High-volume, high-visibility customers know they have negotiation power. That shouldn’t stop you from initiating price increases with them when they are warranted. Suppliers tend to back down under the pressure of negotiating with their biggest customers, and who can blame them? Rocking the boat on price issues sometimes puts your company at risk of losing […]

Nothing has more impact on profit margins than pricing actions. Yet, most companies don’t measure price performance and how it impacts margins. Price performance is the difference in prices across items sold multiplied by the number of units sold in a given time period. So, an item that increased in price by $1.00 and had […]

In nearly every business there are performance goals of many varieties. Consider sales goals, cost reductions goals, margin goals, production goals, quality improvement goals and the list goes on. Rarely do we see a company with pricing goals. That is, using pricing as a strategic initiative to improve revenues and profit margins. For many manufacturing […]

So you have a price increase initiative coming up, and maybe you are a little anxious about writing a letter to your customers announcing it. That’s understandable. After all, you don’t write these announcements every day. Price increases occur only occasionally and, like strategic planning, it’s hard to master something without routine practice. There are […]

Does your industry have a clear pricing leader? That is, does one firm tend to make price moves and industry participants follow? If you are lucky, your industry works this way. If you are a price leader you may already know the benefits of this role. You can set the pace for price increases in […]