Pricing Through Uncertainty: Value, Volatility & AI with Cargill’s Bhadra Menon

Speaker A: Welcome to if Prices Could Talk, a, uh, podcast where we explore how pricing, sales and negotiation drive growth. Brought to you by Holden Advisors. Let's dive in. Welcome to if Prices Could Talk. My name is Emily McCauley and I'm here with Brian Doyle, President and CEO of Holden Advisors.

Speaker B: Great to be here, Emily.

Speaker A: Wonderful. Today we're talking with Badra Menon, senior director of global strategic pricing at Cargill. Cargill is one of the largest privately held companies in the world with more than 150,000 employees across 70 countries. And Bajra leads strategic pricing for their foods business, which means she's setting price in an environment shaped by weather, tariffs, geopolitics and commodity markets that move whether you want them to or not. Badra, welcome to the show.

Speaker C: Thank you Emily. Thank you for the warm welcome. This is my pleasure. Going to be fun.

Speaker A: We're so happy to have you with us. You have spent your career on the value based pricing side of a business most people assume is pure commodity. Can you tell everyone about yourself, what Cargill does and what you do for Cargill?

Speaker C: Oh, perfect. So um, one in Cargill we try not to use the commodity word. We always say that we have base business and value added business because if it was a commodity then you could buy it on the market. We do provide added services for which the customers are willing to pay. So that's how I would say anybody who runs a commodity business to think about why do customers buy from you if they could have bought it from the open market. You do provide some value. So that's my value spiel. But uh, like you said, I work in the strategic pricing coe for food. Food. And when you work in a coe, your role is not day to day pricing, but setting up the right foundations in the discipline and the muscle in the organization to do the day to day pricing in the best manner possible. So my role is to make sure that all these changes you talked about, the market movements, the commodity exchanges, reading them, being proactive about how you would work in scenarios and not um, be reactive. So that's what I help the businesses do. I've been in the industry for 20 plus years, um, 13 of those has been in pricing. But I've also done a little bit of stints in business development, sales, consumer insights, uh, pre pricing. So yes, uh, I've been to all sides, including finance, so all sides of uh, the game and figured that pricing is a place where everything comes together and uh, you get to play a role in everything and every knowledge you have really helps because as Cross functional as pricing gets, this is the best place to be.

Speaker A: Wonderful. That's fantastic. And you're absolutely right. Everything comes together where pricing sits, even though most pricing professionals don't set out to be in pricing. But I'd love to hear a little bit from you, give folks that are listening a sense of scale in terms of what Cargill does on this in a single day across the globe.

Speaker C: You know, the way I say it is, you would have touched a cardinal product today, one way or the other. Because from the toothpaste to the salt to. If you have been to any of the fast food restaurants, or if you have been to any of the biggest retailers, um, if you have had any chips, any packets that has oils or sweeteners or protein in it, you would have touched a cargo product. So we are in 70, uh, two countries. We are 160,000 people. We are 150 plus billion company, right? So really big. We have presence across the world. We price across the world, we move products across the world. Um, so it's just the mammoth size of it makes people feel that we might be a holding company with, you know, 200, uh, different divisions underneath, but we're not. We are managing our portfolio, um, you know, so that it's. It's a really interesting company. It's also a company where the mission is, it's about feeding the world and nourishing the world. Right. Like, so it gets to the basics of you touch people's life in the best way possible.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: And it's, uh. I love what you said earlier about not being a commodity and that we interact with folks all the time who say to themselves or say to us, ah, uh, but we're just a commodity. And the answer is exactly what you gave is like, no, it's not. We're not just a commodity. And I think, um, the story for you guys is, for me, it's salt. I mean, salt is salt, right? There's what could be special about salt. But it's not like you're just delivering salt. It's that, uh, you are empowering perfectly seasoned French fries on a daily basis, on a minute by minute basis, because you are delivering them where they need to be, when they need to be there consistently. Um, the world could go turn upside down, but somehow the salt is still coming from Cargill to the places it needs to be. And I, uh, think that's fantastic because now, like you just said, you are. It's not just. It's not salt, and it's not just food. It's experiences around those things. And that, I imagine, makes you feel pretty good at the end of the day, if you can scoot your chair back from the desk and think for a second like, okay, I'm improving people's lives in a variety of ways.

Speaker C: Uh, I completely. I love the way you described it, Brian, but I completely agree with you. When you're selling something tangible that people consume and you make sure that people across the world are getting those ingredients, it's. It's beautiful. It's a great feeling. It helps you sleep well at night while making money.

Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, I think part of that is trust, right? So when you think about the chocolate bar that you buy at the store, it. The consumers are trusting that it's going to be the same every single time. Which is which Cargill's job, right. Is the, the same quality, the same taste, texture, all of those things all at the same time, which, which is, in fact, value added. But I would love to talk a little bit now about pricing under external chaos, which the world is full of today. But you work in that environment with a lot of external factors, whether tariffs, political unrest, all of those things influence price, they influence cost. How do you account for all of those things?

Speaker C: So, uh, Emily, it's kind of where we kicked off with, right? Because it's about not how you react to these external market scenarios. It is how you, how you build a pricing organization that can respond to it or can proactively assess it and make sure that you have a plan for it. So even when we talk about tariffs, when that happened, we had systems that helped us solve for it. We had people who had the intelligence to know how to figure this out and what gets passed on, what doesn't, and how do you react to this. So I think that is the most critical element. It is understanding the different factors that impact your business, but also understanding the scenario analysis you need to do if one of them hits, and also knowing the triggers. Right. So that, that those, uh, leading indicators of there is a chance this would happen. What's our game plan? And if we have a pricing organization that is smart enough to do it, that has all the emanations they need, they need to do it, then we're good.

Speaker B: So you've thought through. I'm not going to put it on you that you've thought through everything, because Lord knows there's things happening that no one could have anticipated. But you and your team have thought through a lot of these elements, and you basically have contingency plans Pricing for them. Is that what I'm hearing?

Speaker C: We have an organization that has a lot of contingency plans because you have to think of us as a company that moves products across the world. So when things happen around the world, we have people who work over the weekends to make sure that the products still get delivered on time to the right customers. Uh, and that requires much more than pricing. Right. We are an organization that fulfills our promise, which means our pricing teams also need to be nimble on their feet to know when things happen. How do you. You cannot always be proactive. You might have to react to a scenario, but you always need that much of things in your playbook to know when this happens. What are the five ways I can react and how am I going to do it? So it is a whole organization that is always working through all the macroeconomic factors and all the chaos that happens in the environment. And it's a team that is very, very nimble and very, very fast paced in our reaction to things. So I'm very grateful to work in a company like that for the size that we have. Uh, there is a lot of agility in our organization.

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, you know, it's, it's interesting. I've. I never thought about it in these terms before, but you're, you're reminding me. Uh, I think, as you know, I used to be an Air Force pilot, and so we had a lot of procedures to control everything we could control then. We had a lot of procedures for all those things we couldn't control. But if they happened, we practiced. We were ready for an engine catching on fire. We were ready for somebody to shoot at us. We were ready for all these different things. And then what that did was it really reduced the set of things that we just never anticipated. And so now you're only solving for one or two things instead of solving for 15 in a moment of urgency or in an emergency.

Speaker C: Oh, I love the way you said it, Brian. And just to add on to that, you get the right people, you get the people who do not panic under stress, you get people who are looking at it saying, I know enough about this business and I know how I can work through this. And you're good, you're solid. And I think that's what we are blessed with. It's not that we've gotten everything right. There has been still things we have not thought about, but if you have enough, uh, you know, plans for a lot of things that can happen, then you can develop plans for the rest. You have, you Have a good team. That's what it comes down to at the end of the day, right? Like good team, good process, good playbooks, and um, you just make it work.

Speaker A: So in terms of these playbooks and in terms of the sort of external variables that happen all the time and the need for a nimble team, how does, how did those things factor into price and how does Cargill think about um, cost factors that get absorbed versus passed through? How do those conversations work? What are some of the timelines associated with when those show up in price?

Speaker C: It's a good question and I'm trying to answer this in the right way. Possible, I would say it really depends on, on the scenario. But uh, if you are in a long term agreement, if there is trust, you know, it's not an immediate pass through, it is a, uh, it is a conversation about what is the right time to do this. Because uh, we always have the, we honor our agreements with our customers. We also make sure that we are doing the ethically right thing in the market. Right. So there are many times when we have decided to absorb some of those costs for the right reasons because you might not want to push them into the market at that time. There are times when it has made the right sense that it's a pass through and it needs to be a pass through because that's what the market is doing. So we have tried to do it in the right way possible for the market, for the industry and for us, um, because we have the obligation to do that and we have the responsibility to do that. But we always are aware of our costs, our macroeconomic conditions, our supply demand, when we are going into the market. So wherever we are in the market, we have that awareness. Because we are in industries where you need to be aware of this.

Speaker A: Oh sure.

