Well, hello and thank you for tuning in to another episode of
the professional pricing Society podcast.
My name is Terrance and we have a great conversation ahead of us
today. As we will be discussing the
importance of democratizing access to better pricing.
We have that conversation spearheaded by two very
important people. To very special guest with us
today, the first of which is mr. Matthew Johnson, he's the
founder and CEO of Epic conjoint, which is a
full-service product pricing, and promotion decision.
A software solution provider enabling game-changing b2c and
B2B commercial decisions across over 130 markets within three
business days. Thank you so much.
Matt for joining us today Wells, have Rob ribbed shook who is the
managing partner of ebitda catalyst, they provide pricing
strategy, and execution advisory for high growth brands in the
consumer and software sauce Industries with a focus on
middle-market mission-driven clients how you guys doing.
Great looking forward to this. Good, good.
Awesome was a pleasure to have you, both.
Let's just go ahead and jump right into it right into the
discussion, democratizing access to better.
Pricing. What exactly does that mean to
each of you guys? Well, maybe maybe I could kick
off and just share some thoughts?
I guess. I, you know, I've had the
benefit of being in that the hot seat, that is the pricing.
The pricing role used to head of pricing.
The price of department for some big telecom companies here here
in Europe. And yeah, I mean by back then it
was there were times where you just felt you were flying by the
seat of your pants. You, you were relying purely on
transactional data to make your future pricing decisions.
And you know as we know it's a bit like the investment, you'll
investment caveat, you know, past Almonds is not an indicator
of future. So there was definitely a lot of
squeaky bomb times back then. But fortunately, you know, I
think in the last just in the last five years, maybe the
amount of investment in pricing Solutions has been, you know,
Monumental and you know pricing departments.
Now get the get the benefit of that, you know, in terms of Of
having having being able to make quick pricing decisions at the
click you know virtually at the click of a button is hugely
empowering. And yeah it's it's all credit to
the the solutions providers who've been Innovative in this
space and produced produced the codes.
Now and I would just chime in math.
I mean I think obviously with you and epic have done you know
from a software driven Solutions standpoint I mean that's been
the recipe for democratizing access in other parts of
industry and economy as well. And as pricing has risen in
importance and visibility and especially as we're traversing
this period of, you know, Fairly extraordinary inflation and just
pricing centered changes. I think the way I think about it
that is Bryce team. Also can have a social impact
separation of The Haves and Have Nots so to speak.
And you know, there's always been some solutions for, you
know, the Fortune 100 Fortune 500, you know, the kinds of
people who could, you know, higher very poor.
Pricey consulting firms pay for very expensive Solutions and so
on. And at the other end of the
spectrum, we have an entire part of our society, both in terms of
firms that maybe smaller, mid-market, that haven't
historically had access to either the advice or the
solutions, even though they do have things to price, right?
And then at the very far end of the opposite Of the spectrum.
You have a lot of individuals that may not have anything to
price. There are net, recipients of the
price increases that we see the price decisions that we see and
that might include as far as, you know, even retirees.
And, you know, the unemployed and so on that don't even have
their own labor for price. So they have nothing to
compensate. The pricing decisions that are
being made that they, you know, they're just priced payer.
There's so to speak in the economy and so for me, thinking
about the entities that represent these parts of the
society, whether it's middle-market, firms, startups,
nonprofits. And when I say nonprofits, you
know, at ebitda Catalyst, we've always tried to do pro bono work
for nonprofits that have things to price.
Those are the types of entities that represent these
traditionally underprivileged when it To access to the
benefits of pricing parts of the economy.
So for me, it's always been important to not just to serve
the halves which all of us do and we try to be good at but
also think about the other side that the recipients of the
consequences of some of those decisions and how do we keep
society and vibrant and the economy by burnt by lifting?
All boats? So, based on what you're saying,
And this is something that's worth getting excited about what
you say. Yeah, for sure.
I mean, I'm at Pecan joint is just kind of emerging from the
startup startup mode and we've been immersed in in startup
incubators. And when I, when we first came
into this startup Community, notice it was huge blind.
