From Pricing Strategy to Profit: What Actually Works with Kevin Mitchell

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome to if Prices Could Talk, a podcast where we explore how pricing, sales

Speaker A: and negotiation drive growth.

Speaker C: Brought to you by Holden Advisors.

Speaker B: Let's dive in.

Speaker C: Hey everybody. Welcome to the if Prices Could Talk podcast with Holden Advisors.

Speaker A: Brian.

Speaker C: I'm, um, Brian Doyle, CEO of Holden Advisors. And I'm joined by my business partner, Patrick McCullough. And today we have a unique and timely guest. Frech off his very successful, very well attended Professional Pricing Society semiannual conference. It's the president of the Professional Pricing Society, Kevin Mitchell. Kevin, thanks for being here.

Speaker A: Hey, Brian and Patrick, thank you so much for the opportunity to talk with you and with your audience today. So definitely appreciate that, appreciate all that the two of you and your company and lots of others do for pricing as an art and a science. So thanks for the opportunity today for sure.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker B: It was great to see you in person, Kevin. I mean, it's always good to get together and have a coffee and just chat.

Speaker A: Absolutely, Patrick, likewise. Good to see you. Uh, Brian, good to see you as well. Um, also remember seeing Lori Hrabowski from your team and of course several hundred of our colleagues and luminaries and thought leaders and practitioners as well. So we had a very good week at PPS profitable in suburban Chicago last week. Thank you.

Speaker C: Yeah, awesome. I appreciate it, Kevin. Um, for those of you, for those out there who don't know you, um, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? And our organizations have actually had a long standing relationship. So maybe, you know, talk about that a little bit.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Will do, Brian. So, uh, I'm Kevin Mitchell from Professional Pricing Society. And our organization sits at the center at the nexus of pricing and revenue management and sales enablement and related fields. Basically, we are where you go for connections to thought leaders and experts such as Mr. McCullough and Mr. Doyle and their company, leading scientists, leading academics, software solution providers, and of course thousands upon thousands of our members who are pricing practitioners. Uh, in just about basically every country where business is done, PPS has a very long standing obligation to connect the pricing community. Our organization goes back 45 or so years. I'm not really sure. We were incorporated in the early 80s, but existed before that. And of course with Holden Advisors, with Reid Holden itself. There's a great connection between Reed Holden and my father, whose name is Eric Mitchell, who founded PPS and who retired about 20 years ago. And uh, Brian and Patrick, you know, you probably have heard this story before, but basically it goes, uh, my father, Eric Mitchell, was a pricing practitioner way before pricing was cool. Late 60s, early 70s. I can't even remember exactly when, but I would have been a small child then. Um, yeah, I would have been. We'll go with negative 20 years old at that point in the, in the late 60s and early 70s. But, um, I remember he worked for Ford in Detroit, working on the, uh, on the Mustang. He worked for Xerox in Rochester, New York, when Xerox was a very, very large company. He worked for intel in the Bay Area and basically was a pricing practitioner. Decades upon decades upon decades ago. He became a consultant, as one does after a few years of that, around the same time that a lot of the pricing godfathers also took that path. I'm thinking of course of Reed Holden, whom we all know of, um, Tom Nagel, Kent Monroe, Herman Simon, you know, the godfathers of our space. And the story goes, one day my father said, I'm tired of competing with you, same five or six gentlemen for the same pricing jobs that come out. I'm going to make a newsletter. And basically he told Reid Holden to write him an article about how you partner with your sales team. He told Tom Nagel to write an article about Eve, the economic value estimation, which is in his books. He told Kemp Monroe to write, I don't know, something about elasticity or something like that. And he combined them into a newsletter, which is how professional pricing societies start. So it would have been my job as a small kid to print out the canary yellow newspaper at Kinko's, take boxes of them as a small kid, mail them out. And I do remember, um, this is true, except for one small fact. But yeah, I remember carrying boxes of the newsletters as a school, uh, kid is my summer job and Christmas time job. Uphill through the snow in Atlanta, Georgia and Phoenix, Arizona. That's completely true, except the uphill through the snow part. But, um, yeah, so we started in as a newsletter and obviously Holden Advisors has been a partner with us for many decades. We probably shouldn't say how many decades, but you can tell by the, uh, gray hair here. It has been quite some time. So very, very thankful to you and your team for the partnership and for the opportunity to talk with you and your audience today.

