The Strategic Role of Pricing in Business Operations with Karan Sood

Karan Sood had the privilege of overseeing revenue management for over $6 billion in revenue across a diverse range of industries during the past decade. Throughout this experience, he gained a deep understanding of the critical role that pricing plays in business success.

In this episode, Karan explains how to effectively map out touch points within organizations to help individuals understand the significant impact pricing can have on business success.

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:

• Understand the challenges that come with the pricing role and learn how to strike a balance when interacting with other roles in the company for them to understand pricing's role in business success
• Gain insights on how sales flow through pricing
• Learn how pricing intersects with strategy and marketing

"Map out your pricing touchpoints in marketing, supply chain, finance…everyone! And then figure out how your pricing should operate in the organization."

- Karan Sood

Topics Covered:

01:29 - What led him to pricing and how that internship led him to one job after another

05:46 - Pricing as strategy and marketing

07:40 - Important thoughts on pricing underrepresentation

10:34 - Why there aren't VP of Pricing titles in most organizations

11:34 - The friction role that go with pricing

13:44 - How does pricing relate with sales enablement?

21:53 - What happens when you're mainly pricing and not enabling sales teams

24:56 - Likely reason for sales prevention team existing in the sales enablement team

25:43 - Causes of over-discounting and how not to fall into the trap

28:17 - Karan's best pricing advice

Key Takeaways:

“Pricing sits at the heart of the organization.” - Karan Sood

“It's [pricing] not guesswork, but it's guesswork with a framework in a way that there's no one perfect price.” - Karan Sood

“I don't worry about that price per se anymore because I know with the right leverage with the customer and internally in the organization, I can move that needle.” - Karan Sood

People/Resources Mentioned:

• Philip Kotler: https://www.pkotler.org
• Robert Dolan:https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6449
• Thomas Nagle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-tom-nagle-2bb2288/
• Yellow Pages: https://www.yellowpages.com

Connect with Karan Sood:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/soodkaran/

Connect with Mark Stiving:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/
• Email: [email protected]