Impact Pricing

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on December 8, 2025, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/ai-cant-own-pricing/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com.  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

Alex Shartsis is a pricing and go-to-market advisor who helps founders charge what their products are actually worth. He is the CEO of Silverwood and Skyp, working with early- and growth-stage companies on pricing discipline, packaging, and monetization. This episode explores why charging too little early is one of the most expensive mistakes founders make, including the story of raising a customer from $500 a month to $20,000. Mark and Alex discuss when to raise prices, how early sweetheart deals quietly damage businesses, and why price often signals quality in AI and SaaS markets.   Why You Have to Check Out This Episode: Understand why early underpricing creates long-term trauma in customer bases, teams, and investor conversations. Learn when to raise prices (and when not to) especially with early customers and pilots. See why price often acts as a signal of quality in markets where buyers can't easily judge value (AI, software, experimentation budgets).   "If you can charge for value early and be discip

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on December 1, 2025, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/pricing-ai-outcome-based-pricing-the-holy-grail-for-ai/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com.  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

This episode takes a slightly different approach than the usual Impact Pricing conversation. Instead of teaching a finished framework, Mark brings an early draft of his upcoming book to the table and asks Steven to react to it as a thoughtful pricing peer.  Steven Forth, co-creator of ValueIQ, largely agrees with the direction of the book, but pauses on a key point: how buyer context is defined, and whether the argument separates value and willingness to pay too cleanly. Mark jokingly tells Steven he's "wrong," setting the tone for what follows: a calm, constructive discussion that explores where the ideas hold up and where they still need work. What unfolds is a straightforward, unscripted book review in progress. The ideas are tested against real examples, refined through debate, and shaped in real time.  For listeners who care about pricing theory and how it actually gets formed, this episode offers a transparent look at how those ideas evolve before they're finalized and published.   Why you have to check

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on November 24, 2025, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/a-tool-to-reveal-your-value-literacy/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com.  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

Kathryn Porritt is the founder and CEO of Iconic Empires, where she specializes in helping elite experts build luxury and premium positioning. With a focus on monetization expertise and authority, Kathryn works with clients to elevate their brands and expand their vision of possibilities. Her unique approach emphasizes mastery, rarity, and transformative experiences, enabling her clients to connect deeply with high-end buyers. In this episode, Mark Stiving sits down with Kathryn Porritt to explore the intricacies of selling luxury goods. They discuss the differences between luxury and premium buyers, the importance of creating an expanded vision of possibilities, and how to effectively communicate value in high-end markets.    Why You Have to Check Out This Episode: Learn why luxury buyers don't negotiate and how expanding a buyer's future vision removes price from the conversation entirely. Understand the difference between premium and luxury pricing, and why treating them the same quietly caps your revenue

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on November 17, 2025, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/credits-the-bridge-between-ai-uncertainty-and-value-clarity/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com.  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

Ryan Susanna is the VP of Sales at LogiSense, where he helps telecom, IoT, and SaaS companies operationalize complex usage-based and hybrid pricing models. With more than two decades in monetization, automation, and billing infrastructure, Ryan didn't come up through pricing theory—he came up through execution. His work sits at the intersection of pricing ideas and the systems required to make those ideas real at scale. In this episode, Ryan breaks down why billing platforms quietly shape—and sometimes constrain—pricing innovation, what usage-based pricing actually looks like in practice, why many AI pricing models default to credits, and the single pricing habit he believes every company must adopt: testing pricing ideas in isolation before scaling them across the business.   Why You Have to Check Out This Episode: Understand why pricing innovation fails after approval—and how billing and monetization systems quietly block execution. Learn which modern pricing models die first in rigid systems (usage-based,

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on November 10, 2025, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/designing-hybrid-and-evolving-pricing-models-for-ai/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com.  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Mike Wilkinson, founder of Axia Value Solutions, joins Mark Stiving to explore how AI is fundamentally changing buying behavior—and why this shift exposes weak value stories more than it threatens good sellers. In this episode, Mike explains how AI has raised buyer expectations by enabling benchmarking, price testing, and faster comparisons—rewarding sellers who clearly communicate value and exposing those who don't. He and Mark show why AI creates mediocrity when used blindly, and why value clarity—not pricing tricks—determines who wins.   Why You Have to Check Out This Episode: Understand how AI is changing buyer expectations—and why buyers now demand clearer value justification before accepting price. Learn where AI helps sales—and where it hurts—including why copying AI outputs creates "AI mediocrity" instead of differentiation. Discover how value clarity and value literacy become your competitive moat in an AI-saturated selling environment.   "Whatever price you're charging or thinking of charging, mak

