Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Let's Talk Pricing
podcast. In this podcast, we dive into
the people, strategies, insights and tactics that are shaping the
pricing and revenue management world.
Today, I'm your host, Kevin Mitchell from Professional
Pricing Society, and today I'm very, very excited because we
have a very special guest joining us.
I'm very happy to welcome Mr. Andres Gonzalez to our show.
Andres has a lot of experience working in e-commerce and
banking as a strategic data and financial manager.
For the past few years, he's LED pricing and analytics and
pricing intelligence teams where he's guided his very large team
of high performing individuals towards both profit and personal
growth. Also, if you've been around PPS
conferences, he may be a familiar face.
He has presented with us at our conferences recently in Chicago
and in Berlin and he was also a speaker at the cross-border
conference in Brussels. Today.
Andres is here to talk about something that the PPS team is
very, very excited about. And for our members, you have a
great surprise coming. Andres has a brand new micro
course for us. It is called building high
performing pricing teams, which is something that we can all get
behind and something that we're all interested in.
So Andres, thank you so much. Welcome.
And it's great to have you on our podcast today.
Yeah, thank you for carrying again to to see you again and to
meet again, this time online. But yeah, very excited about
this DD course I'm giving. And yeah, also happy to share a
bit more of what you can expect about it.
OK, terrific. Appreciate that.
And Andres, we've known each other for a little while here
and thank you very much for your partnership with us, your great
presentations at our events. And those of us around pricing
know that you've been leading pricing teams for many years
now. So please tell us a little bit
about the moment when you realize that it's really
important to have a strong, diverse, skilled pricing team
and how that may be as important as building your pricing
strategy itself. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. I, I think when, when I started
as a head of pricing in, in, in Halo print, what we saw, I
started with a very small team and we were getting stuck with a
lot of operational work that was going on with having.
And we didn't have the time to really think more strategically
or more into the future or trying to build that strong
foundation to be able to like move forward.
And, and in that moment was when, well, we, we kind of saw
the the need of expanding a bit more the team.
And it was not just about having smart people in the team.
It was just also having to have the right mix and that diversity
of, of having thinkers of having doers, storytellers, innovators,
that yeah, that dynamic in the end was going to be kind of
maybe most probably that's why we thought in that moment, the
perfect formula to to, to have that high performing mindset.
So it took a bit, of course, to understand, OK, which are
actually the needs and which are exactly those profiles that
that's actually we're going to bring that that value to to the
team, but also to the company. Yeah.
And that's that, I think that's, that's where we started and and,
and, and then basically with in, in the, in the journey, what we
saw, we learned a lot is that, yeah, you really needed that,
that diversity of of again, I will repeat, not only skills
like hard skills, but also soft skills.
Definitely. And I know that those of us who
listen to our podcasts or who attend our events will hear
others and myself will say it all the time.
Pricing people. We have to have an element of
both the artist and the scientist within us in order to
do great jobs. I love how you break down the
profiles from your team members to where some might concentrate
on being thinkers, some are doers, some are innovators, and
so on and so forth. And I love how you have explain
to us where you need that diversity of thought, where you
need some people to concentrate more on one versus the other.
Some people it might match up well with their strengths.
And that is a great way to build a a great team.
And that's going to lead us into really one of the main topics
for our discussion today. We're really excited about your
micro course for those building high performance pricing teams,
which is very, very important of course, and your course really
gets into the how and not just the why behind what goes into
building a successful team. Can you walk us through what our
members can expect to learn when they go through your course?
Yeah, sure. So the course is divided into
models. The first model is foundations
of high performing pricing team. Basically here what we're going
to see is how to set that clear moon shot for your team,
understand your team roles in the company, understand how to
structure around the three main pillars that I I always say in,
in, yeah, most of my presentations and all about
business, about data, about technology.
And then the second model is more about leadership,
collaboration and continuous improvements.
So it's, it's a bit different course in, in, in, I think in,
in price, because we're talking a lot about pricing.
But here it's also about leadership.
And how can you translate that leadership and and collaboration
in pricing? It's about how to give feedback,
how to build that momentum, how to retain talent, how to find
those rock stars and superstars in your team.
