Summary
Pricing teams often feel overlooked. Their analysis can uncover major margin opportunities, yet sales, operations, and executives may not act on the recommendations. In this episode of The Pricing Guys, Michael and Avy challenge that frustration and argue that pricing professionals must do more than build models. They must help the business change.
Key takeaways
- Pricing teams are not only responsible for analysis; they are responsible for helping change happen.
- A technically sound recommendation can fail if stakeholders are not involved early.
- Pricing decisions must reflect customer contracts, sales realities, and operational limits.
- The “seven times rule” can help build understanding and ownership.
- Strong relationships and trust often matter more than a perfect spreadsheet.
- Pricing professionals should act as change agents, not victims of organizational resistance.
The pricing victim mentality
A growing conversation in the pricing community focuses on being underappreciated. Pricing professionals may feel that sales receives the recognition, bonuses, and promotions, while pricing teams quietly create value in the background.
There is some truth behind the frustration. Pricing can have a direct impact on profit, but it does not always receive the same attention as revenue growth or market share. Still, staying in that mindset is unlikely to solve the problem.
If no one listens to the pricing team, the issue may not only be a lack of executive sponsorship or an insufficient job title. It may also be a sign that the team has not made its recommendations practical, clear, and easy to adopt.
That is an uncomfortable message, but it is an important one for pricing leaders and executives to consider.
Pricing is more than doing the math
A pricing team’s role is not limited to finding a number in Excel. The real work includes explaining the opportunity, understanding the business context, and helping different teams act on the recommendation.
A model might show that a 4% price increase could improve margins. But that does not mean the change can be applied evenly across every customer. The business may need to account for:
- Existing contracts and renewal dates
- Customer-specific pricing agreements
- Volume commitments
- Different product mixes
- Competitive pressure
- Sales incentives and negotiation practices
- Operational or service requirements
This is where hands-on pricing expertise matters. At Revenue Management Labs, pricing strategies are built around the client’s industry, data, customer base, and commercial reality. AI can help identify patterns and speed up analysis, but it does not replace the conversations needed to determine what can actually work in the field.
Why good analysis often goes nowhere
Many pricing initiatives fail after the analysis is complete. Teams invest heavily in data integration, pricing tools, internal studies, or complex models. Then the recommendations reach sales or operations, and adoption stalls.
The response is often predictable: “Sales does not listen.” In some cases, sales teams may ignore system recommendations because the output does not match what they see in customer conversations. They override the number because they do not trust the logic, or because no one showed them how the recommendation supports their goals.
The problem is not always the tool. It is often the lack of connection between the analysis and the way the business operates.
A successful pricing partner therefore needs to support implementation, not simply deliver a report or model. Recommendations have to survive contact with customers, contracts, teams, and day-to-day decisions.
Bring stakeholders into the solution early
One of the clearest lessons from the discussion is that stakeholders should not be treated as people who execute a finished master plan. They should help shape the solution from the beginning.
When sales, finance, operations, and product leaders contribute early, they can share important details that may not appear in the data. They also become more likely to support the final recommendation because they recognize their own input in it.
A practical approach is to ask stakeholders early:
- What business problem are we trying to solve?
- What would make this change difficult to execute?
- Which customers, products, or contracts need special treatment?
- What would the team need in order to act confidently?
- How will we measure whether the change is working?
This process may feel slower at first. In practice, it often prevents weeks or months of rework.
Use the seven times rule
The episode highlights the seven times rule: if you want someone to understand and support a change, expect to discuss it repeatedly.
That does not mean repeating the same presentation seven times. It means creating several opportunities for questions, feedback, and refinement. By the time the change is ready to launch, stakeholders should be able to explain:
- What is changing
- Why it matters
- How it affects their team
- What obstacles may arise
- What they need to do next
The goal is for stakeholders to begin describing the change as their idea, not something imposed by pricing. That is when ownership starts to develop.
Trust is the foundation of change
A fireside discussion at a private equity conference reinforced another important point: change often begins with relationships. Operating leaders who enter a business cannot expect people to change simply because a new plan has been announced. They first need to understand the people involved, their goals, and their concerns.
The same applies to pricing teams. A coffee, a thoughtful conversation, or a walk through a customer issue may achieve more than another polished spreadsheet. Trust gives pricing professionals the credibility to challenge assumptions and ask teams to work differently.
For business leaders, this is also a useful test. If a pricing initiative is not gaining traction, look beyond the model. Ask whether the team understands the commercial details and whether the affected functions trust the people leading the work.
From pricing expert to change agent
The strongest pricing professionals combine analytical skill with communication, judgment, and relationship-building. They understand that pricing is connected to corporate priorities such as profitable growth, customer retention, cash flow, and market position.
That requires a shift in mindset. Instead of asking, “Why is nobody listening to us?” pricing teams should ask:
- Have we understood the business problem well enough?
- Have we involved the right people early?
- Have we explained the recommendation in practical terms?
- Have we built trust with the teams expected to execute it?
- Are we measuring adoption and results?
Pricing transformation is not complete when the model is finished. It is complete when the business can use the new approach consistently and produce measurable results.
Revenue Management Labs takes this practical view by combining practitioner-led pricing expertise, embedded AI, and implementation support. The objective is not just to find untapped opportunity. It is to help teams act on it and make the change last.
