Very good day, everyone. My name is Kevin Mitchell from Professional Pricing Society and welcome to the Let's Talk Pricing podcast. This podcast is where we talk issues for our members worldwide. We talk about revenue management, we talk about global macroeconomics, we talk about game theory and negotiating and analytics, and of course, everything pricing related. Thanks again for joining us today. I'm very, very pleased that we have two very knowledgeable
gentlemen joining us today. That is Mr. Juan Echevery. Juan is a, he is the Head of Revenue Management and Commercial Planning for Latin America at Holsum, the concrete company. Of course, he is joining us from Mexico City. And one is a gentleman who is very, very knowledgeable in a lot of different areas as far as manufacturing processes, as far as revenue management, and
someone who also leads a team. And joining us also today is Mr. Laurent De Sonia. Laurent is joining us from Amsterdam. He is the Co founder of Nexo Consulting. And a lot of us know Laurent through PPS when he was with Philips, where he was a strategy leader in healthcare, in health tech for Latin America as well. But really today we are very happy that we have two global leaders with a lot of experience joining us today.
And of course, Juan and Laurent are great partners with PPS at PPS profitable in Dallas in May. On Wednesday, the 7th of May, they will be leading a workshop entitled Develop Your Revenue Growth Management Framework in one day. So Juan, Laurent, gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us. Looking forward to our discussions. Thank you so much, Kevin. It's a pleasure to talk to you always. Thank you, Juan, and thank you Laurent as well.
No, thank you, Kevin. I mean, it's also a pleasure for for being here with you in this podcast and also great that we can have the privilege to, to talk in Dallas. Absolutely. So we are looking forward to seeing you in Dallas coming up. And of course, you all are veterans of doing great workshops and great presentations with us here at PPS. And I know a lot of people are excited about your workshop to
come. So first of all, tell us a little bit about what we're going to learn and how we can develop our revenue growth management. And Laurent, we will start with you. What are some key strategies and tactics in your view that can help us develop our revenue growth management?
Thank you, Kevin. I, I would maybe start saying this, the, the journey we will be on is really to give the attendees some practical tools, frameworks, some ammunitions, if you can say like this to, to really go for a structured plan to deliver sustainable and profitable growth. That's basically the main goal for us. So it's supposed to be very practical.
We basically Juan and I share experience from all past industry experiences, so basically from different companies from of course all the same with Juan is still in, but also from Sanofi, PepsiCo and I show some examples from Philips. So it's really giving, sharing our experience, executing the strategy, making it stick to the organisations and to the commercial people make it happen.
And at the end, we want the attendees to have this possibility to have a plan at the end of the day so they can bring it back to their world and try to start from there. So it's really made for people to have experience who will have maybe less experience, making them comfortable to, to develop something new, having something structured, a plan to start the
journey on revenue growth. That's a little bit what we what we hope we can achieve in that, in that day and we had already done it in Chicago last year and was quite successful. So we hope to repeat the same in in Dallas with the new audience. Understood. And thank you so much, Laurent. And of course, we love things that are actionable for our member companies and for our members themselves.
So that's great, and I'm sure everyone will appreciate the availability of your experience and learning about how they can execute successful strategies, how they can create plans. And really, it's going to be a wonderful day where we can all learn on how to take our RGM, our revenue growth management forward. So thank you very much for that.
And 1, Sir, how about from your viewpoint, from your perspective, what are some other things that our members are going to come away with after your workshop with us in Dallas? I guess the the way we structure this is by leveraging the experience that we as practitioners had with also top consulting firms like some culture, Deloitte and so on in
different industries. When, when I work at PepsiCo, we developed from scratch the whole, seeing the whole framework for, for Latin America based on, on their experiences and, and the work that was already done in, in the US and, and on other regions of within the PepsiCo world. And also when I joined Sanofi, we started the journey as well.
There, there was something already in place, but we, we finished that up. So we, I, I guess we blend all those experiences and also had some experiences with the developing their own framework. So we tried to take the best out of those experiences and blend with real case scenarios where we developed the theory, but we were also able to apply that theory and basically we learn, of course, we were not, not no
one is perfect. So we, we want to learn as as well of, of them from the mistakes that we, we, we, we made implementing this. So I guess that's, that's the richness of our worship. And I know the last point I guess is that we, we try to do it very practical and very adapted to do to our audience. We do our homework before joining the worship. We already know who's attending what's, which industries are we talking about.
So we try to also customize for the audience for them to take out the most out of the of the session. And we are very flexible since we are practitioners, we are very flexible in, in the way we develop the session and try to focus on this, on the very specific things that the, the, the the public need. Understood. Thank you so much, Juan. That's great.