And then and then basically, yeah, create that awareness of
what is missing now in, in, in, in, in that team that you are
leading at the moment. So yeah, that's what you can
expect from the model. Very cool.
Yes. So I'm sure we're all looking
forward to the course. I like how you break it down
into the foundations and then you have your three main
pillars. And you also talk about
leadership, collaboration, continuous improvement, and of
course, retaining talent, recognizing the talent and
making sure that people are in the right types of jobs and have
the skills and everything behind them in order to continue to
proceed with their careers and to develop as pricing, future
pricing leaders, future revenue managers and people who are
going to be basically central to a lot of different business
processes. Because as we know or good
pricing teams for good revenue management teams, you have to
have those connections to a lot of other groups, both within
your company, with your customer base, with your marketplace,
with your suppliers, and basically a lot of them.
So that that's very powerful. And one of the things that I
like most about your approach about your presentations about
the courses that you are working on with us is as you mentioned,
you really put a lot of emphasis on the people aspect.
It's not just algebra, it's not just the numbers, it's not just
the frameworks, it's not a black box there, but really is about
the individuals on your team in order to become a high
performing pricing team. So why do you think it's
especially important right now that we focus more on perhaps
the people side of that than the pure numbers side?
Yeah. So I think I read the other day
and I really liked it. It's like pricing is no longer
about setting numbers, it's about navigating complexity.
And what you see is that everyone in the company always
will have an opinion about pricing.
So from finance, from sales, from marketing, from legal, from
product. So in the end, you really need
to have the people in, in that pricing team that is able to
influence, to communicate, like to, to lead across different
departments. And, and that's where what I
mentioned before, the importance of our of understanding, which
are the soft skills that you need in the team and to find
that kind of a balance. That's yeah, that's it's not
only about being very technical in some things, but also like
you can trust that people in your team can go to other
departments and can really, you know, have that, that impact.
And, and, and, and, and that will come with a diversity as,
as I will mention in the course, a lot about cultural diversity,
emotional intelligence, being able to, to, to be able to
react. How do you react on pressure on
how can you react with all the opinions that will come along
on, on in this journey? So I think that that's, yeah,
super important to to have in, in, in the team.
Definitely. And I like in particular, one of
the things that you said there when you talked about it really
is dependent upon the pricing team in order to go out and to
forge these connections. And I know that I hear from our
members all the time. I hear from pricing people no
matter where they are in the organization, no matter what
their title is, that a big part of their job is centered around
the so-called soft skills as you mentioned.
And essentially you have to speak different languages to
different people. For example, to your senior
leadership, you might have a 32nd elevator speech on top line
strategies and how it impacts the organization overall.
For a new financial analyst, he or she might actually prefer if
you would talk the numbers and the margins and percentages in
euros or yen or dollars or whatever you have there.
And of course, those conversations would be very
different if you're talking with a 25 year sales veteran, someone
who's been around and who knows his marketplace extremely well.
So look how when you talk about everyone has an opinion about
pricing, the soft skills are so important and really it is
dependent on us. It's part of our job in order to
be multilingual with other people within our organization
depending on on where they are. And of course, I don't mean
specifically multilingual, but obviously how we talk to senior
management, how we talk to our peers, how we talk to sales, how
we talk to finance, those can all be very different
discussion. And the technology as well, the
software engineers that most probably will for sure impact
your processes. And yeah, so it's, it's it's,
it's quite interesting, right way of dealing and the different
situations I think. Absolutely, yes.
And definitely can't forget about the technological partners
that we have as you mentioned. And of course, that's a
completely different language when we talk.
Totally. Exactly.
Yeah. You cannot talk to A how you
would talk to B how you would talk to C and so on and so forth
there. Yeah, right.
So I know from your course you have a lot of insights for
people who are managing teams, but for our members who are
joining us and listening today, who are perhaps new pricing team
leaders or maybe experienced pricing team leaders.
But with everything going on macroeconomically right now,
every day is almost like a new day.
