Very good day, everyone. My name is Kevin Mitchell from
Professional Pricing Society and welcome to the Let's Talk
Pricing podcast. This podcast is where we talk
issues for our members worldwide.
We talk about revenue management, we talk about global
macroeconomics, we talk about game theory and negotiating and
analytics, and of course, everything pricing related.
Thanks again for joining us today.
I'm very, very pleased that we have two very knowledgeable
gentlemen joining us today. That is Mr. Juan Echevery.
Juan is a, he is the Head of Revenue Management and
Commercial Planning for Latin America at Holsum, the concrete
company. Of course, he is joining us from
Mexico City. And one is a gentleman who is
very, very knowledgeable in a lot of different areas as far as
manufacturing processes, as far as revenue management, and
someone who also leads a team. And joining us also today is Mr.
Laurent De Sonia. Laurent is joining us from
Amsterdam. He is the Co founder of Nexo
Consulting. And a lot of us know Laurent
through PPS when he was with Philips, where he was a strategy
leader in healthcare, in health tech for Latin America as well.
But really today we are very happy that we have two global
leaders with a lot of experience joining us today.
And of course, Juan and Laurent are great partners with PPS at
PPS profitable in Dallas in May. On Wednesday, the 7th of May,
they will be leading a workshop entitled Develop Your Revenue
Growth Management Framework in one day.
So Juan, Laurent, gentlemen, thank you so much for joining
us. Looking forward to our
discussions. Thank you so much, Kevin.
It's a pleasure to talk to you always.
Thank you, Juan, and thank you Laurent as well.
No, thank you, Kevin. I mean, it's also a pleasure for
for being here with you in this podcast and also great that we
can have the privilege to, to talk in Dallas.
Absolutely. So we are looking forward to
seeing you in Dallas coming up. And of course, you all are
veterans of doing great workshops and great
presentations with us here at PPS.
And I know a lot of people are excited about your workshop to
come. So first of all, tell us a
little bit about what we're going to learn and how we can
develop our revenue growth management.
And Laurent, we will start with you.
What are some key strategies and tactics in your view that can
help us develop our revenue growth management?
Thank you, Kevin. I, I would maybe start saying
this, the, the journey we will be on is really to give the
attendees some practical tools, frameworks, some ammunitions, if
you can say like this to, to really go for a structured plan
to deliver sustainable and profitable growth.
That's basically the main goal for us.
So it's supposed to be very practical.
We basically Juan and I share experience from all past
industry experiences, so basically from different
companies from of course all the same with Juan is still in, but
also from Sanofi, PepsiCo and I show some examples from Philips.
So it's really giving, sharing our experience, executing the
strategy, making it stick to the organisations and to the
commercial people make it happen.
And at the end, we want the attendees to have this
possibility to have a plan at the end of the day so they can
bring it back to their world and try to start from there.
So it's really made for people to have experience who will have
maybe less experience, making them comfortable to, to develop
something new, having something structured, a plan to start the
journey on revenue growth. That's a little bit what we what
we hope we can achieve in that, in that day and we had already
done it in Chicago last year and was quite successful.
So we hope to repeat the same in in Dallas with the new audience.
Understood. And thank you so much, Laurent.
And of course, we love things that are actionable for our
member companies and for our members themselves.
So that's great, and I'm sure everyone will appreciate the
availability of your experience and learning about how they can
execute successful strategies, how they can create plans.
And really, it's going to be a wonderful day where we can all
learn on how to take our RGM, our revenue growth management
forward. So thank you very much for that.
And 1, Sir, how about from your viewpoint, from your
perspective, what are some other things that our members are
going to come away with after your workshop with us in Dallas?
I guess the the way we structure this is by leveraging the
experience that we as practitioners had with also top
consulting firms like some culture, Deloitte and so on in
different industries. When, when I work at PepsiCo, we
developed from scratch the whole, seeing the whole
framework for, for Latin America based on, on their experiences
and, and the work that was already done in, in the US and,
and on other regions of within the PepsiCo world.