Speaker C: It is a basic necessity of functioning in these industries. Right. Like if you're running these businesses, you really need to know the external costs, you need to know the um, supply demand, you need to know the inflation, you need to know the exchange rates, you need to know all these elements, the fuel surcharges, the fuel costs. Right. When you function. So these are all basic inputs for us. When we think about pricing or being in the market.

Speaker B: Mhm. It makes me wonder, um, because you are global, what you just said is significant. Um, and let me not skip over the doing the right thing ethically. Uh, not everybody can make that statement. So good on you guys for that. Um, globally, are there differences in how you approach what you just said? For us versus Europe versus Asia versus Africa. Uh, pick a couple of spots. How do you consider those differences?

Speaker C: I would say from Cargill. So I'm starting with that ethics guideline. The ethics guideline and how we function that is strict across the geography so that across the globe that doesn't change. You have to do the right thing and you always have to honor your obligations. So that does not change. But what really changes is from a pure pricing perspective is the mature market versus the growing market versus the competition. So the basics of you think about all the five forces in place, you think about, um, how you go to market. Yes, that does impact how we go to market and how we look at these different external factors. Some would be more critical in certain markets with certain product lines, with certain competition landscape, whereas some would not. So you play accordingly and you know, accordingly. But it is always about doing the right thing because we have been here for 160 plus years and we would like to be here. The family, Cargill family would like to continue this business for another 160 years. So you, you don't think about next month, you think about long term whenever you make a decision.

Speaker B: Right. I remember in our past work with you in the animal nutrition, um, that there were, you know, in certain parts of the world there are giant customers of yours who are providing animal nutrition to countries practically, you know, really large companies. And then in other places like, uh, I'm thinking Southeast Asia, you know, you might be supplying animal feed to somebody who's got 20 cows or 30 sheep or something like that. And it's a whole different approach. So I, I can see how that would be quite different around the world.

Speaker A: Who are, what are the roles that go into making decisions like this? Like who from the Cargill team is working together to, to make those calls.

Speaker C: So for us we have a pricing organization in every business in every region. And so if I speak about food, um, we have four region and we have prices in each of these four regions. But then you also have um, teams that are good at big deal advisory. There are teams that are good at the deal desk and the day to day operational pricing. There are pricing strategists in each of the regions. So you have multiple roles. You have pricing technology data analysts in all these regions. So you have multiple roles. But if you look at it from, if I think about a strategic customer, strategic team, it is always multiple teams coming together. Right? So what we call a deal team or a deal decision making would have a, uh, business or a product line leader. It would also have uh, prices it would have sales team, it would have. Anybody who touches a customer is a part of the conversation. The marketing team, the insights team, because you want to make it as business comprehensive as possible, understanding that the sales team are, uh, the first step of contact with the customer. But from the truck driver that delivers it to the customer, to the different customer service people, everybody has had contact with the customer and they would have a story to tell. So the conversation is that whole zippered approach of tying in with the customer and who needs to be a part of that conversation. So that's how we look at that. So if you're thinking about price setting or the price strategy, the pricing team would own it. But the final, when we are going for strategic conversations, it is the whole business that has a tie into it. Okay.

Speaker A: And that's really important, right? Because everyone, everyone has a piece of the pie and is going to be accountable for some version of that conversation. Speaking of the customer conversation, when your input cost moves for a reason that the customer can see right on the news, does that make the conversation easier or harder when it gets passed through to the customer?

Speaker C: So, um, it depends on the customer because in certain cases the, because the customer themselves are very intelligent about the underlying commodity, uh, markets, um, we might be doing index pricing. So then it's a much easier conversation because the index is moving. So it doesn't require much from our side. But most of our customers, if I think about the mid, uh, size to the higher, they are very aware of what is happening in the market from the underlying commodity markets and some of the input costs. So it is not a difficult conversation. But it is also a side where do you want to have a cost plus conversation or do you want to have a value based conversation? There are some places where we prefer not to have that. Uh, and I will give salt as an example. You want to talk about the value of salt and you don't want to talk about the cost of making salt.