Speaker B: What a journey, Kevin. What a journey it's been.

Speaker C: M. Yeah, as I think about that, um, I'm thinking about Badger Menon had a keynote at PPS this is this past week about her journey to becoming a pricing leader. And what I loved about it was it was self effacing. It was really like I didn't do everything right to get to this point. And, and I learned some lessons along the way and I was wondering with that rich history that you were just describing, like what are one or two lessons that you've learned either individually or being around pricing leaders for your, you know, the end of your career here, the most recent part of your career, um, what have you learned that you could share with the audience?

Speaker A: Yeah, thank you for the question, Brian. And it was great to see Badra at our conference. And for those of you who don't know her, Bajra Menon actually came to a PPS conference 13, 14, I can't remember how many years ago as a, as a student, as an MBA student from um, the Simon School at the University of Rochester, who at the time, and maybe still now has the only pricing concentration where you can get an MBA in pricing instead of just one or two classes that talk about pricing. And she was able to get a job through attending our conference, through meeting with one of our members, a gentleman named Lynn Gwynn, who a lot of us around pricing know of, who at the time led pricing excellence for Cargill, who is a company who makes everything that goes into everything edible and quite a few things non edible as well. Uh, this morning, believe it or not, if you had toast and coffee and anything that you had Cargill products, probably multiples of um, them. And we're talking about an organization that depending on the price of oil is either the largest or second largest privately held organization on the planet. And so 13 years ago Badger came here as a student and now she leads pricing for that multi, multi, multi billion billion billion dollar organization. And some of the lessons she talked about, Brian, as you mentioned, were you have to be a student of the game. You can't stop learning. You will make mistakes, you will see areas for improvement. You will have curveballs, uh, thrown at you and have to sidestep some issues. You will have to work with people up and organization in order to succeed. You will have to be a negotiator with your customers and also with your internal teams as well. You'll have to be a science and understand how the numbers work and how they should work. You'll have to understand how to be able to make money. And basically you will have to use all of the tools that are available to you, be they optimization tools, be they expertise from organizations like yours and many, many more in order to succeed. And we as pricing people cannot be siloed. We have to have these great connections to sales and marketing and finance and operations and to our marketplace and to our customer place and to the macroeconomic world as a whole. And if that sounds interesting to you, then yes, that makes you a future pricing leader. And it's really the art and the science of everything and really trying to be at the center of the business in order to provide the fuel that keeps the business going, which is basically making sure that your organization is properly compensated for all of the goods and all of the services that you provide to the marketplace. So it was great to see Bajra. She's been a, uh, friend for a long time since she's been attending our conference and uh, just being around the business world. So it was great to have someone who has had that journey from being a wide eyed MBA student who basically came there wondering, all right, I've had classes in this, I'm studying this in school, but what is it really like, let me talk to the people who actually do the job. And so she was able to use our conference and other organizations such as yours to really build on the academic experience that she had in order to get the real life experiences in order to become a leader that she has now. So lots of lessons there. Overly long answer to your question there. But yeah, it was a great presentation. It was great to see that and it was a great way to kick off our conference in earnest.

Speaker C: Yeah. And it's, it's interesting there were a few talks about that change management aspect like, like you just used the word art. The art and science. And it's funny because when you think about pricing for somebody from outside the industry, you would think very technical spreadsheets, you know, all those things. And I think the answer is yes. And there's all this other part and I'm just, I'm wondering in, in your tenure, how have you seen that evolve from a, uh, more technical discipline to like, you named like five, seven parts of the organization that you need to coordinate with if you're going to be a successful pricer.