Spot pricing was a huge blind spot for a lot of startup
companies you know, Eric please the most important p in the Then
mix. And what I was finding out was,
you know, very often, it wasn't until the last minute when was
ready to hit the launch button. That was, oh my God, you know,
what price do we put on this? Oh, you know, we just, we give
it away for free and we'll see, we'll see what happens, see what
clients say or and so, it was, it was, it was, it was really
scary. So we've actually embarked on a
pricing training, even amongst the community, their startup
communities. We go around the different.
Hubs Soooo and Enterprise schools.
Educating educating people on how on the importance of getting
their pricing, right? Best practice price tools skills
and processes. I guess.
Fortunately, back to my previous point about in the last five
years, a huge investment, and Innovation and pricings software
Solutions. People now who are starting to
take an interest in pricing have kind of leapfrogged, you know,
so what we as pricing guys over the last 15 20 years of Taken
15, 20 years to get to this point.
They can do it very, very quickly now with all of these
pricing solutions that are available.
So it's yeah, it's hugely empowering and liberating for
for the pricing community and as Robert mentioned, you know,
really experienced this myself as as you know leading the
pricing teams within the organization's telecom
companies, you know. They're just totally
underestimated, in terms of the value, they bring to commercial
decision. So yeah, really, really
exciting, exciting times for the price and community, and raising
the profile of that pricing Department.
You know, looking forward to the day when we see Chief pricing
officer on the board, or in the c-suite, don't think it's too
far away. I couldn't agree more.
And I think there is like, so many.
Facets to get excited about. I mean, you know, even the the
knowledge that there is ultimately sort of a Synergy or
build-up effect from the contributions made in different
areas of this problem, right? So so it used to be before I
knew math and some of the other folks working in this area You
know, when a conversation would turn for example, with a
potential client or to doing more research, you would have
this cringing feeling of like, oh my gosh, here comes the
budget conversation and it's potentially going to tank the
project or, you know, the the because it was thoroughly
off-putting an inaccessible for all.
But the, you know, very large companies and so certainly
Knowing that, that part of the ecosystem of solution and has
more accessible reliable excellent Solutions out there.
And also people, we like to work with writing, those Solutions
has made those conversations a lot easier and frankly an option
in more Congress in more clients situations and in further, as I
mentioned later you know, sort of like this trickle-down
effect, like where is the car? Off.
You know, if you start high with the Haves and do you end up low
with the really have nots? Where is the cutoff of people,
you know, still benefiting from from this.
So for us as providers of advice advisory rather than necessarily
softer, we partner with people like Matt for software, you know
that to is, is extremely important, right?
So a start-up like, Matt was a couple of years ago, wouldn't
historically have had a Access to someone to come in and talk
at the reasonable program to reasonable cost about what they
can do with pricing to be better, right?
And so we all see the benefits of those software and startups
and smaller businesses, making it and contributing in the
economy as best they can. And, you know, for the advisory
side, we try to extend our services to smaller entities
like that for precisely that. Reason.
And, you know, it's exciting to say, we don't really say no
based on cost, at least, for some portion of our work.
Okay. Yeah.
And that's understandable, can you forgive me?
May have eluded to this or mentioned this previously, but
were there any specific examples or two from your specific Farms
work? Well what we're saying now that
the challenges facing all, you know, companies You know from
startup to SME smaller cap. Mid-cap even the large you know
household brand names, you know, they're facing this perfect
storm where input costs are rising.
So profits are getting squeezed and now with inflation and the
pressures that putting on disposable income you know
consumers consumers are getting In more price conscious and,
and, and considering Arbitrage positions, you know, trading
binder that the more that, you know, the generic store brand
products. That's what we're working with
some clients and specifically in the fmcg spaced that are really
feeling that pinch, what they're really trying to understand.
Is how much of this exposure, because there's no, there's no
end in sight. Nobody's talking about This
dissipating anytime soon which is which is really scary but
they're really trying to understand how much can they
pull on that pricing lever to try and alleviate the The
Squeeze on margins and in a you know in conjunction with looking
at our cost base and and rationalizing.
