Article prepared by partner Juliana Sampaio

The journey towards pricing excellence necessarily involves the formation of a dedicated team. Like other high-performance teams, the pricing team should not be casually composed or staffed by unprepared professionals. It is essential that the team leader dedicates efforts to finding the appropriate professional(s).

The ideal profile
Let’s talk about the profile of pricingprofessionals. Regardless of the department that pricing reports to in the organization, the professional must primarily possess numerical aptitude. There is no price management without calculations, break-even points, and various spreadsheets. Therefore, graduates in Administration, Engineering, Economics, or Statistics are usually qualified to perform these tasks.

Logical reasoning is a requirement for interpreting problems and for constructing exploratory analyses frequently demanded. Along with quantitative analyses, familiarity with databases and mastery of suitable tools for it are necessary. It is common for the pricing specialist to need to develop analyses or controls on raw billing data from the company. And depending on the complexity of the business, this can be quite robust.

The evolution of revenue, pricing and volume analyses goes at least as far as the contribution margin level in the pricing area. Therefore, it is important to understand the accounting formation of financial margins.

Investigative attitude is precious in this role. Not only to validate the information that is given to you, but especially to trace the root cause of problems and paradigms. Discoveries can be surprising! Do you remember that customer contract that is stored in the drawer or forgotten among so many other files? It may be worth updating it. Or why does the system have some fields and reports that are not used? Are they really of no value or are they processes that have been abandoned over time and the information has been lost? Are the customer registration databases updated, without duplicates? Or could this be a reason for divergent results in reports and sometimes even incorrect charges?

Regarding interpersonal skills, it’s important to remember that this person should be able to navigate well between different departments in the company, but mainly between the commercial and financial areas. Interaction with these two teams is inevitable when managing prices, as one has access to a key piece of the puzzle – the customer. And the other area can judge whether the prices being practiced generate profits for the company – another fundamental piece of information for profit-oriented companies! In companies where Marketing is involved in pricing decisions, this is another frequent point of contact.

In addition to these teams, the routine of this professional may require interaction with teams or leaders from other areas, always with a focus on pricing according to internal and external conditions of the company. Another typically partnered area is Operations, for information regarding production capacity, inventory levels, logistics, product stockouts, etc. The partnership with Legal deals with topics related to commercial contracts or forms of billing and payment to customers and partners. Contact with Product Managers to reflect on technical differentials in prices and form prices for new products. With the tax area to explore the incidence of taxes and fees. With Market Intelligence to learn about trends, growing/retracting markets. Not to mention the synergy with IT for automations and system improvements. In short, there may be several teams with which a pricer must deal. He definitely cannot have difficulty interacting with other leaders, nor feel intimidated by top executives when he has to confirm the company’s strategies to be aligned with pricing positioning.

The last highlight is for a persistent personality, which is often indispensable. When analyzing data or researching poorly explained subjects, it is not uncommon to uncover opportunities that have not been seen before. Persistence (accompanied by evidence) is necessary to convince sponsors to change processes or culture.

In practice

How to reconcile all these technical, interpersonal skills, and knowledge into a single person? Does this superman/woman exist?

Yes, they do! It is true that you have to search, but those who search, find!

In Brazil, we live in a reality where universities do not specifically prepare their students for price management and everything interconnected with prices in companies. Therefore, we do not have newly graduated professionals who are fully qualified. Interestingly, Tim J. Smith, in his article “Pricing Organizational Excellence,” reports the same difficulty in the North American market. Professionals with instruction on the subject have acquired it in practice with a mentor or sought this knowledge in courses, lectures, foreign literature, on their own initiative. This adds a level of difficulty to recruitment processes.

Depending on the level of maturity of the professional that your company needs, or the urgency for hiring, it is possible to find pricers with proven experience or grant an opportunity to a good analyst and develop them in the missing competencies.

A good way to find potential candidates is through people who already work in this field and attend pricing events (lectures, workshops, conferences). Relationships with people from other companies and classmates can help spread the word about the job and direct interested candidates.

When there is no contact with pricing professionals, the next step is to use digital platforms to advertise the job, including social networks and even specialized recruitment companies.

Once some candidates are available, selection should not be based solely on the CVs presented. Taylor Wells, an Australian company specializing in pricing professionals recruitment, reminds us that although resumes tell people’s stories, they are not always entirely accurate. Candidates may use techniques such as including terms and expressions that recruiters want to read. It is recommended to test analytical skills, pricing knowledge, and real-time tool mastery, not remotely. Applying a real case (or similar to a real one) for the candidate to explore usually works well. Ask them to draw conclusions from the provided data, calculate some pricing indicators, and propose an action for the situation in question. All using appropriate tools to simulate a real situation. The goal is not to subject the candidate to an impossible mission, but to evaluate their way of thinking, presenting themselves and confirm the breadth of their pricing knowledge.

Behavioral or personality tests are usually good allies to assess soft skills. And naturally, other specific requirements of each company should be respected throughout the selection process. Typically, an HR specialist will be responsible for checking the candidates’ fit with the desired profile.

Be sensible when delegating price management to a professional, and remember that the selector is also responsible for the success of the performance. With attention and caution, you will find the right talent to take care of your pricing!