Speaker B: Right? Right. Because then it starts coming down, then you start stripping away all of that value that you're adding into it. If it all comes down to, um, just salt. Yeah. Then, then where are you? It's. We have a client that makes aluminum cans. Same thing. If it's all about just the aluminum, well, forget it. Why am I making cans that change color when they get cold or have a cool label or a different top, or all of these different things or like the salt show up exactly when they're supposed to show up? They can surge in the summertime in North America. When they, people buy more drinks or northern hemisphere and, you know, tail off when they don't and all of those things. So it's, it's really critical. And I find that particularly with what you're doing that. Well, a lot of times when we talk about value, we talk about increased revenue, decreased costs increase, and minimizing risk. And I, I find that a lot of where you bring value is in that minimizing risk. And, and, and one of the elements that I love about Cargill that you don't see everywhere is the diversity of your supply chain. Because when you're diverse, that means if something weird happens in a different part of the world, you can still be a reliable supplier. And uh, if you're all, if you're getting it from one source, um, you know, and then there, the tariffs go up for that one source or there's a hurricane where that one source is or whatever, I think you're pretty much in trouble. So how do you guys talk about that risk mitigation aspect when you're speaking with customers and trying to get their heads around the value that you bring?

Speaker C: Uh, it's a good question. Like, it's something that, uh, we have been training ourselves to do because we are a very humble company and with humility, sometimes you forget to mention the good things you do because you think that it is a part of, uh, who you are and what is expected from you. So to give an example, right when we had the Ukraine, Russia war, um, there was issues with oil supplies in Europe. And we made sure that we were supplying to our customers where we could and where we couldn't. We were having conversations about what would be the recipe changes that would still help them make what they're making, um, but with the same flavor profile and the nutrition profile. So our scientists were working hands in hand with a lot of our customers. When we looked at it as a company, we said that's what's expected from us as a good supplier. But if you think about it, it is a lot of value. So I would say as a pricing team, we had to really have conversations with our, um, uh, sales team and a lot of our internal customer facing teams like the R and D, the technical service, to say what you're doing is above and beyond. You don't realize it because that is, you know, the Kargil mantra. But the truth of the matter is that's a lot of value. Because how many partners would have been able to step up that way at that time to say, we have multiple ways to Solve your problem. Because we want to solve your problem. So I think, uh, one of the good things we also have is Brian, customers do remember that.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: They do remember who had your back when things were going bad. And that really helps. It comes back to that B2B conversation about. It's about trust. It's about making sure there is a short supply. It's about making sure that there is a contingency, uh, support from the supplier. So that's what we try to do a lot, many times. And a lot, many times telling the story is hard, uh, because we are not used to. Our sales team is not used to telling that story. So, um, it's always very interesting because as a pricing team, like you said, we see the value of this, we see the risk mitigation, we do with this and we can quantify this. But how do you get our sales team to communicate that in a way where they're convinced of the value of it? So that's second aspect of pricing. Right. Because I do think that our pricing organizations, one is about getting the right price, strategy and setting. But the second is how do you convince your customer facing team of the value and the numbers that you're putting forward.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: All of that is really, is really tricky all the time because salespeople are scared of having those conversations a lot of the time. But often one of the things that I find so powerful about the Cargill conversation especially is that the risk mitigation is so clearly quantifiable. Right. There's a huge cost associated with a, uh, plant shutdown by the second. Right. That it's astronomical. And so the risk associated or the risk mitigation associated with, hey, we're, we're going to help you avoid that is huge. And it's very empowering and everybody in the plant knows it. Right.

Speaker C: And we are also blessed that we have a lot of salespeople who are very comfortable with this also. So, uh, the first time I had worked on something like this where we had to talk about the contingency and the supply assurance, it was one of the phenomenal sales, uh, lead we had in Europe who came and said, I want to tell the story and I want to tell the story well. Help me tell the story well with numbers because I can give you the incidents, but give me some numbers and give me some value we provided so that I can speak about it. I'm not looking for a negotiation. She just wanted to have this conversation during a customer, uh, meeting just to say, I just want to bring this forth to you. So we have some phenomenal, uh, salespeople who think that way to say, hey, I just want them to be aware that we are providing value here and we are mitigating their risk, and we are making sure that the business is functional and the risk, you know, we should be telling that story frequently. But it's like you said, Emily, sometimes when there is a risk of losing that business, there is a fear of coming across as too aggressive with the value. So people just want to be, hey, I would like to keep the status quo and not tell the story.

Speaker A: It's scary. It's scary.

Speaker B: And what I love about your story is that is the timing aspect of it, because you're right. If it was an rfp and they said, okay, now we're going to bring forward that we had our scientists working with your scientists and they're building a new recipe, people would say, uh, ah, you're just negotiating now. You're positioning yourself for a price increase. But like your salespeople, your salesperson did in that example and did so well was they brought the idea off schedule, so to speak. And I don't know how, uh, they portrayed it, but some of the ways that we see it work really well is they would bring the numbers that you had supplied to them, they bring it to the customer, and they say, gosh, it seems like this is the sort of value that we're providing to. Does this make sense? Do these numbers jive with you and then the customer has the opportunity to say, you're right, those are wonderful numbers. Or let me adjust those numbers. And even if they adjust the numbers, typically, they are so valuable, so big. Gosh, you could cut them different ways, you could reduce them, whatever. You're always going to come up with something that's like, wow, I never thought of value in this light.

