CI 100/200 Boot Camp – Southwest
Presenter: Derek Johnson, CFA

Conference Link: SCIP University
Location: Tempe, AZ
Date: Thursday, December 7
Time: 8:30am – 12:30pm

Overview:

Pricing intelligence is, arguably, the most challenging competitive insights to collect in a systematic and repeatable manner. But then again, nobody got into the intelligence field because it’s easy.

In this intensive half-day boot camp, we will devote our training toward the advanced skills necessary to perform pricing analysis on your competitors. At times these details will reside in the brain trust of your existing employee base or industry sources you can legitimately contact on your own, and at other times you may need to turn to pricing specialists… inside or outside the organization.

60-minute Interactive Introduction:

The session will start with an assessment of how Pricing Intelligence has evolved over the years, including a look at three to five industry examples in areas such as Aerospace & Defense, Consumer Goods, Insurance, Retail, and Technology. The facilitator will lead an examination of commonly-referred to analytical techniques such as “The Pricing Waterfall” and a variety of cost analysis and discounting strategies that will be important in understanding the bottom-line net pricing your competitors may be able to achieve. Including, how much you should worry when your longtime customer suddenly starts asking for a discount.

Additionally, we will continue with early stage outcomes in terms of how to establish a systematic process of where to look for competitive pricing insights – and the role that today’s accessible social media insights can reveal to you – and how to most efficiently establish a strong culture within your organization that Pricing intelligence is something you must do… and do well.

Two (2) 75-minute Facilitated (Small Group) Intensives:

Intensive #1 – Cost Analysis & Price/Discount Policy-Making:

• Examine common analytical techniques that can allow you to better understand a competitor’s cost structure, which feeds pricing strategy and policy setting.
• Understand certain misleading aspects of pricing strategy vis-à-vis how customers may use price against you.
• Equip yourself with the capabilities to create a competitive storyboard as it relates to pricing and pricing strategy with respect to your competition.

Intensive #2 – Elicitation Techniques & Skills Development:

• Learn how certain elicitation principles such as “the conversational hourglass” and certain bracketing techniques work much better than others in active collection of pricing insights with sources you can encounter.
• Understand how the design of a systematic collection process can allow your Intelligence group to partner with other functional leaders (Human Resources, Sales & Marketing, Product Management, etc.) to develop a sustainable model of sharing pricing insights between groups.
• Develop a mode-switching capability where you can quickly pivot between elicitation techniques, that work in isolation or in conjunction with one another, to achieve your desired collection outcomes.

30-minute Closing Remarks & Key Takeaways:

Developing a guidebook to drive Pricing intelligence, and specifically what your department or group can be capable of delivering, with a wide variety of internal stakeholders is your challenge. And when you achieve it, your value to the organization becomes geometric.

The key takeaways of this session will focus your attention on:

• Understanding the ethics and laws that will govern your work in this area, and what will create a true north for the legitimacy of your group’s functional capabilities
• Delivering on your group’s brand promise to help the organization achieve next-generation collection, analysis, and distribution of competitive pricing parameters.
• Informing business decisions related to how your firm should set pricing policy, and working toward a position where ROI justification (with such an intensely quantitative topic as pricing) is much easier and more straightforward.