A revelation for small business owners: creating a profitable business is possible without getting into a slash-and-burn price war with your competitors. Many small business owners feel pressure to discount their products and services, especially when times are tough. After all, how else will they keep up with the low prices offered by their discounting competitors? What they don't realize is that discounting is the last thing they should be doing if they want to win big. Sarah Petty and Erin Verbeck are here to show you that there's a radically different way to run a small business-- one in which the owners focus on creating specialized offerings and an over-the-top customer experience, not on matching the prices of their competition. Worth Every Penny encourages you to explore and use this model, which is designed to maximize your advantages over the big-box stores and other discounting competitors. You'll learn how to: --Build a brand that lays the foundation for you to charge what your offerings are worth. --Create products, services and high-touch customer experiences to achieve healthy margins and an outspokenly happy and loyal client base. --Understand how to use a pricing strategy that allows you to create demand and attract the right customers instead of discounting. --Throw traditional advertising to the wind and implement a boutique way of marketing to excel in this competitive business environment. --Learn the relationship-based sales skills needed to close every sale and have your clients clamoring for more. The authors' strategies are enhanced by real-life business experiences and vivid anecdotes from all types of business owners--restaurateurs to contractors to professional service providers and photographers. With the advice in Worth Every Penny, you will be inspired to live your passion and pass your enthusiasm on to your customers. The result: a profitable business that avoids succumbing to the pressure to discount.

Sales professionals now confront the most serious threat to their success. Regardless of their size, industry, country, customer type, nature of the relationship or amount of value they provide, sales professionals are finding that purchasing decisions are increasingly being limited by procurement. The modern procurement function is purchasing on steroids. Where traditional purchasing managers negotiated, procurement officials attempt to dictate.  Procurement deploys a variety of tactics designed to do one thing: gain unprecedented discounts and concessions out of even the most sophisticated sales professionals.  This book is a strategy guide for salespeople to help them level the procurement playing field by showing readers how to assess the game procurement plays, describing proven ways to resist discounting and protect margins, demonstrating ways to keep value at the forefront of negotiations, offering targeted tactics to protect hard-earned profits from mindless discounting, and detailing eight strategies effective in any type of pricing negotiation.  This book will be an invaluable resource for B2B sales professionals, customer-facing professionals, and executives responsible for leading successful sales organizations.

FREE -- Insider’s Circle Trial Membership, Newsletter, Audio Program, Special Webinar Series, and More! Take CONTROL of your PROFITS Millionaire maker Dan S. Kennedy and marketing strategist Jason Marrs dare you to re-examine your every belief about pricing and empower you to take a more creative, more effective, bold approach to your price—and prosperity. Kennedy and Marrs don’t offer little tricks, like new ways to say 50% off, half off, or 2 for 1. They tell you the secret to setting prices for the greatest gain. Then they teach you how to avoid the ultimate price and fee failures—like attracting customers who buy by price. You’ll discover how to compete with FREE, learn how to discount without damage, and uncover the key to price elasticity. Most importantly, you’ll grasp how to use price to your extreme advantage and grant yourself the power to be as profitable as possible. Reveals: The 9 ultimate price and fee failures The trick behind discounting without devaluing The 5 price-related propositions to be concerned with The million-dollar secret behind “FREE” How to win price wars with competitors Why price cutting isn’t the cure for the recession and what is And More "All I can say is wow. I had been having a difficult time accepting that we can justify a slightly higher than usual price for our product until I read Chapter 7. The examples and stories in No B.S. Price Strategies made what would typically be a dull read - fun and interesting. Thanks for taking this useful information and making it enjoyable." —Robin Strickland, Co-Founder, BigLittleFudge.com

Bad pricing is a great way to destroy your company’s value, revenue, and profits. With ten simple rules, this book shows you how to deliver both healthy profit margins and robust revenue growth while kicking the dreaded discounting habit. The authors destroy the conventional wisdom that you have to trade margins for revenues and show you how to fully exploit the value your company offers customers. This is a proven plan for increasing sales without sacrificing profits.

Future economic growth lies in the value of experiences and transformations--good and services are no longer enough. We are on the threshold, say authors Pine and Gilmore, of the Experience Economy, a new economic era in which all businesses must orchestrate memorable events for their customers. The Experience Economy offers a creative, highly original, and yet eminently practical strategy for companies to script and stage the experiences that will transform the value of what they produce. From America Online to Walt Disney, the authors draw from a rich and varied mix of examples that showcase businesses in the midst of creating personal experiences for both consumers and businesses. The authors urge managers to look beyond traditional pricing factors like time and cost, and consider charging for the value of the transformation that an experience offers. Goods and services, say Pine and Gilmore, are no longer enough. Experiences and transformations are the basis for future economic growth, and The Experience Economy is the script from which managers can begin to direct their own transformations.