And also when I joined Sanofi, we started the journey as well.
There, there was something already in place, but we, we
finished that up. So we, I, I guess we blend all
those experiences and also had some experiences with the
developing their own framework. So we tried to take the best out
of those experiences and blend with real case scenarios where
we developed the theory, but we were also able to apply that
theory and basically we learn, of course, we were not, not no
one is perfect. So we, we want to learn as as
well of, of them from the mistakes that we, we, we, we
made implementing this. So I guess that's, that's the
richness of our worship. And I know the last point I
guess is that we, we try to do it very practical and very
adapted to do to our audience. We do our homework before
joining the worship. We already know who's attending
what's, which industries are we talking about.
So we try to also customize for the audience for them to take
out the most out of the of the session.
And we are very flexible since we are practitioners, we are
very flexible in, in the way we develop the session and try to
focus on this, on the very specific things that the, the,
the the public need. Understood.
Thank you so much, Juan. That's great.
And of course, we always love the real case studies, the real
examples, and of course, we also love how we can look to apply
those to our daily businesses as well.
And one of the things that you mentioned is, of course, none of
us are perfect. And of course, pricing and
revenue management are jobs where we will certainly all have
missteps. We certainly hope to learn from
them and to move forward. But you mentioned some things
that with your experiences there, of course we all make
mistakes, but we learn from them and we do better and we move on.
And I've always thought that's an interesting approach for our
CPP workshops that we offer. Because a lot of the times I
know I go to events around the world for our part of the
business world and related parts of the business world as well.
And everyone is like, hey, here, all the best practices, if you
do this, it will work perfectly. But of course that's not the
case. Every situation can be a little
bit different and sometimes we can all learn more from slight
missteps or mistakes then we can.
And when everything goes gloriously well and when we have
mistakes and things like that, those can make for great case
studies where we can see what went wrong, what adjustments we
needed to make and how we can do better going forward.
So I think that that is a great explanation there and I
appreciate that. So a couple other questions for
you gentlemen. And we'll reverse our order this
time. So Juan, we'll start with you so
that Laurent doesn't have all the fun, but let's talk about
some of the specific revenue growth management pillars that
you'll be teaching. Can you give us a preview of the
pillars that you're going to concentrate on and how they can
apply across different specific industries?
Thank you, Kevin. Yes, basically we structured the
the session around 4 pillars. The first of course is is
pricing. We we talk about value based
pricing and how to get it done with our own experiences and and
learnings. Then we move to portfolio
management that it's also a way to get a profitable growth by
focusing on the right elements of within your portfolio.
How do you optimize those? How do you optimize the sales
mix depending on the channel and type of customers?
Then we move to promotional management.
I guess that's something that we are all interested and, and, and
I have found probably a misconception on those must be
to be people will think that promotional management is only,
I think for, for MC FM, CG or file of, of retail.
But it's something that you can do in any type of industry.
If you really get your, your category and your customers, you
can do it right. And finally, but I guess it's
one of the most interesting and, and personally, I really love
it. It's how you develop a, a
channel strategy that the answers to the needs of your
customers and, and really Dr. profitable growth for both
parties. So 4 pillars that we try to as
as I mentioned, we try to really adopt, adapt those to the type
of industries that we have in the room.
So we have flexibility to move from FMCG to B to B or to pharma
or any specific industry. We, we have work on, in, in, in
different ones. So we have that ability when we
started working on this with Laurent.
That's why we we created this partnership with him because we
complement each other's profile very well to the something wide
enough for different industries. Absolutely.
