pricing for the CFO

Sales Compass Highlighted in Latest AppExchange Newsletter

Following the nice mention on Inc.com last week (see Free Pricing Analytics for SMBs), salesforce.com highlighted Sales Compass Free Edition in the “Latest Listings” section of it’s November AppExchange newsletter. If you use salesforce.com (Unlimited, Enterprise, or Professional Edition with … Read More

Agility Key to Success in Turbulent Times

The economy’s in a bubble! A crash! A recovery? Careful, you might get whiplash. Looking back at the roller coaster ride, a lot of companies lost a lot of money because they could not act, or even react, quickly enough. … Read More

Value, Scarcity, and Pricing in the Age of Superabundance

For most people, throughout most of human existence, scarcity was paramount.** Now we live in an age of not just abundance, but superabundance. The agricultural revolution created abundance– not by today’s standards– in food. The industrial revolution created abundance in … Read More

Pricing agility is underrated

Pricing is a process, not an event. This mantra is important for companies who think pricing is something they do annually, when they update price books, or in special circumstances when they add a fuel surcharge. But pricing is happening … Read More

Microsoft’s Pricing Dilemma (Part 2)

We mentioned in a previous post that Microsoft is in the grips of a pricing dilemma. Changing paradigms have weakened Microsoft’s dominant position in operating systems and office productivity programs. Businesses and affluent consumers no longer upgrade regularly. What they … Read More

Microsoft’s Pricing Dilemma

Microsoft is between a rock and hard place. The Redmond software giant made an enviable $17.6B in profit last year (see MSFT for more details) but the stock is down from its bubbly peak and has been stagnant for almost … Read More

More on risk measurement– recency bias

Measuring risk is a critical, yet impossible task. How can we act effectively without understanding the risk? How can we see the future? Or, what is the right balance between educated estimates of risk and potential benefit? These questions are … Read More

How do you measure risk?

Few decisions in business or in life are without risk. The outcomes we expect from our decisions depend in some part on a set of assumptions about the world around us. For big decisions with a large impact, we often … Read More

Pricing Lessons from the Detroit Bailout Fiasco

With consumers shunning gas-guzzling SUVs and easy financing gone the way of $1.00/gallon gas, Detroit is in trouble. Some people have called for government intervention. Others have suggested that the best thing to do is allow the big carmakers to … Read More

What’s worse than inflation?

When commodity prices surged and governments around the world pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into markets, crippling inflation was a major risk. However, demand is so soft that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) fell a record 1.0% in October. … Read More