Speaker A: Brian, I liked how you started that with yes, and, and I would add an ellipsis of that, dot, dot after that because there can be a lot of. And in addition to that. So we do need the technical ability and of course there are tools that can help us with that. But if the spreadsheets and the data and the numbers and the analysis does not get across the rest of your organization, then it can be kind of an academic exercise. If I give you reams of data and spreadsheets that show these are the moves that we need to make and this will happen if we do but if that reaches a sales organization that has done the same thing for decades and has been successful doing that, then that really essentially might go over their heads. And really where the negotiation, where the so called soft skills, where the influencing without necessary authority comes into play, is the availability to use that data, but to transfer it into a language that your different parties in your different organizations can understand. So how you present data to a new finance MBA from a top school is completely different than how you would, um, present the data to a 25 year sales veteran who knows each and every person in his or her or their sales district. And so really it's talking their language, it really is getting those ideas across in a way that the other party can relate to them. And it requires a lot of outside in thinking where we as human beings tend to go with inside out thinking. So really you have to speak their language in order to get the points across and that's how you're able to make those changes happen. So it really is a yes and yes. You need the technical skills, the availability to understand the data, to have your crystal ball where you take all of these influences into account and your customer moves the game theory about what's going on, your competitors moves what's going on in the marketplace, what's going on with your input costs if they're necessary, and take all these things, but also get those ideas across to people who might just roll their eyes if you start talking about elasticities and regressions and things like that. So you have to bring it either up or down or sideways to their level. And of course another part of that is you have to get your senior management on board also. And there are different ways of talking to different people there. So it really is a yes. And it is yes, the technical part, but it's also the human element of being an internal and sometimes external salesperson as well for your ideas and to being a team member in order to get everyone on board.

Speaker B: There's Kevin, um, you guys are kind of microcosm, uh, of the broader pricing community. Do you see that reflected as well in the feedback that you're getting in the sessions as well as where your membership wants topics to go? Meaning are they in sync, are they asking for that broader representation and do they want to learn more about those, not so much just interpersonal, but interdepartmental, um, connections and how to better leverage those to be more successful in their careers?

Speaker A: Very good question and thank you, Patrick. I would say that it never of course goes from 0 to 100 or from Alpha to omega. If we talk about the so called analytical skills versus the so called soft skills, I would say it varies perhaps from 40 to 60 one way or the other. And right now I do believe, and there are variances of, of course, depending on industry, depending on the individual, depending on which generation they come from, to use a great goldfish term from Mr. Doyle there. But I would say, in general, yes, I would say we're probably 55 to 60 on that 0 to 100 scale with people discussing exactly what you talk about. How can we partner with others in our organization? How can we take these influences from all over? How can we craft stories and narratives? And how can we get the organizations moving forward that way? There are a lot of tools out there where we can assess the data. But again, you've really got to talk about how this applies to particular situations. In order to get everyone on board, a lot of PPS members across the globe are asking us for information on the latest tools. They want to know what AI can and cannot do for them, but they also want to know how to negotiate. They also want to know how to get buy in from their senior leadership, from sales, from marketing, from finance, from whichever organization drives their companies forward. And all of those depending on the organization can do it. Sometimes sales is the department that really matters on the last day of the quarter. Sometimes it's marketing, sometimes it's finance, sometimes it's operations. You don't really have an option to go with one or two of those. You have to be fluent in all of those languages. And so really what we're hearing a lot from our people is I want to use the latest tools. I want to be able to take those tools and be able to relate the learnings from those tools to my organization, to my customers, to my marketplace, in order to get the alignment that we need in order to reach our, uh, key performance indicators and to meet our goals.

Speaker C: That's great. Yeah. Kevin, there did seem to be kind of a recurring theme of, um, challenges associated with implementing price changes when we were at the PPS conference.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: Where did it sort of follow on to Patrick's question? Where do you see the biggest challenges, um, when it comes to rolling out price change? Is it, is it only sales where oftentimes we spend a lot of time, or is it other places? How do you see that play out?