Speaker C: And, and you are so right, Brian. And I've been, uh, part of a couple of those conversations, and I've been surprised at how open the customers are, uh, in saying, oh, you are being very conservative.

Speaker B: So not only. So I gave the example the numbers might get cut. You're giving the example that the numbers actually went up.

Speaker C: Yes, yes. They were very open about it, saying, hey, you guys are awesome. And have you, like, let's look at those again. So I don't. I think I speak about the timing fact. I completely agree with you. Bringing these, waiting till a negotiation to bring this up is the worst you can do In a, uh, B2B setup, in my perspective, because you are then not setting up your customer facing team for success.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. It's this value reinforcement across b, the cell cycle and beyond into the next cell cycle, which is really important. But memorable. Tricky, successful, ugly negotiation story. I'd love to ask you that question. Now. It could be internal. Also. A lot of the most complicated, most exciting negotiations are internal. Uh, and that. We can talk about that as well.

Speaker C: Okay. So I can think of so many examples in my head, but I speak about something, something which was, uh, very eye opening for us, uh, at least for me from an earlier part of my career. So it also shows the rawness or the naivety you have when you are younger in your career. Right. So we were going into this negotiation of a product which is much more indulgent. And, um, somehow we realized that, um, there were like six different kinds of products we were taking into the same, same negotiation. Great conversation, speaking about value. And the customer came back and said, your competitor at least 25 to 30% priced less than you. Now, the thing is, you can get them using 10 to 15% as a negotiation tool. 25 to 30 just sounds ridiculously cheaper.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: So we, we kind of went back inside, like you said, internal negotiation, to say, what are the costs? Like, what are we doing? Why are we. Why is it this so expensive? Because that's a natural tendency. We came back and we kind of were like, we can reduce it by 5%, maximum 8%. I still remember the 7.87 kind of a number, uh, percent. But we cannot go 25. So we're going, what are we doing wrong? And how is the competitor? Like, are they going bankrupt with this? Is that a decision they made? Because there's no way they can make this. Because we did all the cost analysis. We were missing something. Then after the second round, uh, one of the sales people actually went in and said, can you show us the specs of what the competitor is providing you? We come back and we realize that the specs are way, way. So this is a product where, however smaller it is, the microns being smaller is the best. And this is like five times bigger than us. And we actually went back and said, they're not even providing the same products, right? And they said, yes, but our initial request said, we are going different this time and this is what we are asking for. So the biggest mistake we made as a team was we did not ask the sales team for the debrief. The sales team said, the customer came for renegotiation. Um, the 6Q is the same. And we just pulled the same 6 SKUs and went into the market. We didn't realize that the customers asked for completely different specs. They were willing to go much cheaper with a completely different product line than what we were providing. Didn't know that. Went into two rounds of negotiation, came back and we discovered we cannot even make things that big. Like we go for a certain scale or below. Because that's what you do with this product. You do.

Speaker B: They were so bad you don't even make it.

Speaker C: Exactly, exactly. So we actually had to go in and say, oh, we did not sell this. So we actually went back to the customer and said, when you're going for value added, come back to us. But this is not the area we play in. It was such an interesting conversation for me because if you think about it behind the scenes in the war room, you're spending two to three months in this conversation. Mhm. Right. You've involved so many people and then you learn that you went wrong from the beginning. So that's the learning I had earlier in my career. So now when I have this, I always ask for, can you recap all the conversation? What did they exactly want? What they were trying to do? What is. Where are they trying to use this? Like, have we talked about the possibilities? Because that's something I learned. And I think sometimes people think about the art of negotiation and forget the beginning point.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Oh, that's amazing. Brian, do you have anything to add there?

Speaker B: Well, I do. I thought the story was going to go another direction. And sometimes what we see is when you said we were in the second round of negotiation, I was like, oh, yes, because sometimes. And we've, we've seen this, uh, shoot. I've seen it from the, from the buyer side and I've seen it from the supplier side. Sometimes that second round of negotiations, there's nobody left. It's you in there, like saying, well, I guess I could give you another two points of cost reduction. And they're like, oh, is that all you can do? And, and really to themselves they're thinking, these idiots, they're the only ones left. Everybody else is already gone. And they just keep lowering their price. And if you lower it a little bit, they're like, ah, ah, well, maybe we'll have a third round, see what happens.

