Pricing with Confidence: 10 Ways to Stop Leaving Money on the Table »

Dr. Reed K. Holden is founder of Holden Advisors, a pricing consulting firm that specializes in working across product, marketing, pricing, and selling functions to improve pricing performance. Dr. Holden is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University. He has been speaking professionally for twenty years and is a regular keynote speaker on pricing and customer value. He can be reached at rholden@holdenadvisors.com.

Mark R. Burton is cofounder and Vice President of Holden Advisors. He speaks frequently at Fortune 2000 events and conferences, and has developed leading-edge, risk-based models for the pricing industry. He can be reached at mburton@holdenadvisors.com.

For more information, please visit: PricingWithConfidenceBook.com

Face facts: Customers have never met a price they liked. And they will use every trick in the book to get you to lower your prices and give up profits. The typical business response is to discount, discount, discount—resulting in less revenue and lower profits.

In Pricing with Confidence, pricing gurus Reed Holden and Mark Burton offer a radically different solution—one that actually builds revenues and profits without lowering prices. The key? Linking prices to the value delivered. The real trick is to bring people from marketing, product development, sales, and senior management into the process of discovering and defending the value you create for customers.

Holden and Burton show you how you can get everyone in your firm to feel 100% confident in your pricing—no matter what customers are saying or how fierce the competition. By following the ten simple rules outlined in Pricing with Confidence, you will be able to hold steady or even raise prices while your customers experience increased value for every dollar they spend. The result is increased revenues and profits.

Pricing with Confidence is a road map for senior leadership in sales, marketing, finance, and pricing to work together to outperform the competition. Pricing with Confidence is organized into ten simple and practical rules to help senior leaders tackle rampant price discounting, negotiate with poker-faced customers, and protect the value a company works so hard to create.

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction: Why Pricing Is So Hard and Why Most Companies Mess It Up     xiii
Replace the Discounting Habit with a Little Arrogance     1
Understand the Value You Offer to Your Customer     21
Apply One of Three Simple Pricing Strategies     49
Play Better Poker with Customers     75
Price to Increase Profits     91
Add New Products and Services that Give You Negotiating Flexibility and Growth     111
Force Your Competitor to React to Your Pricing     131
Build Your Selling Backbone: Teach Your Sales Force and Managers to Negotiate with Value     149
Take Simple Steps to Move from Cost-Plus to Value-Based Pricing     169
Price with Confidence: Remember Who You Are     187
Index     203