Speaker A: Yeah, and Brian, you're absolutely right. That was another big central theme of our conference, was how we change prices, how we're able to make the transitions that we need for our Organizations. And we're kind of in a different era now where speed, uh, is undefeated. And so a lot of us want to make darn good decisions quickly instead of perfect decisions weeks or months down the road, which is 100% fine. Uh, sometimes our customers would also prefer speed in that regard. Instead of waiting for something that might have everything absolutely 100% perfect way down the road, it's like, hey, tell me what you can do for me right now. They want to move quickly as well. So when we talk about implementing price changes, there are always a lot of hurdles in our way, um, inertia and humans, sometimes resistance. Resistance to change is part of our evolution because change can be dangerous. That puts a lot of us off. Um, some of us are change seeking, but a lot of us, particularly when we've been successful, and this was another one of Bodger's points, that can make you more resistant to change. That can actually defeat your ability to look at what's next when you've been moderately or even more than moderately successful with the status quo, so to speak. So when we talk about price changes, really, we have to make the case for them. We have to say, what got us here will not get us there. When we talk about the future. And we have to talk about the fact that, um, it is 100% fine to wash your clothes down at the river, and it has been for millennia. But at some point we want to move on to the next evolution and to the next step there. And that can be difficult depending on your organization, depending on the personalities involved, depending on your marketplace as well. So really, there are always more changes. I know a lot of people from outside pricing think, oh, just to change pricing, someone's going to type something in and voila, uh, there's the new price. But it doesn't work like that because even if you do that, there may be pressure through rebates or discounts to push that new price back down to where the old price was or back up to where the old price was. So. So really, again, change management is so key in that. I mean, that's central to being a pricing professional. And when we talk about that change, change can be hard. And a lot of ways that we do this, and some of these I've, um, seen represented in the Holden literature and the Holden books as well, is if you can get buy in from champions, even if they're in small markets, you know, if you can win a good deal, to use a geographical example in Rhode island, and then multiply what the effects would be to a large state like Texas or California. Sometimes that's a way to get people to raise an eyebrow. I can't do that. And to have a light bulb appear up here and do that. So change is hard. We're human beings and when we talk about changing prices, if you can do AB tests, if you can do a change in one market, one business unit, one geography, and say, hey, we had this nice medium sized win in Delaware, think if we were able to do that in Florida and New York, how much bigger that that would be. So just one example of how you can do that. But that is a central theme. That's always going to be something that pricing professionals have to overcome. And we have to be change agents. We have to read and learn all we can from experts on how you do that. Because there is a human bias sometimes against change, particularly when things are going pretty well.

Speaker C: Yeah. And it's. I think one of the things that I've seen is even if you can win the hearts and the minds of these other people, sometimes you have to give them the tools to go execute this, to make it easy for them. So particularly for salespeople, even if they say, I understand that we have to raise the price and I can get my head around that. But you're not in those conversations with procurement like I am.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: You don't know what it's like. You don't know that they're going to threaten to take away all the business. And I can't afford this company, can't afford it. And so sometimes you have to give them the tools and the confidence to go have those conversations and then they can go execute even if they want to. You have to help them. Um, help you, definitely.

Speaker A: Yes, I agree with that. You're 100% right there. And that's kind of where it starts with the internal negotiations with your own sales partners or with your own finance or marketing teams where if they're not convinced of the value and the reasons for whatever price changes that you are instituting, then it certainly is not going to get across to the, the uh, street and the customer base and things like that. So it is very imperative that first of all, yes, everyone needs to understand on their own terms how this is a good change, how it's going to help the organization going forward, how it's going to save and improve jobs and bonuses and salaries. Because as we know, every dollar, every euro that comes in has a pricing decision attached. So it's very, very important that they do that. And Brian, another good tactic There I, uh, tend to recommend to large organizations and I shouldn't say I recommend because a lot of people recommend this as well. So I'll use a we, we as pricing. People who are connected and who've been around a while will also recommend that, hey, within your organization there's a great way that you can train your salespeople to deal with purchasers, procurement, supply chain, and that is to do so called war gaming. Within your own organization you probably have a great supply chain, a great purchasing department and um, a great procurement agency. If you're in a large organization, your sales team can often learn a lot from them. For example, my buyer says A, B and C. You know, ask internally if you said that to one of our vendors, what would that mean? And it could mean again to use a holding advisory term, it could mean you're a rabbit, where they're looking at you as someone merely to decrease the price on their preferred vendor. Or it could mean that they really are looking around. Or it could mean that they are a poker player and they're looking basically to reduce price if they can. But they really value your goods and services and are just trying to see what they can get and we can't fault them for that. So I would also encourage all of us that ah, within your organizations you probably have, in addition to a great sales team, a great procurement agency and you can learn things from them. Also I'm hearing this, you know, my salespeople are hearing this from, from our customers, internal procurement people. What does that mean? You know, how are you compensated? How are you bonused? Do you have a preferred vendor? Where if you keep that preferred vendor and it's less than an X percent increase year over year, does that work for you? Does that get you a pat on the back when your KPIs come around? Are you looking for just the total lowest cost possible in every way, or are you looking to make sure that your plan or your organization has 100 on time delivery? I mean there are a lot of different goals for procurement, supply chain, purchasing as well, just as we have a lot of different goals. And so yeah, I would rely on your internal people within your own company. They probably have that discussion with, you know, companies that you deal with on the other side as well.

