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 […]

We were recently approached by two companies looking to identify the prices of their competitors. Each of these companies were manufacturing firms that produced made-to-order products. One was a forging company and the other a plastic injection molding company. Management of these firms believed that if they knew the hourly rates of their competitors they […]

Do you know how pricing decisions are impacting your profit margins? If you are like most wholesale distributors and manufacturers you probably don’t. Measuring profit margins only goes so far but stops well short of actually measuring price performance. The objective is to isolate price and measure how prices have changed over a time period […]

The vast majority of sales programs do not have incentives focused on rewarding price performance. There are certainly plans that include incentives based on margins but not specifically on price. So, first, why do we want to reward sales teams on price performance? If your sales team is currently involved in the pricing process through […]