Your Pricing Tells a Story. Is it the Right One?
I was working with a manufacturing company and the leadership team described themselves as innovators and technological leaders in their industry.
But their margins told another story!
The leadership team believed they were market leaders, that they were known for innovation, cutting-edge technology, and premium quality.
But when I took a closer look and interviewed customers, distributors, and the sales team, I found a major disconnect between perception and reality:
✅ Leadership's view: “We’re the premium, first-to-market innovators.”
⚠️ Customer Reality: “They follow the competition and win on price.”
⚠️ Sales Practice: Deep discounts (20%+ off was common) to close deals.
⚠️ Pricing Strategy: Cost-plus, focused on reducing production costs rather than capturing value.
Their aggressive discounting had lowered the entire market price without them even realising this.
This pricing approach wasn’t just hurting margins, it was reshaping how the market perceived the company. Instead of reinforcing their premium brand, they were unknowingly positioning themselves as a low-cost alternative.
There was no doubt that their products were just as good, and in most cases, better than competitive alternatives. However, the sales team did not believe this.
And the leadership team had no idea this was happening.
𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗗𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗛𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻?
Many businesses experience this kind of misalignment between brand, pricing, and market perception. This happens for various reasons:
1️⃣ Internal vs. External Perspective – leadership team sees the company one way, but the market sees it differently
2️⃣ Sales & Pricing Disconnect – sales teams may default to discounting if pricing isn’t strategically managed
3️⃣ Lack of Market Feedback – without customer insights, companies assume they know their value
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀?
This isn’t a failure of leadership or the sales teams fault, rather it is a common challenge. The key is aligning pricing with brand strategy by:
✔️ Understanding how customers truly perceive your business
✔️ Moving away from solely cost-plus pricing to a value-based approach
✔️ Empowering sales teams to price on value and not to default to discounting
How are you ensuring that your pricing reinforces, not contradicts your brand?