All right. And hello and thank you all so much for tuning into another episode of the Professional Pricing Society podcast. My name is Terence, and today's discussion is with a very, very special guest to the Pricing Society. We have Mr. Kevin Mitchell, he's the President of PPS and he's with us today. And we'll be discussing the latest hot topics in pricing that's expected to take over in 2024. Kevin, good Sir. How you doing today? Terrence, thank you so much. I'm doing very well.
Always good to talk with you and looking forward to our discussion here. But yeah, thanks so much to you for the great production work and everything that you do for our organization as well. So very much appreciate it, Sir. Of course, of course, absolutely. Thank you for that. Now you, you are somebody who is fairly plugged into a lot of different pricing professionals and somebody who facilitates these type of conferences.
There's a lot of different type of topics that may run across your table as far as what people want to talk about in breakout sessions, workshops or keynote presentations. So what do you think? Are some of the hot topics kind of starting out in the new year? Yeah, that's a very good question. And in a lot of ways, you're
correct. I mean, my knowledge and our company's knowledge, we're often a mile wide, but sometimes only a few inches deep because we talk with everyone, but sometimes we don't get really, really in depth with a lot of people. But we are in a position where we get a good overview of what people are talking about and some of the things that I'm hearing PPS members worldwide
talk about. One would certainly be we still have continued economic uncertainty where we don't know what's going to happen from a global macroeconomic perspective. We are still depending on your geography and your industry, still perhaps fearing inflation, hybrid inflation, deflation, depending on your inputs and where you are. And basically there are a lot of things going on with your leading towards a lot of uncertainty from an economic perspective.
So that's one thing as pricing people that we have to deal with. Another one is that we have all discovered that we have huge amounts of data whether or not it's perfect or imperfect or somewhere in between. And so data analysis would be another big topic on how we can take advantage of the information that we do have to set strategies and tactics going forward. And of course, when we talk pricing, a lot of that boils
down to monetization. Our companies put forth a lot of energy and a lot of effort in developing our products, our goods, our services and so on and so forth. And often the big issue is how we can take this work and how we can actually get it into dollars and EUR and yen and 1:00 and all the other economies that we deal with out there. So really monetization is always a big effort and also a couple new topics that we're hearing more and more about in 2024.
One would be around sustainability. It could be around green efforts, around ecological efforts, around ESG, environmental, social, social and governance and other issues around that with looking at new ways of doing business and some of the new initiatives that are
out there. And I like to warn people when I talk with our members across the globe and if you're not familiar with ESG, with green and with sustainability, you will be soon because these initiatives are coming your way as well. Depending on your, again, depending on your geography, your industry, it might be ancient history, it might be current, but and it might be coming, but it definitely is
coming in one way or another. And Terrence, I think one more hot topic that everyone is talking about now would be artificial intelligence overlapping with machine learning and some of the latest really interesting tools that are out there as far as AI and what it can do for business people and what it can do for pricing, revenue management professionals as a whole. So really we have a lot of interesting things that are going on now.
There is a lot that is new and of course with our members, your mileage may vary depending again on where you are in the line of business that you're in. But what I hear from PPS member companies globally, these I would say would be the biggest five or six hot topics that people are talking about right now. But great question. And hey, there's a lot going on right now, definitely.
It sounds, it sounds like it's a lot going on right now and it sounds like also it's it's it varies based on the region like you mentioned before. But yeah, you're completely right. Monetization is debatably the biggest topic because everyone's trying to figure out how to multiply their revenue. Data analysis, sustainability. AI is going to be, you know, the topic of the of the, I say of the future, but it's it's the topic now in preparation for the future. So I'm glad you made mention of
those. You know when you think about it, a lot of these topics have a lot to do with team collaboration and and departments coming together to make things grow and and multiply and just be more efficient. Let me ask you this, good Sir. How can pricing and revenue growth management teams work more effectively with other departments to maybe achieve their goals or to reach new milestones?