And of course, we always love the real case studies, the real examples, and of course, we also love how we can look to apply those to our daily businesses as well. And one of the things that you mentioned is, of course, none of us are perfect. And of course, pricing and revenue management are jobs where we will certainly all have missteps. We certainly hope to learn from
them and to move forward. But you mentioned some things that with your experiences there, of course we all make mistakes, but we learn from them and we do better and we move on. And I've always thought that's an interesting approach for our CPP workshops that we offer. Because a lot of the times I know I go to events around the world for our part of the business world and related parts of the business world as well. And everyone is like, hey, here, all the best practices, if you
do this, it will work perfectly. But of course that's not the case. Every situation can be a little bit different and sometimes we can all learn more from slight missteps or mistakes then we can. And when everything goes gloriously well and when we have mistakes and things like that, those can make for great case studies where we can see what went wrong, what adjustments we needed to make and how we can do better going forward. So I think that that is a great explanation there and I
appreciate that. So a couple other questions for you gentlemen. And we'll reverse our order this time. So Juan, we'll start with you so that Laurent doesn't have all the fun, but let's talk about some of the specific revenue growth management pillars that you'll be teaching. Can you give us a preview of the pillars that you're going to concentrate on and how they can apply across different specific industries? Thank you, Kevin. Yes, basically we structured the
the session around 4 pillars. The first of course is is pricing. We we talk about value based pricing and how to get it done with our own experiences and and learnings. Then we move to portfolio management that it's also a way to get a profitable growth by focusing on the right elements of within your portfolio. How do you optimize those? How do you optimize the sales mix depending on the channel and type of customers? Then we move to promotional management.
I guess that's something that we are all interested and, and, and I have found probably a misconception on those must be to be people will think that promotional management is only, I think for, for MC FM, CG or file of, of retail. But it's something that you can do in any type of industry. If you really get your, your category and your customers, you
can do it right. And finally, but I guess it's one of the most interesting and, and personally, I really love it. It's how you develop a, a channel strategy that the answers to the needs of your customers and, and really Dr. profitable growth for both parties. So 4 pillars that we try to as as I mentioned, we try to really adopt, adapt those to the type of industries that we have in the room. So we have flexibility to move from FMCG to B to B or to pharma
or any specific industry. We, we have work on, in, in, in different ones. So we have that ability when we started working on this with Laurent. That's why we we created this partnership with him because we complement each other's profile very well to the something wide enough for different industries. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Juan. So just so I'm understanding everything correctly and for our members, the four pillars, one we look at pricing specifically leaning towards value based
pricing of course. The second one was portfolio management. We're looking at optimizing our mix where we're going to focus which products, which services and so on and so forth there. The third pillar you mentioned was promotional management and you're correct, a lot of us think that that is purely a retail, it is purely on consumer
goods or something like that. But of course, we're all seeing more and more promotional management in business to business with manufacturers, with people who do services and elsewhere, of course, in addition to that. And that's a very, very important pillar as well.
And of course, you ended your fourth pillar there on developing channel strategies, which is very, very important these days since most of us sell through multiple channels that sometimes if we're not doing everything correctly right, can even compete with each other. And of course sometimes our customers are very smart. They figure out that we have
multiple channels as well. So they might investigate each and every channel that we deliver our products and goods and services through and compare and contrast and look for the best deals there. So we have to maintain that
consistency. And I know from knowing both of you, from seeing your presentations and your workshop, that not only are we going to just learn about the four pillars that Juan just talked about, but Laurent and Juan are also going to talk about how we can execute them based on your company, your company's goals, your company's unique maturity and your company's needs. So Laurent, a question for you,
please. What does that customization process look like when we're talking about these pillars? Yeah. I mean for us like what I was saying, so depending on the audience that we have at that workshop, we will try to show examples on how it could apply to the industry. Yeah. So when we do value based pricing for consumer goods or when we do it for healthcare products or when we do with construction company material for example, it's a different,
it's a different exercise. Yeah. So the theory might be very similar, but the way you will put it in practice, the way you will make it stick, the organization, it will be different. I can give an example or so on the pricing angle. So my journey at Philips was split between consumer business at Philips or the consumer electronics which is a little bit closer to what we call fast moving. And then the other side which was healthcare, very different portfolio, very different dynamic.