Thank you so much, Juan. So just so I'm understanding
everything correctly and for our members, the four pillars, one
we look at pricing specifically leaning towards value based
pricing of course. The second one was portfolio
management. We're looking at optimizing our
mix where we're going to focus which products, which services
and so on and so forth there. The third pillar you mentioned
was promotional management and you're correct, a lot of us
think that that is purely a retail, it is purely on consumer
goods or something like that. But of course, we're all seeing
more and more promotional management in business to
business with manufacturers, with people who do services and
elsewhere, of course, in addition to that.
And that's a very, very important pillar as well.
And of course, you ended your fourth pillar there on
developing channel strategies, which is very, very important
these days since most of us sell through multiple channels that
sometimes if we're not doing everything correctly right, can
even compete with each other. And of course sometimes our
customers are very smart. They figure out that we have
multiple channels as well. So they might investigate each
and every channel that we deliver our products and goods
and services through and compare and contrast and look for the
best deals there. So we have to maintain that
consistency. And I know from knowing both of
you, from seeing your presentations and your workshop,
that not only are we going to just learn about the four
pillars that Juan just talked about, but Laurent and Juan are
also going to talk about how we can execute them based on your
company, your company's goals, your company's unique maturity
and your company's needs. So Laurent, a question for you,
please. What does that customization
process look like when we're talking about these pillars?
Yeah. I mean for us like what I was
saying, so depending on the audience that we have at that
workshop, we will try to show examples on how it could apply
to the industry. Yeah.
So when we do value based pricing for consumer goods or
when we do it for healthcare products or when we do with
construction company material for example, it's a different,
it's a different exercise. Yeah.
So the theory might be very similar, but the way you will
put it in practice, the way you will make it stick, the
organization, it will be different.
I can give an example or so on the pricing angle.
So my journey at Philips was split between consumer business
at Philips or the consumer electronics which is a little
bit closer to what we call fast moving.
And then the other side which was healthcare, very different
portfolio, very different dynamic.
I could not apply everything that I knew about value based
pricing from the consumer business to healthcare.
Healthcare was much more trying to understand the economic, the
economic value of our solutions, who the hospitals understanding
the output it it gives like reduction of costs, for example,
a better flow, better productivity, better patient
experience. If you have many stakeholders
involved in a in a hospital. So it's not only about the user,
it was the buyer. There is the CEO, there is the
staff, there is many people involved in, in the experience
for consumer, it's, I wouldn't say simpler, but maybe it is so
because you have usually one buyer or maybe maybe a buyer and
a user. So the number of stakeholders
you need to take into account is more limited.
The dynamic is also very different, right?
So it's more about psychology, psychology of purchase than
really going to all the economic, let's say value
drivers. So there are things that you can
replicate. There are things that you need
to, to adapt. And that's what we will try to
do in the, in the workshops based on the audience really
understanding the, the, the stakeholders we are talking to
and try to replicate for them. So we have for every single
pillar exercises so that every attendee can really sit on a
sheet of paper and try to replicate what we just
explained. So the value based pricing is
the size they will have the chance to map value drivers for
their own solution and we will help of them on that.
On that journey is a short exercise but that should give
them the confidence to replicate it later for for their portfolio
and maybe for the organization to date.
But we do the same for every single pillar.
So we will give some concrete example of what we have left.
We can also talk about their own industry and try to make it
customized for for them. Understood and thank you so much
Laurent. I love your explanation about
how different industries lead to different experiences and very
simply how value based pricing in a consumer business can be
very, very different than value based pricing from a healthcare
perspective. Obviously within healthcare,
there's a bit of what we would call an agency type of a
situation where the hospital might purchase the healthcare,
but of course it's their patients who are the actual
users of the the healthcare. So that presents a very
different situation than a consumer business where if I or
you or Juan as a consumer purchase something, we're
probably going to be the user or our families will.
And so it's a very, very different situation there.
And I like how your experiences at Philips and elsewhere and
you're at Phillips and elsewhere allow you to have that variety
where you can take things from specific elements, specific
verticals, specific industries and look for ways that they can
apply to our audience and to apply basically in different
ways to help our revenue growth management exceed and to do
things better there. So thank you very much for the
explanation on that one as well. I appreciate that.