Speaker C: Yeah, you know, it's, it's funny, we, we did a workshop, uh, a sales workshop with a client and we encourage what you just said, which is to say go talk to your procurement group. Um, they did, I think it was like one day they did, then they Came back the next day and they said, oh yes, our procurement does all of those same things too. But then they said, and we're the good guys.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: They're like, our company is actually, you know, is a big company in the Midwest. Uh, typically they're all nice people and they're like, we're the good guys and we still play hardball like this. So it's an excellent point.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. And um, also, and this was another kind of theme around the conference is that sometimes we see things as a zero sum game. You know, we want this price, but um, our partners might want a different price and someone's got to win and someone's got to lose. And of course we know deep down inside that it's a negotiation and it's a case where it is not a zero sum game where we can both win with fair prices, with good value for our customers. And really it's reaching that point. And it's kind of like um, the story about, you know, if you like sausages or laws, sometimes it can be difficult to see how they're actually made. So sometimes those discussions can be rather, uh, involved, let's say. But we should all be pleased with the outcome to a certain extent because it's not a zero sum game. We can win, our marketplace can win, our customers can win. And uh, in a lot of cases, our competitors will be also, even though they may not admit it, will be pleased when we do the right things as well. Mhm.

Speaker B: You know, it's interesting talking to a few different attendees in Chicago. A lot of people know, uh, how valuable the wraparound services are. But when it comes to this idea of a zero sum game and it negotiation, our customers always want us to think that it is a very myopic solution. And it's on us to remind them about all of the value that we bring throughout the entire engagement. And it's funny because as you talked about earlier with the rate of change. Right. That speed, uh, is undefeated. We want to make sure that we remind all those pricers out there that yes, speed is undefeated and we need to respond, but at the same time we need to take, take the time to remind our customers of all those elements of value that we provide and that becomes the juxtaposition that, you know, we talked to a lot of attendees about last week. It's this idea of, uh, you have to react quickly, you have to have speed to decision making and at the same time you have to go slow with your customers and you have to continually remind them about all these value added elements, wraparound services, terms, et cetera, all these things that you do for them. Because if you don't, their memory is very short. They will find ways to forget about whatever you think or whatever you think is valuable. And they are easy to forget.

Speaker A: That's very true, Patrick. You're right on that. We often do have to train our customers as well. And internally we know what we provide. And again, it's making sure that everyone is up to date since things change so quickly on the latest and greatest that we provide. And also the additional element is value is from the perceived point of view. Not necessarily. It is a, uh, benefit, not necessarily a feature which is more internal, going external. So yes, that's uh, one of the things we have to do. We have to train our customers in our marketplace as well on the latest and greatest, what we provide and what's out there. So 100% agreed on that one.

Speaker C: Yeah, you make a great point, Kevin, about the perception of the customer. So sometimes you see ROI calculators where the sales team has been armed with this wonderful spreadsheet that's going to say, look how much value I bring you. But they almost never work because it's got to be, uh, from the customer's perspective. And if you can, you've heard us say this, you've seen it on the screen. We talk about if you can't quantify your value on the back of a cocktail napkin, then maybe your story is too complicated and it really is the truth that you have to lay it out in a manner that the customer says, yep, I believe in that. Yep. This other part, they start to quantify it themselves, then it becomes their number, and their number gets shared around their organization way more than your number that you're trying to convince them of.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And sometimes there's a difference between their number and your number. But in most places that's okay because you started the discussion and you're not going to know about everything that goes on internally with that organization. Um, I think, and I think this is another Read Holden example, but please correct me if not. But, uh, selling topsoil, you know, essentially selling dirt. The example there where, uh, uh, Reid and his team were able to determine that dirt is dirt, there could be nothing that's more of a commodity than dirt than topsoil. It's just the same. But if I'm able to deliver a certain quantity at a certain time, where the people who need that dirt have their employees working instead of waiting around for a truck or a delivery or being paid overtime because things weren't timely, then, hey, that dirt allows them to be a lot more efficient. And if we present a number to them that says, hey, it's going to save you this number of overtime man hours, instead of having your people just sit around doing nothing, even if that number is challenged, once you reach an agreement that, hey, there's something valuable there, their number may be different, but it still could be a pretty good number as well.

