenges.
It hasn't had to deal with a sales vice president when you're
bumping heads up against a quota or anything like that.
But we as pricing professionals and we still have that
experience. So AI is the tool.
Jobs can and probably will change.
We need to be familiar with AI, know its limitations, know its
strengths, know how to use it, be familiar with it and make it
a good strategic partner. As we have with computers and
the Internet and all of these other advancements and robotic
assembly lines and so on and so forth.
The jobs may see a shift, but as far as the total number of jobs,
that will not go away, I believe at least.
Anyway, we're not going to be fully replaced by AI or
machines. There's still going to be a
great need for human intuition and a lot of cases I think and
hope that AI can be a great advantage in that it will take
care of a lot of the grunt work around some of our jobs and free
us up for a higher level strategic thinking.
So we need to be prepared for that as well.
We are in the midst of an AI revolution and there are a lot
of different theories on what's going to happen with it.
So we are living in interesting times there.
As far as total number of jobs, I personally don't have a fear
that we're not going to lose a total number of jobs.
There are specific industries that will have these big shifts
where the job that you perhaps thought you were going to have
five years from now or next year may not exist in the current
format. But there will be another,
hopefully higher level, hopefully more strategic,
hopefully more managerial job or jobs that replace those
interesting times though, definitely.
Interesting times to say the least.
That's a great and a great explanation of of it as well.
As you know it's more so of a shift in in your words than a
complete annihilation as it as it people kind of deem it to be
at the moment. At least now I want to kind of
steer in a different direction with this conversation and ask
you one last question that's not too hopefully not too strenuous
of a thought process. What is new with PPS, What's
going on around the the walls of of the PPS building and the the
team and everything going on this new year what what would
you say is kind of new with the team and everybody?
Oh yeah, definitely. Thanks for asking that, Terence.
Appreciate that. Also, I hear from a lot of
members around the globe and we're lucky in that we do
business basically everywhere and we are so lucky.
First of all, that PPS has a great team, yourself and our
team members included of course. And we always have a lot of new
things that are going on with us.
Some of the things that are brand new for us is we are
continuing expanding our online training courses.
I think we have 55 now and maybe 56 or 57, I'm not sure, but we
add them all the time. And of course, we work closely
with our big member companies to discuss the challenges that they
are facing right now and rebuild our programs based on everyone's
feedback in order to meet their needs as well.
So I want to make sure that PPS members keep an eye on our new
offerings that are coming up because we've got some great new
online training courses for you and for your team.
And also of course we are continuing to expand our
certifications for those who want to do a lot of in depth
learning around revenue management, around pricing,
around sales enablement and a lot of related fields there.
We are continuing to build and expand on the CPE as an Edward
program. The certificate of profitability
education really is designed for people who have pricing as part
of their jobs but may not even know it or know how much of it
there is. They may be in sales or
marketing or finance or operations, they may make
pricing decisions and and they need to know something about
that so that they're not using a gut instinct or something like
that. So we have a a certification
really that's not for people who have pricing or revenue or
margin or customer in their job title, but for people who have
sales or product management or marketing or finance and their
title as well. And we think that this is a
great way to address some of the things that we talked about
earlier and that is the collaboration, the teamwork.
When we have to deal with other departments, we think not only
is it great if we know what they're talking about, but we
have a way for them to know what we're talking about as well.
And basically the CPE for your team members.
It's a great way for people who really don't know anything about
pricing to learn about what we beautiful we are those who are
in pricing do on a daily basis, so we can build a common
language there, OK. Also as we speak, Terrance, we
just received the brochure in the program for the next great
PPS. Event we did.
So our, yeah, our 35th annual conference is in April, April
23rd through 26th in Chicago, our second home, the city where
we've had far more events than any other city on the planet.
And we've got two new breakout tracks.
One is around practical pricing, so things that you and your team
can take back to your office immediately and work on.
And the other one's entitled Data science pricing from A to
I, some of the things that we were talking about earlier as
well around some of the scientific advancements in AI
and machine learning and how you can use those tools for your
teams. So yeah, make sure to keep an an
eye out for emails from Terrence and from me and from our team on
our new programs there. And of course you can always
check our website pricingsociety.com to register
and to check out more information for that.
And later this year, we're going to go back to Las Vegas, your
favorite city and Berlin for our fall conference and our 19th
annual European and Global conference there.
So a great program of advance, a lot of online offerings, a lot
of ways for you and your team to get information through our
podcasts and webinars, expanding that, expanding our social media
offerings. And really a lot of ways for you
and your team to work on your training, to network, to
benchmark, to hear the latest and greatest strategies and
tactics and really get the information that you need in
order to continue doing your job as best you can, to do great
things to your company, to exceed your goals and to move
forward there. So yeah, we're very thankful and
that in these interesting times, we have a lot of new initiatives
for pricing professionals worldwide.
So we are going to have a wonderful year and definitely
look forward to connecting with everyone around all of these
offerings and around all of these great topics as well.
Mr. Kevin Mitchell, President of the Professional Pricing
Society, it has been a pleasure to speak with you today.
I want to thank you so much for your time.
If you wouldn't mind sharing with us very quickly where you
know interested party members can learn more about you or PPS
or just the different resources we have to offer.
Yeah, absolutely. You can certainly find me on
LinkedIn if you search for Kevin Mitchell and include pricing in
there. I think you will find me there.
Of course, my e-mail address is simplykevin@pricingsociety.com
and you can also check our website.
We'll have hashtags for our events coming up.
So our Chicago conference will be hashtag, EPS, CHI 24, So make
sure to keep an eye out for that as well.
And you can find lots of information about our online
training, about our certifications, about our
membership offerings, about our conferences to come at
pricingsociety.com, or you can just reach out to me.
Sounds good. Thank you so much again for your
time. And like Kevin said, we do have
our upcoming spring conference happening in April.
To learn more and to register for that, you can visit
pricingsociety.com as well. Thank you so much for your time,
Kevin, and you all have a very safe day today.
Bye, bye.