So other questions for you, Juan and Laurent.
A big part of success in pricing and in revenue growth management
seems to be stakeholder alignment.
Can I ask each of you to share an example of how you've seen
teams build confidence with their leadership by involving
them in the revenue growth management framework, design
implementation And basically the process is there and we'll
reverse our order again. So Laurent, this time we will
start with you. So tell us about an example
where you've seen a team build confidence with leadership when
talking about revenue growth, management strategies and next
steps. Yeah, I would, I would say I've
seen it very good example at at Philips on the consumer business
when we had developed a very strong revenue growth management
framework, probably replicating what the best practices from
fast moving well and and then you could see the whole
organization behind the the framework.
So we had shared goals, the the KPIs of performance were quite a
line around the organization and there was also a very good
balance between the central governance of that that
framework and the different markets who had to execute the
strategy. So I would say there were always
tensions. Of course, I mean that you
cannot not ever. Usually there is a tension
because one is focusing much more on selling and some are
focusing more on profitability. But at the end, as a as a, as a
company, I could see that there was a good balance between the
market and the headquarter. And I can make also the analogy
of what I've seen on the B2B side, where I could see the team
struggling a little bit more to find the same balance of
orchestrating the, let's say, the execution of that strategy
and make it make it land in the, in the countries, which is,
let's say why it's also good to to see the differences between
the different industries and CEO case in the same company.
Even you can have best practices and still struggle in other
parts of the organization. And I could see there that the
stakeholders were not always In Sync and there were too many,
let's say, conflicts around finally the same strategy.
So that's where we were always coming back on the same thing.
The most important in in the organization is how well you
communicate around your strategy and how well you make sure that
the executions stick from the top, the bottom of the
organization. And that was also the power of
the discussion I had with one where we were exchanging those,
those insights from different, let's say, experiences from
different industry and we could connect the dot OK, you, you
know, here, I think we had the best practice here.
I think we could do better. And then we can bring it back in
our workshop and share that experience and say, look, don't
replicate those mistakes because I think we can give you some
tips to avoid them and try to see that there are some best
practice that you can leverage on.
And I think that's what we try to bring because of course I've
seen also the situation where. Not aligning all the
stakeholders can bring actually a lot of frustration, but also
some bad results. So it's always good good to go
back to the essence of, OK, we are all human beings.
Let's make sure that you communicate and try to make
results together. So that's the say what I would,
what I would say. OK, I understand.
Thank you so much, Laurent. And of course, people who listen
to the Let's Talk pricing podcasts have heard me say this
a couple times already. But as revenue managers, as
pricing strategy analysts, managers, directors, vice
presidents, we have to be both artists and scientists.
And a lot of that art is communicating, reaching and
deciding where we have common goals, how we can help out each
other. And of course, that leads to the
execution, which might be more on the scientific end where we
look at the numbers and we look at actual things that we can do
in specific situations there. So I love that example.
So thank you so much and Juan for you Sir, same question.
Can you share an example where you've seen a team build
confidence with their leadership by involving them in a revenue
growth management framework? And I, I was reflecting and and
it it's good that I was on 2nd place because I, I can't think
better my my answer. But actually I I think I would
like to share one example that is very recent.
We we have been building trust with the sales teams for the
last five years on on how we do our pricing strategies and
basically on our side. On our side there are two
lessons. First, if you involve evolve
from the very sales Rep to the sales director early on, on
during the process, the decision making process, they, those guys
will really become ambassadors and and will endorse your
strategy because they feel part of, of, of the strategy.
So that's, that's one piece of advice.
And then everything is everything else is very easy
because you're already tested and learned from them when and
then if you go up in the in the hierarchy ladder, it is going to
be easier because you already build trust on the on the lower
side. So, and, and very specifically,
when we introduce the AI powered strategy, something that was new
for everyone, many of the feel like using AI is like a black
box. You put things in that and you
don't know what's happening on the inside.
