YouSaid · the spoken record

Madhavan Ramanujam

lines on the record
108
first
2022-12-08
most recent
2022-12-08
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “Pricing by discipline is like a cross functional discipline. I mean, you can't talk pricing in isolation or product, finance, sales, et cetera. I mean, there's always touch points. So it's extremely cross-functional. Back in the day, probably a decade ago, I used to say pricing needs to sit in finance because my view was finance would be the counterbalance to sales, especially if you have sales coming up with pricing in a B2B situation. I mean, you can sell all the pricing you want. It's a human having a human conversation. So how do you put checks and balance in some of that? And my view was, you know, pricing should sit in finance and it has to report on ultimately to the CFO. I have over the last decade I've been actually advocating that this should sit in the product side. And there was also the genesis of monetizing innovation because if we truly believe that we need to build products that are simply products that customers need, they love their value, they're willing to pay for, it is a product.”

    2022-12-08 · Lenny's Podcast · The art and science of pricing | Madhavan Ramanujam (Monetizing Innovation, Simon-Kucher) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Things in a different way and build something that was more meaningful. So we wrote monetizing innovation because increasingly we were working with companies more early stage in helping them design the right innovations that customers need and what are they willing to pay for as opposed to just building a product and slapping on a price. So it was crossing that chasm between knowing and hoping that you wouldn't monetize knowing that you truly will. And that was the motivation for writing monetizing innovation.”

    2022-12-08 · Lenny's Podcast · The art and science of pricing | Madhavan Ramanujam (Monetizing Innovation, Simon-Kucher) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Yeah, I think he'd probably start with some kind of mini frustration because we used to get calls from companies saying, hey, we need a pricing strategy, we need a price plan. And they would have invested like years probably making the innovation. And then we would ask them, how long do we have? And they're like, we need it like yesterday, right? I mean, so it was like time and again we witnessed this spray and prayer approach. We used to ask this simple question like, how do you truly know that people will actually pay for your innovation when you built it? Did you do any studies? Did you actually understand whether there's a product market pricing fit? And usually the answer was no. And then it had to change. I mean, when we benchmarked 72% of innovations actually fail from a monetization or commercial perspective simply because entrepreneurs or companies did not do the check earlier on. Had they done it, they could have probably pivoted the product.”

    2022-12-08 · Lenny's Podcast · The art and science of pricing | Madhavan Ramanujam (Monetizing Innovation, Simon-Kucher) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “You want to come join us? We're looking for Sanford Grass. And I was like, whoa, I didn't even know you existed. I joined because I actually wanted to get to understand the science behind pricing, not just the art. And that's kind of what I've been focusing on in the last 15 years. And also my education in Stanford was in quantitative marketing. So many of those, let's say, theoretical models I could bring back into a practical industry relevant.”

    2022-12-08 · Lenny's Podcast · The art and science of pricing | Madhavan Ramanujam (Monetizing Innovation, Simon-Kucher) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I actually happen to stumble in it. I mean, it's classic fashion. I was at Stanford graduate school, both graduate school of business and the engineering school. And we had a lot of startup discussions thinking of creating startup very classic. And I was this guy who was actually in charge of coming up with the pricing monetization strategy in our teams when we were actually pitching to VCs. And I remember going and pitching our ideas in the VC asked me like, how do you know you'll actually make money on this innovation? And I pulled up a spreadsheet. I showed him all the assumptions and I said, so I'm going to do it. And I still remember this. He said, you've labeled them, correct those assumptions. How do you truly know? And I was like, ah, I actually don't. I just made stuff up. And within that same week, I got a call from the then managing partner of Simon Kucher, Matt Johnson. And he said, hey, we are the pricing and growth strategy consulting.”

    2022-12-08 · Lenny's Podcast · The art and science of pricing | Madhavan Ramanujam (Monetizing Innovation, Simon-Kucher) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Creates impact, and that's also why we wrote the book. So the way I measure impact for monetizing innovation is literally there is probably someone reaching out on a daily basis saying, hey, I read the book, we could make some impact around pricing monetization in our companies. And to me, that's real impact. And that's what keeps me kind of going. Because when we wrote the book, we didn't want to write any marketing fluffy crap. We wanted to write something that was more actionable. to see that people find it actionable and can use it Monday morning to actually make changes. I think that's real impact. But of course the book has done well. It is still in top 10 categories, many categories in Amazon, for instance. It's been six years since we wrote the book. Need a second edition soon”

    2022-12-08 · Lenny's Podcast · The art and science of pricing | Madhavan Ramanujam (Monetizing Innovation, Simon-Kucher) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Sure. So I work as a senior partner in a consulting company called Simon Kucher. So we are the worst largest pricing strategy consulting firm. We have about 2,000 employees worldwide in 43 offices. So I work in our Bay Area offices and I've been here for the last 15 years. So I work primarily with tech companies here in the Bay Area. So the software, internet, marketplace companies, et cetera. So I worked with over 250 companies, more than 20 Unicons on everything to do with pricing, monetization, profitable growth, and these kind of topics. So companies such as Uber, Asana, DoorDash, many LinkedIn, many come to mind. I think you asked about the book monetizing innovation that I wrote a number of copies, et cetera. I mean, look, when we first launched the book, I used to track some of these copy sales and everything else. And I quickly realized that the book is only good if it actually”

    2022-12-08 · Lenny's Podcast · The art and science of pricing | Madhavan Ramanujam (Monetizing Innovation, Simon-Kucher) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “When we talk about pricing, many people quickly gravitate to like dollar figures. That's just a price point, that's the dollar figure. But when we think about price, we think about it as a measure. Like, you know, a liter is a measure of volume. Price is a measure of value. And when you think of it this way, it really stands for do people actually want your product and would they actually buy it? And that is the whole willingness to pay conversation. And entrepreneurs and companies need to do this much earlier so that they can understand, are they on the right track?”

    2022-12-08 · Lenny's Podcast · The art and science of pricing | Madhavan Ramanujam (Monetizing Innovation, Simon-Kucher) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source