I could not apply everything that I knew about value based pricing from the consumer business to healthcare. Healthcare was much more trying to understand the economic, the economic value of our solutions, who the hospitals understanding the output it it gives like reduction of costs, for example, a better flow, better productivity, better patient experience. If you have many stakeholders involved in a in a hospital. So it's not only about the user,
it was the buyer. There is the CEO, there is the staff, there is many people involved in, in the experience for consumer, it's, I wouldn't say simpler, but maybe it is so because you have usually one buyer or maybe maybe a buyer and a user. So the number of stakeholders you need to take into account is more limited. The dynamic is also very different, right? So it's more about psychology, psychology of purchase than really going to all the economic, let's say value
drivers. So there are things that you can replicate. There are things that you need to, to adapt. And that's what we will try to do in the, in the workshops based on the audience really understanding the, the, the stakeholders we are talking to and try to replicate for them. So we have for every single pillar exercises so that every attendee can really sit on a sheet of paper and try to replicate what we just
explained. So the value based pricing is the size they will have the chance to map value drivers for their own solution and we will help of them on that. On that journey is a short exercise but that should give them the confidence to replicate it later for for their portfolio and maybe for the organization to date. But we do the same for every single pillar. So we will give some concrete example of what we have left. We can also talk about their own industry and try to make it
customized for for them. Understood and thank you so much Laurent. I love your explanation about how different industries lead to different experiences and very simply how value based pricing in a consumer business can be very, very different than value based pricing from a healthcare
perspective. Obviously within healthcare, there's a bit of what we would call an agency type of a situation where the hospital might purchase the healthcare, but of course it's their patients who are the actual users of the the healthcare. So that presents a very different situation than a consumer business where if I or you or Juan as a consumer purchase something, we're probably going to be the user or our families will. And so it's a very, very different situation there.
And I like how your experiences at Philips and elsewhere and you're at Phillips and elsewhere allow you to have that variety where you can take things from specific elements, specific verticals, specific industries and look for ways that they can apply to our audience and to apply basically in different ways to help our revenue growth management exceed and to do things better there. So thank you very much for the explanation on that one as well. I appreciate that.
So other questions for you, Juan and Laurent. A big part of success in pricing and in revenue growth management seems to be stakeholder alignment. Can I ask each of you to share an example of how you've seen teams build confidence with their leadership by involving them in the revenue growth management framework, design implementation And basically the process is there and we'll reverse our order again. So Laurent, this time we will
start with you. So tell us about an example where you've seen a team build confidence with leadership when talking about revenue growth, management strategies and next steps. Yeah, I would, I would say I've seen it very good example at at Philips on the consumer business when we had developed a very strong revenue growth management framework, probably replicating what the best practices from fast moving well and and then you could see the whole organization behind the the framework.
So we had shared goals, the the KPIs of performance were quite a line around the organization and there was also a very good balance between the central governance of that that framework and the different markets who had to execute the strategy. So I would say there were always tensions. Of course, I mean that you cannot not ever. Usually there is a tension because one is focusing much more on selling and some are
focusing more on profitability. But at the end, as a as a, as a company, I could see that there was a good balance between the
market and the headquarter. And I can make also the analogy of what I've seen on the B2B side, where I could see the team struggling a little bit more to find the same balance of orchestrating the, let's say, the execution of that strategy and make it make it land in the, in the countries, which is, let's say why it's also good to to see the differences between the different industries and CEO case in the same company. Even you can have best practices and still struggle in other
parts of the organization. And I could see there that the stakeholders were not always In Sync and there were too many, let's say, conflicts around finally the same strategy. So that's where we were always coming back on the same thing. The most important in in the organization is how well you communicate around your strategy and how well you make sure that the executions stick from the top, the bottom of the
organization. And that was also the power of the discussion I had with one where we were exchanging those, those insights from different, let's say, experiences from different industry and we could connect the dot OK, you, you know, here, I think we had the best practice here.
I think we could do better. And then we can bring it back in our workshop and share that experience and say, look, don't replicate those mistakes because I think we can give you some tips to avoid them and try to see that there are some best practice that you can leverage on. And I think that's what we try to bring because of course I've seen also the situation where. Not aligning all the stakeholders can bring actually a lot of frustration, but also
some bad results. So it's always good good to go back to the essence of, OK, we are all human beings. Let's make sure that you communicate and try to make results together. So that's the say what I would, what I would say. OK, I understand. Thank you so much, Laurent. And of course, people who listen to the Let's Talk pricing podcasts have heard me say this
a couple times already. But as revenue managers, as pricing strategy analysts, managers, directors, vice presidents, we have to be both artists and scientists. And a lot of that art is communicating, reaching and deciding where we have common goals, how we can help out each other. And of course, that leads to the execution, which might be more on the scientific end where we look at the numbers and we look at actual things that we can do
in specific situations there. So I love that example. So thank you so much and Juan for you Sir, same question. Can you share an example where you've seen a team build confidence with their leadership by involving them in a revenue growth management framework? And I, I was reflecting and and it it's good that I was on 2nd place because I, I can't think better my my answer. But actually I I think I would like to share one example that is very recent.
