Inflation, driven by post-pandemic volatility and supply chain snafus, was already an unwelcome newcomer for B2B pricing managers. The recent events in the Ukraine have only exacerbated that.
New inflationary pressures and uncertainty in global markets have created new hurdles for pricing teams in the manufacturing and distribution sectors who are being challenged with preserving profits during volatile times. There are steps they can take, however, that can help them manage those impacts.
A Far-Ranging Guide for B2B Pricing Managers
We’ve just published a comprehensive guide that explores the past, present, and future of inflation, how it affects B2B pricing managers, and what they can do to combat it.
In this guide, compiled by a blue-chip team of Vendavo’s expert analysts and consultants, we dig into:
- How governments and businesses tried to cope with prior inflationary periods, and what success (or lack of of it) they found.
- The state of inflation today, and the specific problems it’s creating for B2B companies, particularly in terms of profit margins.
- How inflation impacts the job of the B2B pricing team.
- What measures pricing managers can take right now to mitigate the effects of inflation on their margins.
A Hedge Against the Future
Given the whirl of world events? Every crystal ball has cracked, so it’s impossible for B2B pricing managers to see what’s ahead. As the Guide explains,
…you can bet new developments will arise that may require you to make a quick course correction in pricing policy, strategy, and/or tactics. Agility will continue to be a primary key to business survival. Will your current price management systems be able to support the next wild economic roller coaster ride?
How can you prepare? As we explain and explore in the Guide, there’s a clear path out of the current dark woods for B2B pricing managers: Applying intelligent B2B pricing practices.
Some of those best practices? Employing pricing discipline, avoiding impulsive pricing decisions, applying situational pricing, measuring profitability at the granular level, and more. All of them covered in this new publication.
Finding Clarity, Achieving Agility
Will this conversion be a simple and overnight transformation? Not necessarily. A great deal of it depends on the transformation partner you choose to work with, and your enterprise’s commitment to making the change. At a time when only 15% of companies use price optimization, there’s a lot of room for improvement everywhere.
Yet if there’s one lesson to be learned from the events of the past two years, it’s that there’s an absolute need to embrace agility and find clarity amidst the confusion and complexity that’s confronting B2B pricing managers. Because as we all move forward, there’s a clear formula, stated in the Guide, for winning the battle against inflation and volatility – and your competitors:
The companies that will pull ahead of the rest are already implementing best-in-class pricing processes, tools, and skill sets to enhance sales cycle effectiveness and protect their bottom line – despite rising inflation.