Speaker C: How many people pay for TSA PreCheck or clear at the airport?

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker C: Same thing. It's like, hey, if you can make this happen faster, I'm willing to pay for it.

Speaker A: That's right. Uh, we all have the availability to perhaps, uh, make more money in our careers and for our companies. We cannot create more time. Uh, we have not solved that one, unfortunately.

Speaker C: That's funny. Yeah. Hey, Kevin, you mentioned earlier, uh, you just made reference to AI and I noticed that a lot of the sponsors at PPS were AI companies. Certainly people are using AI and I was curious what you're seeing about how AI is being used in pricing and, um, sort of the best of. And then maybe the pitfalls of using that.

Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for your question, Brian. And actually, I have to admit that part of the reason that I go to the PPS conference is to learn more about AI myself. Um, someone who is, uh, of a different era and can learn many, many, many more things about what AI can and cannot do. So that's one where I admit that I am not an expert, but I learned something new all the time at our conferences and at other events as well about what AI can do. And it is central to a lot of the offerings from a, uh, pricing optimization standpoint and also from our customer standpoint. And it really is a case where if AI, if the new science can help you elevate your strategic thought by getting you and your team out of the weeds, so to speak, throughout the, uh, Excel sheets that look like the old phone books used to look, or something like that, then that allows you to basically, in a Pareto principle kind of way, to concentrate on the things that really matter instead of the things that really don't. So I certainly see AI as a time saving tool for our people. And of course we've talked a lot about time and how speed is undefeated. And so really it is a way where instead of worrying about the weeds, you can worry about the fruit trees and the things that really matter and able to elevate your thinking there. I hope to become more of an AI expert After learning a little bit more from younger and more competent people on my team who probably grew up, uh, around AI and with that mind frame. So I'm very much a student of what AI can and cannot do. But at our conference, you're correct. We had lots of great presentations about it. We had lots of thought leadership about it. And it's evolving so quickly right now. I feel that I understand the things that AI did X number of months or a year or two ago, but since then it's improved so much that it really is an arms race. So I have a little bit of work to do there as well, I have to admit that. But, uh, AI certainly will be a game changing tool. Um, just right now, how we probably would not hire someone who was otherwise brilliant, but said, uh, you know, I'm really not good at using a laptop or a phone or anything like that. I'm really good, I'm really smart, I'm a great business person, but, yeah, I don't do computers or phones. Just like we would think twice about interacting with that person, I think rather quickly, we will probably say the same thing about AI, where you certainly will need to become familiar with it. No, what it can do, what its limitations are, where it can save you time, where you need the human in the loop, or, um, where you need the race car driver instead of the machine itself. So I'm a student as well, and I'm looking forward to learning a lot more about it.

Speaker B: I think we're all students of AI right now. Anyone who says they're an expert, I would think twice about that.

Speaker A: You're probably right on that, Patrick.

Speaker C: And they're an expert today, but not tomorrow. Exactly your laurels for just a second. Yeah, that's right. I'll tell you the one thing that, that at a high level that I'm learning is, you know, you use the phrase you need a human in the loop, and I, um, in my brain, it instead of a human in the loop, meaning like a human in the center of it, I feel like the human's got to be at the beginning and the human's got to be at the end. Because, um, what we're seeing is you will get an answer, right? You will get an answer. So you need to direct that machine, uh, so to speak, in the right direction. And then you got to make sure that what it's spitting out, particularly when it comes to pricing, is accurate and applicable.

