Gaining Pricing Advantage Through Digital Transformation with Craig Zawada

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:  Learn about the concept of digital transformation and its relevance in this evolving world of pricing  Find out how better pricing is achieved through artificial intelligence with less human intervention  Discover the need to integrate digital transformation with customer experience to create an impact in pricing    Craig Zawada is a Sales Growth and Pricing Strategy Expert.   He joined PROS in 2010 and serves as its Chief Visionary Officer. He is responsible for creating and articulating the vision for how PROS uses big data and the latest technology, to help companies drive incremental sales growth and profit improvement.  In this episode, Craig shares how relevant market prices can be created with less human intervention.  “View pricing from that customer experience perspective, not from the management perspective of trying to protect margin and all those things.”   - Craig Sawada      Increase Your Pricing Knowledge: Become a Champions of Value INSIDER! To sign up go to insider.championsofvalue.com Topics Covered:    01:09 - What paved his entry into the world of Pricing  02:26 - Moving from consulting to technology - his entry into Pros  04:02 - His thoughts about the concept of digital transformation  06:38 - Taking a look at the concept of digital transformation in B2C versus B2B companies  09:37 - How to gauge willingness to pay accurately  12:35 - Setting market-relevant price without human intervention  16:59 - Why we cannot do away with negotiating the price  19:39 - Tradeoff of the price for benefits  20:22 - When is the use of AI in pricing applicable  21:38 - His best pricing advice to impact businesses  24:00 - Factors to help understand customer’s willingness to pay and why it’s important to integrate into the pricing system    Key Takeaways:      “Digital transformation to me is how you transform your process in pricing, such that you can deliver on this new customer's need of getting a fair market price immediately, without having to go through this management problem of pricing that companies try to control.” - Craig Zawada    “The interesting part and where AI is incredibly applicable and really important in this environment in the future environment is being able to make those decisions without human intervention to set the market-relevant price.” - Craig Zawada    “A lot of this back and forth negotiation is due to a lack of confidence in knowing what the market price is.”  - Craig Zawada    “People want choices, right? So they want to be able to configure their choices and understand what are the implications of that, so you can know ways of reducing the price.” - Craig Zawada    “From a pricing perspective, you have a tremendous opportunity to have an impact by integrating price into that digital transformation, because it's one of the most fundamental things that is part of that customer experience in buying.” - Craig Zawada    People / Resources Mentioned:    Gartner  Saint Gobain Glass  McKinsey    Connect With Craig Zawada:  pros.com  [email protected]    Connect with Mark Stiving:     Email: [email protected]     LinkedIn