So for our members who are joining us and listening and who
manage pricing teams or who will be team leaders one day, what is
1 quick insight that they could apply today from your teaching
and from your course? Yes, I, I, I think that the, the
first homework I, I said in the in the course was to set up your
moon shot. So set up that ambitious goal
that you have for your team because most proudly in the
company that you work, the, the founder already have that
vision, right? That, that mission and they,
they, they know exactly what they want to do or where they
want to get. And, and for sure it's not going
to be an easy path. I do believe that each team
should have this as well. Each team has that goal that
motivates them to wake up every morning and say, OK, why am I in
this pricing team? What am I going to do different
where where I'm aiming to? So I think that that's the first
thing that I will recommend everyone to do before also I
kind of doing this course and and this I can think that it can
help. It will make more sense when you
finish it and for sure it will make more clear for you and for
your team where you want to head to.
Understood. Yeah, that's very interesting.
And that's another thing that we hear from pricing leaders all of
the time is if you can have that moon shot, if you can have that
first primary important job and if you can secure a good win
there, if you can show some results there, then you can
expand that of course to priorities, B&C&D and so on, so
forth down the line. So that's very important and
that's also an interesting point because that's a great way to
get alignment with your team. Our moon shot, our primary job
on today in April 2025 is to do AB and C.
And once we do those, we will worry about our other strategic
initiatives or strategic plans. We'll worry about that later.
But right now this is our big job.
Want to make sure everyone on the team is aligned.
And of course, as a team leader, you make yourself available in
case anyone has questions or concerns or wants to know why or
wants to know what they can do today to further that goal.
So I love that as the one quick insight, the homework as you
said to define that and to move forward in that way.
So I know that sometimes key performance indicators KP is and
outcomes can be very, very different for pricing teams
depending on their industry, their geography, where they sit
in the in the organization chart and so on and so forth.
So as a pricing leader for our future pricing leaders, let's
talk about outcomes. What should pricing leaders be
looking for as the signs that their team is doing what they're
supposed to do and delivering value to the organization, to
the marketplace, to their customers.
And of course, since we're pricing people being compensated
for that value coming in as well.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, in the end, I think the main metrics for for, for what I
understand and what I've read and what I've learned that a
pricing team can influence our mainly gross profit revenue
order. You know, the volume conversion
rate in the case of e-commerce companies.
I think that's, that's kind of OK that the basic one, but then
it's maybe a bit more about that into understanding how much can
your team influence others in strategic decisions in the
company. Do do you really have, is it
very clear which is the role of your pricing team in your
company? So I also go through that in the
in the course Is, is, is, is it your the role more operational?
Is it more strategic? Is it more a consultant style?
Is it another one that I don't know, but maybe you have that,
but is it clear, right? Because that can will really be
connected to which are those metrics that you can steer or
you can impact. And then, and then the question
here is also like, OK, is your pricing team more a reactive
team or a proactive pricing team?
And it's not, I'm saying that one is good or there is bad.
It's also depends of the the face of the company where they
are, the face of the team where they are.
And that's I think some, well, you will see it also in the
course. I give some tips of how can you
really kind of make sure that you set the right expectations
in the company and in your team. All right, understood.
And of course, before you said that everyone has an opinion
about pricing within the organization and different
departments may have different opinions of what pricing is,
what it should do, if it should be operational, if it should be
strategic, if it should be analytical, if it should be more
of a a consultant basis. So it's very interesting that
everyone has their opinions of what the pricing team can be,
but the pricing teams function within a company can really,
really be a changing moving target depending on the
organization. And I know that I talked with
pricing professionals all the time and people who are really
good at their jobs, who have built teams that do a great job
of delivering value, delivering the numbers for their team.
And they will say things like, yes, when times are tough.
My senior leadership sees me as a bank machine where I go hit a
few buttons and I'm expected just to have my team just spit
out large numbers of large amounts of cash and a lot of
money for the organization there.
So it's interesting when you talk about you really, it's kind
of a cultural thing. Again, a soft skill, a human, a
personality thing and understanding your organization,
if you are operational, if you are strategic, if you are
consulting, reactive versus proactive.
So there are a lot of different elements there and of course
those can all change very quickly as well.