Yeah. That's a great question because often there is a little bit of healthy butting of heads and sometimes there are conflicting goals between revenue growth management or pricing departments and sales or marketing or finance or product management. Sometimes our goals as pricing professionals may be on centered on margin dollars or on effective price realization or something like that. But your sales people, their goals may be purely on volume or primarily on top line growth or
something like that. And those two, there can be a little bit of healthy conflict. At least we hope it's healthy conflict between goals like that. And so when faced with issues like that, when we have to work effectively with other departments, I try to remind our member companies and our contacts that really we have to use our empathy and our sympathy.
We have to talk with people on their terms and we have to remember that their goals and their strategies may be a little bit different than our goals and our strategies. And those in turn also might be different than the corporation's overall overall goals and strategies.
And also in addition to use of utilizing these so-called soft skills, same things from other people's viewpoints, talking with them on their own terms, understanding how they're challenged, how they're compensated, what their goals are, what they're trying to do. We also have to remember that we have to present data, our thoughts, our strategies in a way that matches up with what our counterparts are ready to
deal with. For example, if you have a 25 year sales veteran on one hand and a brand new MBA who's a hotshot financial analyst on the other hand, you probably can't talk about your pricing data, your RGM revenue growth management data in the same way to both of those parties. They have completely different backgrounds, completely different goals, different experiences and so on and so forth. There ideally we do want to tie all of our strategies to the corporation's overall goals and
strategies. But of course there can be some differences they're in. So always remember that your sales people know your their products and their sales stories, their sales territories, I'm sorry, and their markets far better than you can.
And product managers probably know their product attributes far better than you do. But as pricing and revenue management professionals, we have the job of knowing about all of the supply chain, all of the market conditions, what the competition is going to do. We have to be familiar with all of the data and we have to reach a common ground with them where we describe why certain things should take place, describe why we feel that certain deals are great or are not great or
somewhere in between. And we also have to remember that when we come from these different perspectives, we all have our own viewpoints, and all viewpoints can be correct from the beholder's perspective. And really, that's when we use our partnership, our arts and our sciences, our data skills, but also our negotiation skills to reach decisions that are best
for everyone as best we can. And we also have to keep in mind, even though we would never say this publicly, but sometimes we all have the pleasure of dealing with advanced senior sales people who have 25 years of history, but sometimes that 25 years of history is one year of history that's repeated 25 times over and over again. We should be in the position where we have broad data, a lot of market insights, a lot of knowledge of what might happen next.
And also we have to be in a position to put all this information together in a way that our different counterparts can understand it, that we can negotiate with them internally and externally. And hopefully we can all reach agreements where we're doing the best things for our company, our employer, moving forward. So we all stay happy and healthy from a business perspective. That's good.
That's, that's really good. You know that and that's also a great point presenting data in a certain way that our counterparts can receive it well. And how I present data, I mean to my colleague may be completely and how they receive it may be completely different depending on how I receive that same data. So that makes a lot of sense. And then you also mentioned
trust as well. Well, indirectly, I guess I suppose trusting that whoever we're speaking with as far as different departments that they actually do have that skill set and that knowledge to to be able to contribute to the conversation. And it's in a way that we can kind of find some sort of common ground that also highlights all of our strengths, if that makes sense, if I'm saying that correctly. Definitely.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It is all of our jobs to make sure that our company continues to generate good profitable growth because that's how we get to reinvest in our company and all of our salaries and bonuses in our product development going forward and in all of our other efforts there. So from a big corporate perspective, hopefully we can all see that we should be on the
same team moving forward. Sometimes there is an amount of stress with conflicting goals there, but we have to be human, we have to be artists and scientists, and we have to move forward and be the best team members that we can. That's the goal at least ideally.