Praise for How to Sell at Margins Higher Than Your Competitor"This is the complete book for both new and experienced salespeople and business owners to learn and re-learn the essentials for success. How to Sell at Margins Higher Than Your Competitors emphasizes the pricing strategies and tactics to increase the market share and profits of any organization. This is a book that is as important to presidents as it is to salespeople."--Bill Scales, CEO, Scales Industrial Technologies, Inc."As the largest service provider in our industry, we have a significant market advantage. However, we constantly walk the pricing tightrope because, as this book so clearly states, 'business is a game of margins . . . not a game of volume!'"--John K. Harris, CEO, JK Harris&Company, LLC"If you live and die on price, this book could be your only lifeline."--Tom Reilly, CSP, author of Value-Added Selling and Crush Price Objections"How to Sell at Margins Higher Than Your Competitors successfully illustrates profitable sales truths to assist us in selling for maximum return. This book's well-researched, logical, and affirming words validate the simple fact that as a premium company we deserve premium margins. So, while our competitors reduce or match prices out of fear and scarcity, our managers, thanks to this powerful sales tool, can continue quoting and closing with profitable confidence."--Joe Bracket, President, Power Equipment Company"I learned a long time ago that it is pretty difficult to control what my competitors will do, but we must control what we do--like maintaining margins. This book is a 'wow!' that will help my salesmen crack bad habits. Sales organizations should design their entire training programs around the content in this book."--George C. Giessing, President, Brusco-Rich, Inc."This energizing book is the 'right stuff' for every sales force. It should be a required study for every executive and sales professional who seeks to be successful."--David R. Little, Chairman and CEO, DXP Enterprises, Inc.

A comprehensive look at creating pricing strategies that work in both good economic times and badWritten by three preeminent pricing experts at McKinsey&Company, the Second Edition of The Price Advantage is a practical pricing guide for the executive or pricing practitioner who wants to identify, capture, and sustain substantial pricing gains in their business.Pricing is by far the most powerful profit lever that managers can influence. Yet few companies approach pricing in a way that fully capitalizes on its value. This Second Edition, a major revision and extension of the first book, shows you what it takes to achieve the price advantage in today's competitive and complex business environments. Based on in-depth, first-hand experience with thousands of companies, this book provides managers with a pragmatic guide through the maze of pricing issues. It reinforces why pricing excellence is more critical than ever today and then explains state-of-the-art approaches to analyzing and improving your own pricing strategy and execution. Explores the fundamental role of pricing infrastructure in achieving the price advantageIncludes new topics such as software and information products pricing, lifecycle pricing, custom-configured products pricing, pricing of high-count product lines, pricing in distributed sales environments, "razor/razor blades" pricing, and tiered products and services pricing Revisits the full range of classic McKinsey pricing tools, including the pocket price waterfall and value mapsEngaging and informative, the Second Edition of The Price Advantage will put this essential discipline in perspective.

In Smart Pricing, Wharton professors and renowned pricing experts Jagmohan Raju and Z. John Zhang draw on examples from high tech to low tech, from consumer markets to business markets, and from U.S. to abroad, to tell the stories of how innovative pricing strategies can help companies create and capture value as well as customers. They teach the pricing principles behind those innovative ideas and practices. Smart Pricing introduces to marketing and product executives, along with corporate strategists, many innovative approaches to pricing, as well as the research and insights that went into their creation. Filled with illustrative examples from the business world, readers will discover restaurants where customers set the price...learn how Google and other high-tech firms have used pricing to remake whole industries...and understand how executives in China successfully start and fight price wars to conquer new markets. Smart Pricing goes well beyond familiar approaches like cost-plus, buyer-based pricing, or competition-based pricing, and puts a wide variety of pricing mechanisms at your disposal. This book helps you understand them, choose them, and use them to win. "Name your own price": not just for Priceline anymore New ways to match the right offer with the right customer at the right moment The new art of the price war How to plan and execute a price war to conquer new sales territories Are the best things in life really free? What you can give away, what you can’t, and how to defend against "free" The snob premium: from cachet to cash The more you pay, the more it’s worth

"Aswath Damodaran is simply the best valuation teacher around. If you are interested in the theory or practice of valuation, you should have Damodaran on Valuation on your bookshelf. You can bet that I do."-- Michael J. Mauboussin, Chief Investment Strategist, Legg Mason Capital Management and author of More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional PlacesIn order to be a successful CEO, corporate strategist, or analyst, understanding the valuation process is a necessity. The second edition of Damodaran on Valuation stands out as the most reliable book for answering many of today?s critical valuation questions. Completely revised and updated, this edition is the ideal book on valuation for CEOs and corporate strategists. You'll gain an understanding of the vitality of today?s valuation models and develop the acumen needed for the most complex and subtle valuation scenarios you will face.

Provided here are practical guidelines on how to value the cost of designing commercial or residential interiors. From the designer's creative input to the pricing of decorating products and procedures, this guide allows interior designers to establish prices and budgets that satisfy their clients and make their business profitable. Interviews with experienced interior designers, case studies, and sidebars of projects highlight professional pitfalls and how to master them.• Advertising in Communication Arts