So you know helping them understand their the price
elasticities of their product. Their competitors products at
different customer segments levels, that's that's critical
and that's what the really really trying to Grapple with
and get that that visibility. So that that's that's a lot of a
lot of the work we're doing with the big, big fmcg brands at the
moment is trying to understand where that head room is and
where that Cliff Beyond which if they price it so high that it's
just going to demand is just going to fall off a cliff.
So yeah really Really, really anxious anxious times.
Sure sure. Yeah.
I mean, I really like the example, Matt, just gave, which
is, you know, our brains have been conditioned to see over the
last couple of years, to think about pricing, in terms of
always going up right pricing increases but you know, and so
on and so forth. But I think some of the work
that Matt's doing helping companies, understand, you know,
price pack architecture what what what is that offering that
can still be affordable. For the consumers that they're
squeezed out there, you know, that's, that's really important
and that, you know, switching to what we do.
You know, one of the things I'm very excited about this, you
know, we thought about what can we do for those smaller firms.
May be a start-up, maybe someone below five million dollars in
revenue. And, you know, we introduced
this kind of packaged offering, which is, you know, a small and
medium business pricing power Workshop.
It's something where we go in for, you know, up to a work day.
You know, it's usually a little less because people can only
absorb so much pricing talk at the time and, you know, really
as opposed to, you know, giving some sort of canned that core
something like that. We actually take the time to
understand that small business, you know, we run a Google form
survey ahead of time to, you know, think about their specific
industry, their specific problems.
So, you know, meet them where they're at with.
Customized advice that we can give in a compressed period of
time together with some of the Frameworks and tools that would
help them. And you know they can have that
for a pretty nominal fee that is you know when a completely
different Universe from what Theo typical work in the space
charges charges and you know it's very interesting.
We've been able to serve with that anybody from you know
smaller couple million dollars in Revenue.
Professional Services firms to startups inside and outside
larger companies. And so you know there's there's
there's clearly a demand for that walk before you run product
and you know for many many businesses who are just looking
to get off to the ground and do something about pricing in an
educated fashion, 80% of the battle is helping them gain that
conviction and something. They don't need more than just
this, you know, fairly small bite and if that gets them to
conviction and enough information and expertise to
take that 80/20 action and their business, that's a fantastic
outcome. Now, I want to get both of
y'all's opinions on this next question, as well, and your
opinion is democratizing access, not cannibalizing, the
higher-value business. Just speaking from epic con
joints perspective. So you know our USP is rapid
conjoint surveys. You know, I'm very cost
effective rates. So what wine is you know, though
and this was my experience when I used to commission, conjoint
studies back when I was heading, heading a pricing.
You know, you to gauge a research agency or consulting
firm could take up to two to three months to do, one
conjoint, depending on the sector you're in.
Arguably, the results are redundant at that point.
So you know, many of these clients have multiple products
and multiple markets previously, you would only get one shot at a
conjoint. You would only the finance, the
CFO would give you, you know, one shot, one budget to to run
one conjoint study the risk with that is So many.
So many questions where pile into that one conjoint study,
that, you know, the results were arguably diluted when they were
eventually provided what we've done by democratizing this
access to content. Particularly conjoint, is we
allow companies of all sizes to run conjoint really quickly as
of when the business need arises and that business he could be.
New product launch a new service launched a price increases
assessing price increases evaluating a compare competitor
risk whether they're the launch a new product or they've
launched a very impressed promotion.
So by enabling them to, to apply rapid, conjoint surveys to
Myriad of use cases has really that from our Perspective has
opened up so many more revenue streams beyond the typical.
It's a new product launch. Let's let's run a conjoint
studies. It's going to take two to three
months. Of course not.
Absolute Fortune. Now we do it within two to three
days at a fraction of a fraction of the cost.
So and and that, that message is really sinking in.
To the point we have we have clients now purchasing that
multinational companies purchasing Pax and really using
those all over the world to run quick.
Conjoint studies, to answer these critical product, pricing
promotion questions. I love that print in, it's
actually spot on because, you know, sometimes when I was
thinking about, you know, pray research studies, you know,
conjoint analysis. I think one of the concerns
always was because there's a limited amount of actions or
variables that you can insert in any one particular study before
it becomes, you know too complex or potentially inconclusive
etcetera. I always had this question in
the back of my head you know what happens if you need a
second or a third to really nail all the angles of what you need
and you know like Matt said, you know before when both from a
timing and a cost standpoint that Have been a pretty horrible
compounding. That was terrifying, right?