And then when you take it out the, the outcome, you don't
understand the process, the thinking process and the
processing of the tool. So what we did is try and and to
test and learn with them by creating these peer groups,
customer pre peer groups. So we started saying, look, if
you have customer X that is very similar and share these five of
or 10 characteristics with this group of customers that is also
from your region, from your scope and, and see how they are
performing in a different way. You can see by yourself why the,
the tool, the, the, the software is giving, it's giving us this
type of recommendation to increase prices.
So we take it, take them by the hand and walk them through the
whole process. And by doing that, they really
grew confidence on, on the tool and how the tool will work.
And nowadays they love it. They, they just love it.
They just adopt anything that the tool will recommend because
they really were part of the of the, of the decision making
process and how we tweak the, the OR fine tune the, the tool
to make it work for us instead of against them as they might
see the tool at the beginning. So that's something that we are,
we are also including in our workshop probably is not written
in stone, but if anyone wants to learn from our experiences
implementing AI tools like Pross, that is my case.
That's something that we can also cover and and share
examples on how we do it for different business units on
different modules, smart pricing, smart optimization,
evade to management. So that's something that I guess
is very powerful nowadays to to share also with the with with
people. Horrific.
Thank you, Juan. And that's a good thing about a
workshop with Laurent De Sonia and with Juan Echevari is that
being in some of their presentations before, I know
that they can tailor needs. And of course, they will be able
to answer your specific question.
So I would encourage anyone, if you are considering AI tools or
if you have AI tools that have been considered for you and you
have questions about that, then certainly they are both expert
in how you can make that transition.
And one, I really like your explanation about how we thought
in your instance that AI was this big black box where data
goes in and data comes out. But once you walk them through
the process, once you look at the customer peer groups and
understood it, that everyone really bought into it once they
figured things out and once they were able to see it in action.
So that's one of these things where we can look at human
nature and look at us. And sometimes when we understand
things we tend to rely on, the more understand, the more
understanding, the more means that we can get better results
from them as well. So that's very interesting on
how we can take a new tool, a modern tool.
But once we see the inner workings of it, once we see the
explanations behind it, then it can become something that works
for us, something that we don't question as much, and something
that allows us to exceed expectations and to do even
better. So appreciate that information
there. And Juan and Laurent, thank you
so much. We are almost running out of
time here, but I do want to encourage everyone if you are
interested in any things that we've talked about in building
your revenue growth management strategies and working with your
teams at looking at pricing expertise, looking at value
based pricing, you can certainly take advantage of their
workshop. It's going to be on Wednesday,
the 7th of May and they we will be in Dallas for our great event
there. And of course Juan and Laurent's
workshop is develop your revenue growth management framework in
one day, which is what they're going to help you do.
And also for our members out across the globe.
If you're unable to join us at this conference, we also will
have two conferences later in the year.
We are very happy to be in Las Vegas for our Fall American
conference. Those dates are October 21st
through 24th and for our EMEA for our Europe, Middle East,
Africa conference, we will be in Barcelona from the 2nd to the
5th of December. We look forward to seeing
everyone there and of course Juan and Laurent.
I would encourage everyone who has questions for Laurent and or
for Juan to reach out to them either via LinkedIn or we'll
include ways that you can get in touch with them if you have any
questions. But gentlemen, thank you so much
for your time today. We're looking forward to a great
workshop and of course, I'm looking forward to seeing you
both very soon. So Juan and Laurent, thank you
so much. Thank you, Kevin.
Thank you so much. Kevin, take care.
See you soon, all right. Thanks very much.
And with that, we will have more information about other podcasts
coming up. Thanks everyone for listening to
Let's Talk Pricing and I look forward to seeing everyone again
very soon. Thank you.