Speaker A: M. That's it. That's great. I love those conversations because there's always something really powerful to learn and especially around the. That that most of what makes a great salesperson and likely a great pricing professional is listening and asking really good questions. And that kind of ties into the next topic that I think we want to talk about, which is AI. I know that Brian, you and Badra have talked about AI before, because listening, synthesis, having really good value conversations are things that. That are distinctly human. Right. So I wanted to just hand the floor over to Brian to kind of kick off the AI conversation a little bit around pricing.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, uh, there's a million places we could go with this. And so I'll kick it off and then, Padre, you take it, you know, where you want to go. But one of the conversations that we've had in the past is, um, how, you know, you normally think of the. The human in the middle and, and the. The. One of the points I made when we were discussing this the other day was it's really less about the human in the middle, and it's more about the human at the front end and the human at the end. Because if you don't have, uh, if you're not asking the right smart questions to AI, then it's going to spit out worthless material. And the same can be said for the context at the end that if you don't know how to interpret that. And I mean, we've talked for the last 20 or 30 minutes, we've been talking about all the complexities in your market. And if you don't have the context to say, uh-huh, aha, AI, fix this or solve this for me or figure something out for me, but I need to ask different questions or I need to accept this part and discount this other part. Get rid of this other part, whatever it is. Um, that's what's so critical. Um, and so, Bhadra, I know one of the things you said was it's not just people on either end, but the experiences and the caliber of those people on either end. So I sort of hand it to you for that portion.

Speaker C: No, I agree with you completely. So, uh, Brian and I have had this conversation very many times because we are both ardent believers and skeptics of this whole journey together. Uh, we have our moments on both sides. And I really do believe that, uh, it is a very powerful, uh, system for a good and smart, critical thinking pricing person. But the moment you are missing any of those adjectives to the pricing person, it actually becomes riskier sometimes. Um, I've seen both in action. When people see the end result and they make calls based on that without knowing the context or without understanding a certain guardrail or variable that is missing, it can be very dangerous. So it is that. How do you make sure that you have the right people? Because with the right person this is a powerful engine that moves them from a price setting person to a commercial wish. Actually it just transform you. But on the other hand, if you do not have the right critical thinking, you might actually create something that does half baked analysis, provides half baked insights. And then you are kind of convincing a whole business to take decisions which are not going to be great for them in the long run. Because sometimes you can give it enough context and enough analysis to make it win for short term. But then when it learns from itself, it only learns those short term variables and short term ideas and that's the risk you run. So I am very, I am all for. If I look at my team, I have a team of phenomenally bright people, um, in my team in the CoE, but also across Cargill, we have very good prices. So if I look at them, AI has been a powerful engine and machine and how do I say a friend for them to make them move from the data analytical side to the more of the commercial strategy and uh, negotiation side. They are much more involved in the business decisions. They're not asking what price to set, they're saying where do we win, where do we grow, what do we do differently? Because they have the bandwidth to do that now. But on the other hand, the thing that concerns me, Brian and I have had this conversation a lot, many times is the workforce of the future because it is through doing those deal desks and those activities, the more uh, senior prices call as mundane uh, activities is how they have developed their critical thinking capability, how they have learned what is right and what is wrong. So when you don't have a capability to do that and you have not had a chance to do that, how do you grow into that critical thinking professional? How do you know to ask the. Can you show me what the RFP is about without making the mistake once? Right. Like so you, if you have not been through the grind, it is tougher for you to get to be that intelligent human in the beginning or the end. And so the workforce of the future worries me. But for the, for the workforce of today, it is a powerful, powerful ally.

Speaker B: Yeah, um, I'd love your perspective on what I'm about to say here. Badra is uh, one of the things that I'm starting to notice is that junior folks sometimes don't get invited into the room where the conversations and the context happen. And, and there's this, there's this sort of philosophy where I don't want to have too many people in the room. Therefore I will take uh, me and two senior people and we'll go have the conversation. We'll let you know how it came out. And what I found recently is that if you uh, open up a couple of chairs in the room, people can see how those decisions are made. They may not agree with the decision, but they may, they can see how the decisions are made. And I find that that is really powerful in being that human, particularly at the end of the AI to say this is never going to fly. I heard the questions that were asked by the president. C suite, whatever. This is never going to work. I need to go back and do some more homework. How do you feel about who's invited in the room for those conversations and uh, how to use that as a learning environment.

