Skill Survey - Pricing Expertise
Steven Forth is a Co-Founder of TeamFit. See his Skill Profile.
TeamFit is partnering with the strategic pricing firm, Ibbaka,to explore current and emerging skills among pricing experts. We leaned on some of the world's top pricing experts in designing this survey, including Dr. Thomas Nagle, author of The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing, Dr. Tim Smith, author of Pricing Done Right, Ed Arnold, Vice President of Product Management at the SaaS value-based pricing platform LeveragePoint and pricing aware product management leader Alan Albert. There will be a draw for copies of The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing Sixth Edition (new in 2017), Pricing Done Right and Roger Martin and Jennifer Riel's book Creating Great Choices (pricing is after all about creating and making great choices).
This is the first of a number of discipline specific studies TeamFit will undertake in 2018. Others include the skills needed to lead Talent and Performance Management and skills needed for Product Management. We will also be probing the skills needed for Distributed Ledger and Blockchain as well as the Internet of Things and Cybersecurity.
The results of this research will be presented at the Professional Pricing Society's May Conference in Chicago.
The survey itself is part of a larger project that includes interviews with pricing leaders, analysis of pricing and associated skills as presented on LinkedIn, and of course an investigation of the TeamFit Skill Graph. The results will be used in four ways:
By Pricing Leaders to improve their own practices and to develop talent
By HR and Talent Development Leaders to identify and develop talent for their organizations
By Recruiters to see what skills they should be looking for in their searches
By TeamFit to deepen its Skill Graph and help people to identify their current and potential skills and put them to work
Pricing is emerging as a central business function. Long the domain of specialists focused on the technical nuances of pricing, packaging and revenue management, it is now central to business innovation. See "Don't Set Prices. Design Pricing." Pricing is even being investigated by non-profits and government agencies as a way to nudge behaviour into more productive channels. As a result, pricing skills are becoming much more varied, and on the TeamFit Skill Graph we are seeing a growing number of Associated Skills (skills that are frequently used together by the same person on the same project) and Complementary Skills (skills frequently used by different people on the same project) connecting to pricing.
New technologies, such as machine learning, are reshaping pricing, and new business models and platforms, such as The Internet of Things and Blockchain are presenting new challenges. At the same time, business conditions are changing. Products and services get pushed to commodity status faster and faster, see How SaaS Companies Can Compete Under Commoditization, and what were once local markets are becoming more and more international bringing in new alternatives and competitors (think of how a platform like Alibaba gives people from around the world access to Chinese manufacturing power).
Please share the survey with anyone in product marketing, product management, sales or finance whose work touches on pricing. If you have any questions for us or suggestions on skill research that will be important to you, please contact us at info@teamfit.co
