Can Dynamic Pricing Temper Sales Panic

‘Twas ever the solution sellers lot. The items you wish to discount you cannot and those you can are deemed irrelevant to your cause.

Who ever pays List Price?

One relatively early selling revelation I had was when I stopped showing people officially sanctioned price lists. Whereas others viewed these as merely a stating point to knocking as much off as possible to gain the signature, I went the other way. Never settling for anything below list.

Lately the science of pricing policy has come under renewed scrutiny. Uber surge pricing the divining rod through which the internet is considered devil/angel (pick your side).

Their type of demand or capacity pricing is nothing new. Airlines have been (ineffectively mostly) trying this style of yield management for years.

In its current guise, the antis now popularly term it discriminatory pricing. This nefarious label leaves you in little doubt as to its supposed nastiness.

Others hail its flexibility and ability to reflect that most basic of economic pillars, scarcity. They see it as dynamic pricing. Go-getting indeed.

A Radio 4 Money Box half-hour ponders The death of the single price?. Mainly examining whether the consumer losses out.

Among its many insights was the old adage, “never ask the person sitting next to you on a plane how much they paid for their ticket”.

In any solution investment, there’s all manner of variables that can obscure any cost-per-unit comparison. Modules, services, delivery, set-up, maintenance, added extras, subtracted excess, betas, alphas, reciprocals.

Many a salesperson’s instinct come period-end is to discount. I nearly always see these promos as unnecessarily aggressive. Turnover for vanity, profit for sanity (cash for reality) and all that.

I feel the absence of a reference price often means a salesperson can rather give away less. Less discount leading to more commission. And the client remains happy to pay the justifiable price.

What you are offering will make/save quillions. No-one else can provide it, right. And you’re discounting? Really…

One typical example. Recognise the ‘only x mandays of services available between now and year end’ picture? Hoping to create a sense of urgency. Yet whenever I see these the days are at reduced price. You’ve got something rare and decreasing. And you cut its price? Dynamism gone the wrong way, surely. Package up something tailored rather.

I grew up told haggling only happened in the bazaars of uncivilised lands. An outdated view totally shattered when first selling to a corporate purchaser.

Solution sales can go dynamic to be both fair and profitable.