Now let me ask you this as well. You know, when it comes to our PPS members and the people who subscribe to these knowledgeable professionals and and really experts in the field, how can PPS members prepare for something like economic uncertainty? That's a very tough issue. And yes, you're correct. That's one thing that we hear a lot about because we really don't know what's going to happen next. And I would say the first step is always don't panic, take a deep breath.
And the second step is once again, don't panic again and think about it. We've had economic uncertainty before. We'll have it again and again, depending on your business and where you are. It may have been recently, the last time we had situations like that. It may have been a long time ago, but others have faced it and have been able to recover, survive and thrive and move on. And I always think in situations like this, there are a few things that we can do.
One is that we can all use our contacts inside and outside of our company to find people who have dealt with this before. And by that, for example, I mean that during the pandemic, we really feared hyperinflation and increasing inflation really across the globe. And for those of us in North America, Western Europe, a lot of us hit the panic button and started really, really being very, very concerned about that to a huge degree where it may have prevented good calm thought
in a lot of cases. And we also have to remember that what was a crisis for us, if you are from Argentina or elsewhere in Latin America or Turkey or various places in Africa, hyperinflation, they would have called that Tuesday. It would have been no big deal for them because they're familiar with it and they've done it before. So they're always people who have faced your issues before.
So seek them out. Get knowledge, network, benchmark, take a deep breath, think of all the scenarios, get a range of scenarios. Remember that we have to be game theorists. We don't do anything in a vacuum. If we make a move, our markets, our competitors may make moves also and we have to take that into account as well. When dealing with economic uncertainty, we can plan for a number of scenarios.
It's very interesting because in a way we have to be forward-looking and backward looking at the same time. And I remember talking with a few very, very smart people at one of our events, Terrence. And at the height of the pandemic, when everyone was talking about inflation, I remember talking with a group who said right now we need to put plans in place for potential stagnation or deflation because the inflation was already here and things can be cyclical at a
certain level. And so you've got to consider all of the opportunities there. And you don't want to panic, but you also don't don't want to be very late to the party. You want to be able to move with agility, with forethought and also with the knowledge that our moves do not happen in a vacuum. Any move we take, there may be a competitive response, a market response, and we have to take that into account and be willing to adjust our plans based on that as well.
So we have interesting challenges. We have some great opportunities there, but we have survived economic uncertainty before. We will survive it again and seek out people who have knowledge about it. Remember your game plans, remember your corporate goals, and remember to be able to plan for a few different scenarios along a spectrum there. And also again the game theory. Remember that your move may generate another move from somebody else and so on and so forth.
And we don't want a big domino effect leading to basically a price war or anything like that because our whole industry may lose in a situation like that. So don't panic, think, seek out knowledge, think about the competitive response and act accordingly. Act quickly, but not in a panicked fashion. I think that's probably the best way that we can all deal with uncertainty and remember the lessons from before and take that into account as we move forward as well. That's.
That's good. You know that that can almost translate just to life advice. Yeah. Don't, don't. Pirates is, you know, pricing his life in a lot of ways. Price. We're telling you. Quotes, but yeah, there are some parallels there. Mm hmm. OK, that's good. Now, now Speaking of, you know, something like uncertainty or economic uncertainty, there's this little thing that's starting to take over called
artificial intelligence. Now my question is, in your opinion, what effects will AI have on people's jobs moving forward? Because it is starting to kind of take over and it's, you know, just like the we had machines that started to build a car is a lot quicker than the assembly line. So a lot of people in the assembly line that worked those jobs didn't have a job anymore.
