E109 - Jon Manning - Science vs Art & Data vs Behaviour in Pricing

Have you ever trusted your gut feeling to make a decision?

Maybe you have when making a random online purchase, or when deciding which road to go down when your GPS stops working.

But what about the big decisions - such as in your business?

Are all your decisions based entirely on logic and research then?

How about when pricing your products and services?

Science vs Art.

Data vs Behaviour.

Which do you choose?

Meet Jon Manning

Jon’s Role as a Pricing Leader at PricingProphets

Jon Manning is the Founder and Chief Expert of PricingProphets.com - the world’s first crowdsourcing platform for pricing. Since launching in May 2011, PricingProphets has enabled companies struggling with pricing to ask a panel of global pricing experts and thought-leaders what price to charge for a product or service and why. PricingProphets has won accolades from customers and the media alike, finishing in the Top 20 in the Anthill Smart100 awards in 2012.

Jon’s Other Work in Pricing

While Jon is the Founder and Chief Expert of his own company, he is also the Head of Pricing at MYOB, a tech company that exists to help businesses start, survive, and succeed. MYOB assists with everything from accounting, payroll, payments, retail point of sale, CRM and professional tax solutions - and more - with solutions for businesses of every size, shape, and sector. MYOB believes in Australian and New Zealand businesses, having a range of initiatives to help support them.

He has hosted over 80 public workshops and in-house seminars conducted across the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the UK, as well as co-presented the ‘Pricing Strategy & Revenue Management’ Executive Education Program at Lancaster University Management School.

Pricing, Data, and Behaviour

In this exclusive analytics podcast episode, Jon shares:

• His experience travelling to the UK for an educational program including in procurement
• How to detect early signals when pitching to companies with procurement
• His role as the Founder and Chief Expert of PricingProphets
• The world's view of pricing
• His journey through the world of pricing
• Overselling flight tickets and dynamic pricing with Internet cafes
• A key lesson he has learned that could help others starting out in the industry
• How important data is in the world of pricing
• A case study for when data has positively impacted one of his pricing decisions
• "Gut" pricing
• Pricing = Science and data-driven examples
• Pricing = Art and behaviour-driven examples
• Combining both art and science into pricing while striking a balance between the two
• What factors come into play when choosing between science vs art
• Advice for those looking to renew their pricing strategy through the use of data analytics

If you are a pricing professional looking to incorporate data analytics into your strategy or deciding which school of thought you fall into, this is the episode you do not want to miss out on.