And I think a lot of people who understood that risk stayed away
whereas now with some of the work he's doing and others like
him, it's a lot more realistic. You know, from our standpoint,
the cannibalizing risk. I mean, of course the pricing we
think about that all the time when we advise our clients and,
you know, for example, for us we're very clear, of course, our
pro bono work is virtually 100% for nonprofits.
And we have a selection criteria set for with which nonprofits
can qualify. And even the small and medium
business Workshop is clearly delineate.
The limited to, you know, less than 5 million dollar Revenue
companies and we basically do only up to three of those a
quarter. So we put pretty clear, limits
around, you know, how much in Whom that that work is is doable
and who's eligible and certainly we understand that, you know,
the hope is that some of these entities grow down the road to
actually succeed and become clients in, you know, the more
sweet spot type of projects that we do with the majority of our
time for larger clients. Okay, good.
Thank you. Well explain.
Thank you. Now, let me ask you this, you
know, knowing that both you guys care deeply about this.
How does knowing each other help you balance this against other
priorities. Well look, I mean Robert really
admire what Roberts doing and, you know, diverting is valuable
time and effort to for pro bono cases with charity work and what
not we I guess I what I like to do in terms of giving back is,
you know, going to academic institutions.
So not so long ago, I was in the Copenhagen Business School.
Cool. And, you know, educating them on
on the benefits of conjoint analysis and the the intricacies
that can't can kind of merge but you know.
So I do not quite right. I always like to, you know, take
a step out from behind the the desk and kind of you know, go
get into Academia. Classrooms and share and share
that knowledge and share. Share my passion for pricing it
because, you know, I'm fanatical about it being as I think I said
stars as the most important p in the marketing mix and it's so
underrated. And anyone coming up with any
kind of a business degree or, you know, economics degree or
any, any screams going into business?
Really, really needs to be aware of.
This. So, so that's how I try and do
is, you know, in an academic context spread.
But also, as I said in the in the in the startup communities
as well, the incubators and the Hobbes, as I mentioned, it's a
big blind spot for a lot of companies.
So I like, you know, I like to see them leveraging leveraging
those that knowledge and pricing skills that We impart in these
lectures and workshops, it's, that's hugely rewarding.
And I feel like I mentioned already a couple of different
places where kind of knowing math or the work he's doing, you
know, makes either easier or more realistic to offer some of
this kind of expertise and make it more accessible to you know,
entities that ugly couldn't afford it.
And so on I'd also say, you know, we're we're social animals
and you know, because so much of pricing is focused on, you know,
ultimately helping clients be more profitable, Financial
metrics Financial accomplishment.
I think there's there's comfort and partnership and you know,
some degree of kinship and knowing there are other people
who care about this other side of the equations.
So the equation and, you know, it's been just lovely knowing
math and what he's doing. And I think he's powering a lot
of Ability Beyond his own firm for other people to, to promote
a smaller companies. And the democratizing of this
access We'll also want to thank you both for joining us and
spearheading this conversation today.
Before we depart would you guys mind sharing with the listeners
where they can find more of your material or where they can find
any of your resources robber? I'll let you go first and then
Matthew, all right, 12 stress, you've got Catalyst.com /sm.
Be like small medium business, is where we have information
about our small me. IAM business Workshop that they
mentioned. And of course the broader
website has information about our pro bono nonprofit.
So that's always the first place to start.
Yeah. Similarly, I think conjoint.com,
just click the, let's meet button.
Happy more than happy to have a chat explore.
You know, any pricing questions. People might have a kind of
specifically conjoint. Yeah.
Yeah, happy to do that or on LinkedIn.
We company website up there and, and obviously my personal
profile to. So, either way, I'll be happy to
have a chat with anybody, okay? I appreciate that.
Whether you are so much for listening to me.
Until next time, we will see you all later.
Have a good one. Thank you.
Thanks for having us.