Speaker C: I like the idea of it. I loved the idea of it when we used to have a lot of meetings in person. Like honestly, because there is the element of the body language and just how people react to scenarios now, although with the team's environment I think it's easier to have more people in the conversation because you get, it's not restricted by the size of the room. So I see the plus and minus in it because when you have um, 50 people in a meeting, how much do you pick up from different people and how leadership makes decisions?

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: But I like the idea of having somebody or one or the other person from your team in all these conversations. So I usually try to do that a lot wherever there is the acceptance that you can bring in somebody or you should bring in somebody. Because I also like to get their feedback because I am used to interacting with these, with the people that I'm interacting with that I kind of make a lot of assumptions. Whereas when you have somebody who's fresh out with a completely outside in perspective, they might notice things or ask questions which make you think, huh, we've never thought about that. So I like the idea it's learning for them, but it's also their questions make you think um, much differently about things. And one of the things I've noticed with a lot of the less tenured people that we have is they're very bold in asking questions.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: Which I think my generation was not years back. Like we wanted to be sure before we asked a question. Um, but this is a group of people who will ask their questions, who want to be clear about the direction and um, with the right. I love how you said rick, have them understand the decision making process. Process and what goes in There I think is a powerful way to educate them because we need to think about ways to coach them to get to that uh level without doing the same work we did. So there was a tried and tested pattern of having people grow in each of our companies. Right now that that is changing. How do we pivot but still give them the experience needed to make them successful in their careers?

Speaker B: Yes. What experiences do they need to develop? It's not necessarily rebuilding the calculator.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker B: Let's just use the tool for what tools used for. That's great. But they do need to learn as you said, the critical thinking, the decision making process, what questions people are asking. And then I love you coming back and asking for feedback. I think a lot of senior leaders don't do that. So I think that's super positive thing that you're doing and let them ask questions. And of course you're right. In the um, in the previous generations, uh, I will speak for my own that uh, there was a lot of uh, you will speak when spoken to and you don't just ask questions out of the blue. Yeah. I'm old enough to remember calling people Mr. Or Mrs. Something or other.

Speaker C: I have done that. So I get what you're saying.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, they weren't first names back in the day. Yeah.

Speaker A: So you recently did a keynote on how pricing leaders get built. Right. What specifically in the, not in the, in the roles of tomorrow, but in the roles of today. In this age of AI, what are you telling your team to get good at now?

Speaker C: I actually tell my team that you need to be good at solving commercial problems.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: And um, proactively predicting it because the silos of uh, functions are kind of that, that the, the, the walls between the functions are becoming very thin. If you need to be a successful pricing person, you need to understand how to solve commercial problems from a sales lens, from a uh, product lens, from a uh, like all these cross functional teams and you need to be able to speak the language and solve it. So I always speak about impact is much more important than the plan or the uh, strategy to approach it. And how do you get the impact? And one of the other things I am very much talking to my team about and I think it has become more and more critical. When I started in pricing it was all about analytical capabilities, data knowledge and um, you know, you're the whiz who's behind the scenes. Today's pricer needs to be amazing at storytelling.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Good at getting the facts in front of people. But in a way that engages them and convinces them the skill sets have, like, you still need to have analytical capability, but if you cannot tell the story, if you're not good in front of convincing people, nobody's going to buy in. And then that analysis is going to lie somewhere in the back burner. So that has become more critical. So storytelling has become critical for today, and I don't know that tomorrow might be slightly different, but it's a good skill to have.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And it speaks to the walls between the functions becoming thin, because that's a universal critical skill across the board, across industries. No one listens. If you're not compelling, you don't have influence. If you're not compelling.

Speaker C: I agree, I agree. And, uh, we have a tougher role too, right? Like if as prices, even though we have decision rights on what the price we set, we have the final approvals, etcetera, you really still want to be able to convince everybody that the decisions are right and it's not a tussle. We are all a part of the same team. And there's a lot of that, you know, building relationships, communicating it well, telling the story. That's just the muscle you need to develop. M. Absolutely.

Speaker B: 100%. Yeah. And you said, I don't know if it'll be the skill set of tomorrow. I think it almost has to be. I think it's becoming more and more important, not less. Yeah, agreed.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Brian, what are you telling your team to get good at now? Yeah, let's go there.

Speaker C: Um, yes.