We we have been building trust with the sales teams for the last five years on on how we do our pricing strategies and basically on our side. On our side there are two lessons. First, if you involve evolve from the very sales Rep to the sales director early on, on during the process, the decision making process, they, those guys will really become ambassadors and and will endorse your strategy because they feel part of, of, of the strategy. So that's, that's one piece of advice.
And then everything is everything else is very easy because you're already tested and learned from them when and then if you go up in the in the hierarchy ladder, it is going to be easier because you already build trust on the on the lower side. So, and, and very specifically, when we introduce the AI powered strategy, something that was new for everyone, many of the feel like using AI is like a black box. You put things in that and you don't know what's happening on the inside.
And then when you take it out the, the outcome, you don't understand the process, the thinking process and the processing of the tool. So what we did is try and and to test and learn with them by creating these peer groups, customer pre peer groups. So we started saying, look, if you have customer X that is very similar and share these five of or 10 characteristics with this group of customers that is also from your region, from your scope and, and see how they are
performing in a different way. You can see by yourself why the, the tool, the, the, the software is giving, it's giving us this type of recommendation to increase prices. So we take it, take them by the hand and walk them through the whole process. And by doing that, they really grew confidence on, on the tool and how the tool will work. And nowadays they love it. They, they just love it.
They just adopt anything that the tool will recommend because they really were part of the of the, of the decision making process and how we tweak the, the OR fine tune the, the tool to make it work for us instead of against them as they might see the tool at the beginning. So that's something that we are, we are also including in our workshop probably is not written in stone, but if anyone wants to learn from our experiences implementing AI tools like Pross, that is my case.
That's something that we can also cover and and share examples on how we do it for different business units on different modules, smart pricing, smart optimization, evade to management. So that's something that I guess is very powerful nowadays to to share also with the with with people. Horrific. Thank you, Juan. And that's a good thing about a workshop with Laurent De Sonia and with Juan Echevari is that being in some of their presentations before, I know
that they can tailor needs. And of course, they will be able to answer your specific question. So I would encourage anyone, if you are considering AI tools or if you have AI tools that have been considered for you and you have questions about that, then certainly they are both expert in how you can make that transition. And one, I really like your explanation about how we thought in your instance that AI was this big black box where data
goes in and data comes out. But once you walk them through the process, once you look at the customer peer groups and understood it, that everyone really bought into it once they figured things out and once they were able to see it in action. So that's one of these things where we can look at human nature and look at us. And sometimes when we understand things we tend to rely on, the more understand, the more understanding, the more means that we can get better results
from them as well. So that's very interesting on how we can take a new tool, a modern tool. But once we see the inner workings of it, once we see the explanations behind it, then it can become something that works for us, something that we don't question as much, and something that allows us to exceed expectations and to do even better. So appreciate that information there. And Juan and Laurent, thank you
so much. We are almost running out of time here, but I do want to encourage everyone if you are interested in any things that we've talked about in building your revenue growth management strategies and working with your teams at looking at pricing expertise, looking at value based pricing, you can certainly take advantage of their workshop. It's going to be on Wednesday, the 7th of May and they we will be in Dallas for our great event
there. And of course Juan and Laurent's workshop is develop your revenue growth management framework in one day, which is what they're going to help you do. And also for our members out across the globe. If you're unable to join us at this conference, we also will have two conferences later in the year. We are very happy to be in Las Vegas for our Fall American
conference. Those dates are October 21st through 24th and for our EMEA for our Europe, Middle East, Africa conference, we will be in Barcelona from the 2nd to the 5th of December. We look forward to seeing everyone there and of course Juan and Laurent. I would encourage everyone who has questions for Laurent and or for Juan to reach out to them either via LinkedIn or we'll include ways that you can get in touch with them if you have any questions. But gentlemen, thank you so much
for your time today. We're looking forward to a great workshop and of course, I'm looking forward to seeing you both very soon. So Juan and Laurent, thank you so much. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you so much. Kevin, take care. See you soon, all right. Thanks very much. And with that, we will have more information about other podcasts coming up. Thanks everyone for listening to Let's Talk Pricing and I look forward to seeing everyone again very soon. Thank you.