Same thing with I guess the keyboard and the typewriter or whatever the case is. So now it's artificial intelligence and now you see across the board a lot of these companies are starting to lay off a lot of these tech roles and things of that nature. What you know or just generally in pricing, how will it have an effect on people's jobs moving forward? Yeah, it's a very interesting topic. And AI is a tool, so we have to
remember that. And in a lot of cases, if you've been around for a little while, as I have, as you can tell by the three Gray hairs that I have, we've heard kind of over and over again how certain new tools, new things, new machines and so on and so forth are just going to wipe out large amounts of jobs. And really kind of what happens is they usually involve a shipping of jobs but not really wiping out jobs. Of course, no one is building
Model T's anymore. But when the Model T came out, people were like, oh, that's just going to kill entire industries. And it really means for a shift, you know, if you are in one of these areas where a new tool basically means a huge change, then you have to become familiar with the tool, of course, and think about what's next. And jobs will change. There are some jobs that will go away with every new, with every new tool, with every new
advancement. But really, if you look about it from a holistic perspective, really it means a shifting of those jobs more than the whole type of job going away. We are still basically looking at things where if a lot of manufacturing is done with robotics and with machinery, we still have jobs there. They're just a lot different than they are. We don't have people actually on assembly lines in various parts of the world like we used to, but we still have jobs for those people.
They just may be different jobs. So a healthy amount of concern is definitely valid. Jobs will change. I do believe that from a big picture perspective, this will be like any other tool that will advances from a business perspective, from a human perspective. But there are those shifts that can happen along the way. I remember hearing that when the Internet was taking off, it was just going to kill all of our jobs. We were going to work 4 hours a week.
All the information would be right there. There would be no need for people to do research or anything like that. And of course that. Did not, was not the case. I'm sure if you're from a generation when personal computers and typewriters came about, well, yeah, for stenographers or for people who wrote in longhand, that job went away. But basically, if they were able to train and able to work with computers, the job was still there, it was just in a different function using the tool.
And I remember hearing from a few people at our events, I think it was Kavia. I can't remember Kavia's last name, but others had said no, AI. AI won't replace us directly as pricing people, but an individual who is familiar with AI and who uses AI and these other tools in machine learning may have a big advantage over someone who is not familiar with the tools. So I've also heard people say that you can think of AI right now as a bright but impressionable teenager.
It knows a lot about what's going on today. It may come up with some great pie in the sky, plans for tomorrow. It may hallucinate. It may have these hallucinations. Whether or not there's a bug or a feature probably depends on your job function. But AI itself has not LED your company through a tough negotiation. It hasn't had the to manage the internal challenges. It hasn't had to deal with a sales vice president when you're bumping heads up against a quota or anything like that.
But we as pricing professionals and we still have that experience. So AI is the tool. Jobs can and probably will change. We need to be familiar with AI, know its limitations, know its strengths, know how to use it, be familiar with it and make it a good strategic partner. As we have with computers and the Internet and all of these other advancements and robotic assembly lines and so on and so forth.
The jobs may see a shift, but as far as the total number of jobs, that will not go away, I believe at least. Anyway, we're not going to be fully replaced by AI or machines. There's still going to be a great need for human intuition and a lot of cases I think and hope that AI can be a great advantage in that it will take care of a lot of the grunt work around some of our jobs and free us up for a higher level strategic thinking. So we need to be prepared for that as well.
We are in the midst of an AI revolution and there are a lot of different theories on what's going to happen with it. So we are living in interesting times there. As far as total number of jobs, I personally don't have a fear that we're not going to lose a total number of jobs. There are specific industries that will have these big shifts where the job that you perhaps thought you were going to have five years from now or next year may not exist in the current
format. But there will be another, hopefully higher level, hopefully more strategic, hopefully more managerial job or jobs that replace those interesting times though, definitely. Interesting times to say the least. That's a great and a great explanation of of it as well. As you know it's more so of a shift in in your words than a complete annihilation as it as it people kind of deem it to be
at the moment. At least now I want to kind of steer in a different direction with this conversation and ask you one last question that's not too hopefully not too strenuous of a thought process. What is new with PPS, What's going on around the the walls of of the PPS building and the the team and everything going on this new year what what would you say is kind of new with the team and everybody? Oh yeah, definitely. Thanks for asking that, Terence.