Speaker B: So, uh, I think the storytelling aspect of it is, um, is super critical. And it's, you know, for us. Um, so we work, uh, on that pricing strategy side that we've been talking about all day today. And we also work on that implementation side, which you're alluding to is like, how does this pricing strategy, um, become a reality? How do we roll it out? How do we sequence it? How do we talk about it? How do we get marketing and sales on board, all of those different things. And what we're finding is that that is a big hole in this whole pricing sequence, that people are on the pricing strategy side are getting smarter, the tools are getting better, they're super sharp. And then there, there remains the, the, the implementation bathtub, if you will. This just gap, um, continues to be a problem. Like that part hasn't gotten better as fast as the analytics has gotten. And so, uh, you know, Emily, to answer your question, which you're well aware of, the answer is that that's where we're putting a Lot of our emphasis is, is, how do we make this real? How do we. You said, how do we get. I'm paraphrasing the results, the impact, how do we make that happen? And, um, and that's where we find our clients ask. That's what we find them asking of us quite a bit more recently is, can you help us make this thing real? Sometimes it's, can you help us set the pricing strategy? Oftentimes it is also just, can you make this real? Because the greatest fear of most leaders, whether it be in pricing or not, is that when there's a pricing change, you're going to lose customers. So how do we roll this out so that we don't lose the customers that we want to retain? And that's where we spend a lot of our time these days.

Speaker A: What are your thoughts on that, Badra? Um, in terms of a pricing change and the fear of losing customers, it

Speaker C: is always going to be there, right? I, uh, think that there is always. We talked about the sales organization. I don't think it's just a sales organization issue. Like, it's an organizational. When you are reliant on really big customers and you have built those relationships for years, you really don't want to lose them. And I think, uh, it all comes down to, for me, the salesperson I talked about and how she used her customer meetings to talk about the relevancy of the work we're doing and the weightage of it and the value we are providing. Just making sure that it is a relationship that you're building over time and not, uh, conversations happening during annual negotiations. Because that's a mistake sometimes that we make, and that's where the fear comes from. Because if you're having those regular conversations and connections, you have an idea of where the next negotiation will go. Because. Because regardless, uh, of how much ever we say that the procurement wants the cheapest deal, the procurement wants assured supply more than the cheapest deal. Because the worst thing that could happen to a buyer is the product not being at the plant when they need it.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely. So in our last couple of minutes, uh, two quick things. One is we ask all of our podcast guests this as an ending. What is a belief that you held five years ago that you no longer have today?

Speaker C: Five years ago, I really believed that if you can think about all the factors, um, the macroeconomic factors and all the costs and all the input and you can plan for it, you can predict a lot of how the market is going to go and what would happen. And Then six years back, Covid hit and then it changed my idea of how people look at things. Uh, it was very unpredictable, especially if you think about food, the frantic, uh, you know, demand for food and how things were happening. Um, I really think that I, we would not have predicted that. So one of the things I really learned was the, you can prepare. I like the way Brian said is you can prepare for all the things you can think of, but there will still be so many elements that you have not thought about and there will be human reactions and the market interpretation of things that would actually, uh, create chaos. And you just have to plan through it.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: So we've seen growth unpredicted, we have seen certain industrial markets go, why did it go that way? So learning that you can be as prepared as you want, but you still have to be able to navigate through the unpredictable.

Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. Yes. I think that we could have spent an entire episode on what the pandemic was like at Cargill, because. Must have been the wild West.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: For a long time, I imagine, because it was like just even, even little things you couldn't buy, you couldn't find, you couldn't buy any of it. But. All right, so excellent. I would love to wrap us up. Here we are at just about at time.

Speaker C: Audra.

Speaker A: I would love, um, for listeners who want to get in touch with you, how can they reach you if they want to learn more about what you do, uh, hear more of your perspective? I know that you are involved with pps, you're on their circuit. How should listeners reach you?

Speaker C: I would say just get in touch with me over LinkedIn. I like talking to people, uh, about pricing or about solving problems, uh, find it very interesting, um, and just picking people's brains. So if you're ever getting in touch with me over LinkedIn, also understand that you're going to get questions from me on how you would approach certain things because Brian is aware of this. I do this all the time. I like to pick people's brains and different ideas I can get from them so that, uh, you're not set on your way. So just reach to me over LinkedIn. Um, always happy to connect with anybody who is in pricing or not in pricing, doesn't matter. With a different perspective is always welcome.

Speaker A: Fabulous. That's wonderful. Rodra, this is excellent. Thank you so much for joining us. If for folks listening, if you got something out of this, follow if prices could talk wherever you listen and come find us at Holden Advisors. We're on LinkedIn. We are available via email and we will see you next time.

Speaker C: It.