Speaker A: Definitely. Brian. Yes. You have to ask the right questions to start off with, you know, your company's goals. You know what your aims are, you know what your next steps should be. And without that, AI can go off on a side path that does not lead towards your goals or towards what you want to happen next. So I would agree with that. You definitely need to start off with the good questions with your aims in mind and then if and when you engage AI, then realize the limitations, make sure that everything tends to make sense, and also make sure that you use it as a tool, not as your end variation of thinking or as your uh, basically is your complete product that you only use there. I mean we've got to be there throughout the process and we have to know what's going on there. Um, I think we all know the famous pricing story. I can't remember the name. There was a textbook that cost several million dollars because there was an algorithm where company A was like, okay, we're going to start the list price and company B said, oh, we've got better delivery than company A, so our price is going to be theirs plus 2%. And then company A matched that one and eventually I think it was called like the lifespan of the fly or something like that. I can't remember the exact book, but there was a book that, a textbook, a biology textbook about flies that eventually cost several million dollars because algorithms kept building on each other. And one would raise a price, one would meet that price, one would raise that price, one would beat that price. So obviously that can't happen if there's a human in the loop. And if it happened with prices going up, it can also happen with prices going down. So we have to make sure that we use this as a tool, as a machine where the tool doesn't act on its own, the machine doesn't act on its own. There's got to be someone there who knows when there's a problem with the machine, knows how to fix, the machine tells the machine what to do and it's there throughout the process.

Speaker B: Yeah, we don't wish this on anyone, but I imagine there will be more stories like that coming out in the future. Right. And, and as well, it'll be interesting to see how the topics at PPS and the keynotes, uh, how they evolve. Do they focus on the same areas that they're on right now? Do they evolve to be more perception based? Do they involve or do they evolve to be more about the human in the loop on the beginning or the end? Or do they really go deeper into the technology? Because it's easy for us to want to uh, go to the shiny New object. Right. To seek to better understand this fancy thing that is AI. And I think probably it'll be a little bit of both for sure. But I think more just as a projection, it'll be really fascinating to see where people go and what the experts are speaking on the stage about.

Speaker A: Absolutely, Patrick. And again, that's one where it may vary from 40 to 60 on our 1 to 100 scale. It certainly is never going to be all or even almost all of A versus B there. And one thing that we do as an organization that we've been pretty good at is with our depth. You know, we've done conferences on four continents. Now, obviously at the center of this space, with our many, many, many thousands of members, we kind of get an idea of what everyone wants. But I would encourage the several hundred of us who were at PPS profitable last week as we record this, that, uh, my team is probably sending you multiple opportunities to fill out surveys and tell us what you want. So in some ways we're a push, but in a lot of ways we are a pull from our marketplace. So when we hear about the challenges that are out there from the pricing community, that's when we partner with experts such as yourselves, leading academics, leading thought leaders and others in order to provide that. So there's an element of push, but also an element of pull. And we will try to address the needs that are basically our biggest challenges and opportunities there. Sure.

Speaker C: Yeah. That's great. And Kevin, that seems like a great way to wrap up what we're talking about today. It really, um, ties together last week's PPS conference, all of the really smart people who were there, the smart, uh, presentations, and then how your team is pulling all that together, not only for last week, but then you've got another conference coming up in Atlanta in the fall. So, uh, you know, just pulling that thread all the way through to what the members really need to. So, um, if somebody wanted to be a member of pps, they're listening this. They're like, it's time. I don't know why I wasn't a member up to this point. It's time for me to join. How do they join? Where do they go?

Speaker A: Yes, you can connect with me or my team. Um, I'm pretty easy to find on LinkedIn. If you look for Kevin Mitchell and probably put pricing in there, you'll find me. So you can definitely connect with me that way. You can also check pricingsociety.com for my team or you can email me at. Ah, Kevinricingsociety.com and I look forward to hearing from everyone soon. And it was great to see both of you last week. Brian, you were a big part of our program as well with your presentation, so thank you very much for that as well. And, uh, also I should mention that for those of us, like me, myself, who need to learn more about AI, we do have an AI, uh, specific micro certification in addition to the certified pricing professional that a lot of us know. So we do have some expertise that's available to the business community on that, on the Venn diagram overlap between AI and pricing and revenue. And we are very much looking forward to connecting with you and the Holden team again. We're very much looking forward to connect with the pricing community as well through our conferences, as you mentioned, through our online training, through our virtual events, and so on and so forth. But I'm looking forward to seeing, uh, the two of you and of course many others again at PPS events later in the year. So we are in Atlanta, our hometown, October 27th 30th our European event will be in Amsterdam the week after American Thanksgiving. It will be the very beginning of December. And very much looking forward to seeing everyone again soon. And thanks for the opportunity to talk with you today. So, Patrick, Brian, thank you for your partnership and thanks for our, ah, chat today.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Kevin, thanks so much for being on the podcast with us. Really appreciate it.