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on November 3, 2025, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/pricing-ai-evaluating-pricing-metrics/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com.  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Steven Forth, Managing Partner at Ibbaka and co-creator of Value IQ, joins Mark Stiving to tackle a topic most pricing teams are avoiding: pricing governance in an AI-driven world. This episode explores who owns pricing decisions when AI is involved, how companies should govern data and models, and why pricing leaders must step into a broader leadership role or risk having governance imposed on them by others.  If AI is touching your pricing process in any way, this conversation will change how you think about responsibility, risk, and trust.   Why You Have to Check Out This Episode: Understand what pricing governance actually means and why poor governance shows up as finger-pointing between sales, pricing, and finance. Learn the new governance questions AI introduces around data usage, bias, accountability, and mistakes. Discover why pricing leaders must own AI governance or risk losing control of pricing decisions altogether.   "The big issue for me is how, as pricing people, do we develop the knowledge t

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on October 27, 2025, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/what-pe-firms-miss-in-pricing-due-diligence/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com.  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

Michael Mansard, Principal Director of Subscription Strategy at Zuora, joins Mark Stiving to challenge one of pricing's most accepted conventions: the order of good, better, best. In this episode, Michael shares original research showing how simply changing the display order to best, better, good can significantly increase purchase intent and revenue. Drawing on behavioral economics, loss aversion, and real-world testing, he explains why buyers react differently when the most expensive option is presented first.   Why You Have to Check Out This Episode: Learn how reversing plan order increased top-tier selection by 15 points in controlled testing. Understand how loss aversion works against you in traditional pricing pages and how to flip it. Discover when best, better, good works and when it can hurt retention and Net Revenue Retention (NRR).   "By simply changing the order of plans, we increased revenue by nearly 11% without changing price or features."  – Michael Mansard   Topics Covered: 01:16 - Best, Be

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on October 20, 2025, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/how-to-define-powerful-market-segments/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com.  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  

Dan Layfield, founder of the Subscription Index, joins Mark Stiving to unpack the less-visible pricing and monetization levers that drive real growth in subscription businesses. With experience scaling Codecademy from $10M to $50M in revenue and leading product teams at Uber and Diligent, Dan brings a product-led, ROI-first perspective on pricing. This episode culminates in one of the most actionable subscription pricing tactics you'll hear: how to price annual plans based on actual monthly retention, not industry norms.  If you work in SaaS, consumer subscriptions, or any recurring-revenue business, this episode offers practical insights you can test immediately.   Why You Have to Check Out Today's Podcast: Learn the annual pricing tactic that dramatically increases LTV and cash flow by aligning plan discounts to real retention behavior. Understand why subscription growth is constrained more by monetization systems than acquisition and where hidden revenue leaks live. Discover how product, pricing, and paym

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on October 13, 2025, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/shareholder-value-is-an-outcome-not-a-strategy/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com.  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Deovrat Kajwadkar is the Director of Strategic Deal Pricing and Monetization at Google Cloud, where he sits at the center of some of the most complex commercial decisions in modern tech. With a background in management consulting at McKinsey and deep experience in cloud and AI monetization, Deovrat brings a rare inside view of how pricing actually works when products are platforms, costs are dynamic, and value is constantly evolving. In this conversation, Deovrat and Mark Stiving unpack why pricing is not just a "number-setting" function but the grade of how well everything else in the business is working. They explore the difference between platforms and solutions, why value-based pricing becomes harder as offerings become more flexible, and how AI is changing both how pricing is done and what pricing even means.   Why You Have to Check Out Today's Podcast: Learn why pricing sits at the heart of cloud and AI economics, touching product, strategy, sales, and profitability all at once. Understand how platform

This is an Impact Pricing Blog published on October 6, 2025, turned into an audio podcast so you can listen on the go. Read Full Article Here: https://impactpricing.com/blog/pricing-ai-the-compass-spectrum-of-pricing-metrics/ If you have any feedback, definitely send it. You can reach us at mark@impactpricing.com.  Now, go make an impact.   Connect with Mark Stiving: Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/

Etinosa Agbonlahor is the CEO of Decision Alpha and former Director of Behavioral Research at Fidelity Investments. A behavioral economist by training, she helps companies understand how customers actually make decisions—and how that should shape pricing. In this episode, Etinosa and Mark Stiving unpack the tension between real value and perceived value, why customers don't react to prices rationally, and how behavioral economics can strengthen pricing strategies. They explore value drivers, ethical nudging, the fear of raising prices, and why most buyers don't remember prices as clearly as business owners think. If you want clearer, psychology-backed ways to price, communicate value, and make better pricing decisions, this episode gives you practical insights you can use right away.   Why You Have to Check Out Today's Podcast: Why customers forget your prices—and how that myth makes business owners afraid to raise them. How behavioral economics expands value beyond profit into perception, context, and emoti