Appreciate that. Also, I hear from a lot of members around the globe and we're lucky in that we do business basically everywhere and we are so lucky. First of all, that PPS has a great team, yourself and our team members included of course. And we always have a lot of new things that are going on with us. Some of the things that are brand new for us is we are continuing expanding our online training courses. I think we have 55 now and maybe 56 or 57, I'm not sure, but we
add them all the time. And of course, we work closely with our big member companies to discuss the challenges that they are facing right now and rebuild our programs based on everyone's feedback in order to meet their needs as well. So I want to make sure that PPS members keep an eye on our new offerings that are coming up because we've got some great new online training courses for you and for your team.
And also of course we are continuing to expand our certifications for those who want to do a lot of in depth learning around revenue management, around pricing, around sales enablement and a lot of related fields there. We are continuing to build and expand on the CPE as an Edward
program. The certificate of profitability education really is designed for people who have pricing as part of their jobs but may not even know it or know how much of it there is. They may be in sales or marketing or finance or operations, they may make pricing decisions and and they need to know something about that so that they're not using a gut instinct or something like
that. So we have a a certification really that's not for people who have pricing or revenue or margin or customer in their job title, but for people who have sales or product management or marketing or finance and their title as well. And we think that this is a great way to address some of the things that we talked about earlier and that is the collaboration, the teamwork.
When we have to deal with other departments, we think not only is it great if we know what they're talking about, but we have a way for them to know what we're talking about as well. And basically the CPE for your team members.
It's a great way for people who really don't know anything about pricing to learn about what we beautiful we are those who are in pricing do on a daily basis, so we can build a common language there, OK. Also as we speak, Terrance, we just received the brochure in the program for the next great
PPS. Event we did. So our, yeah, our 35th annual conference is in April, April 23rd through 26th in Chicago, our second home, the city where we've had far more events than any other city on the planet. And we've got two new breakout tracks. One is around practical pricing, so things that you and your team can take back to your office immediately and work on.
And the other one's entitled Data science pricing from A to I, some of the things that we were talking about earlier as well around some of the scientific advancements in AI and machine learning and how you can use those tools for your teams. So yeah, make sure to keep an an eye out for emails from Terrence and from me and from our team on our new programs there. And of course you can always check our website pricingsociety.com to register and to check out more information for that.
And later this year, we're going to go back to Las Vegas, your favorite city and Berlin for our fall conference and our 19th annual European and Global conference there. So a great program of advance, a lot of online offerings, a lot of ways for you and your team to get information through our podcasts and webinars, expanding that, expanding our social media
offerings. And really a lot of ways for you and your team to work on your training, to network, to benchmark, to hear the latest and greatest strategies and tactics and really get the information that you need in order to continue doing your job as best you can, to do great things to your company, to exceed your goals and to move forward there. So yeah, we're very thankful and that in these interesting times, we have a lot of new initiatives for pricing professionals worldwide.
So we are going to have a wonderful year and definitely look forward to connecting with everyone around all of these offerings and around all of these great topics as well. Mr. Kevin Mitchell, President of the Professional Pricing Society, it has been a pleasure to speak with you today. I want to thank you so much for your time.
If you wouldn't mind sharing with us very quickly where you know interested party members can learn more about you or PPS or just the different resources we have to offer. Yeah, absolutely. You can certainly find me on LinkedIn if you search for Kevin Mitchell and include pricing in there. I think you will find me there. Of course, my e-mail address is simplykevin@pricingsociety.com and you can also check our website. We'll have hashtags for our events coming up.
So our Chicago conference will be hashtag, EPS, CHI 24, So make sure to keep an eye out for that as well. And you can find lots of information about our online training, about our certifications, about our membership offerings, about our conferences to come at pricingsociety.com, or you can just reach out to me. Sounds good. Thank you so much again for your time. And like Kevin said, we do have our upcoming spring conference happening in April.
To learn more and to register for that, you can visit pricingsociety.com as well. Thank you so much for your time, Kevin, and you all have a very safe day today. Bye, bye.