Depending if if you are in a publicly traded company,
depending on your numbers for the last quarter, your CEO might
have completely different goals than he or she had in the
previous quarter. Which means that even though you
thought you were operational now, maybe you're strategic now,
maybe you are a consulting partner now, maybe you are out
there on the street working directly with sales in order to
deliver whatever number or whatever goals the organization
is looking for. And that's, I think one of the
thing that makes our jobs are part of the business world so
interesting is that you've got to have all these connections,
all these different languages, everyone has an opinion.
And depending on the day, you might have a completely
different role than than you had last Friday or something like
that. So that's great. 100%, yeah.
We are running up on time here, but Andre is always very good to
talk with you and we are really, really excited about the
Building High Performance Teams course that you have for us.
So everyone makes sure to check that out.
And I know you've talked a lot about your course and about some
of the learnings here. But for our last question today,
could you tell us about one more key take away that you hope PPS
members worldwide will leave with after viewing your course?
Yeah. So I think you you mentioned it
right now, right. So, so it's about being able to
adapt to different situations and how you are able to.
React to these changes. Things are changing a lot,
especially now with all the technology, you know that that's
coming and, and, and, and then how are you able to confront
that and, and be able to be prepared to get to confront
that? Right.
And I will repeat, it's not about are we only smart people?
It's about trying to create the perfect mix of skills.
And again, in my course I said you, if you have a football
team, you're not going to just hire strikers or goalkeepers.
You need that mix that will help you score the goals.
So in the end, I believe that everyone that also see this
course, I will give them also tools to have a better pitch to
come with a better pitch to their management board and and
try to make them understand what is the the importance of
investing in the pricing team and investing in those different
key players that you're missing to to achieve success.
Yes, I like the analogy of the football team there and someone
when he was a kid growing up who was a very mediocre goalkeeper.
I do like the idea and the thought 11 goalkeepers on the
the pitch at one time. Of course, that would devolve
into rugby more than than football, but that would be at
least interesting to see for a while.
But a great analogy there where, yes, you can't have all
strikers, you can't have all people who want to score with
every touch of the ball. You've got to have all of the
elements in there, as you mentioned before.
You've got to have your thinkers, your doers, your
innovators. You've got to have people who
can handle the soft skills, who can speak in different languages
to different people when needed, and also who are very adaptable
to change. And that reminds me that we
always misquote Charles Darwin on that, where the strongest
survive. But the actual Darwin quote I
think is it's the most adaptable and the most welcoming of change
that survives, not necessarily the strongest.
If it were the strongest, we would still have dinosaurs
everywhere, all over the place. Well, Andres, thank you very
much. Unfortunately, we're running out
of time, but always good to talk with you.
Good to see you. You know, it's only virtually
this time. Thank you very much for sharing
your knowledge with us today. And for everyone listening,
please check out the building High performance pricing teams
with Mr. Andres Gonzalez. You can access that through your
PPS learning platform. Visit pricingsociety.com to get
started. And also we here at the PPS team
are very, very much looking forward to visiting your your
current hometown of Barcelona. We will be with you later in the
year for our conference where we're going to focus on some
EMEA things at the very beginning of December.
So I look forward to seeing you and some of your neighbors and
people from around the world in the great city of Barcelona in a
few months. Of course, our other events, we
will be in Dallas for our spring conference coming up very soon
here in May. We'll be in Las Vegas for our
fall American Conference in October.
And of course, very much looking forward to being in your part of
the world in Barcelona after that later in the fall.
So, Andres, thank you so much, Sir.
Always good to talk with you. We look forward to seeing you
soon. And everyone, please make sure
to check out Andres's course on building high performance
pricing teams. And we have lots of other
training options available for you and your team with leaders
such as Andres, people who have built high performance teams
themselves. And we thank you for your
partnership and I look forward to talking and seeing everyone
again soon. Thank you, Kevin.
Thank you again. Also nice to meet you online
this time as you said and for sure more, more than welcome
here in Barcelona. Hope to see you soon well end of
the year and and share more knowledge about what really like
this is pricing that is pricing. Definitely, we are looking
forward to more knowledge to come and we will see everyone
again soon on the Let's Talk Pricing podcast.
Thanks so much everyone.