Robbie Kellman Baxter is an Advisor to the world’s leading subscription-based companies, a Keynote Speaker and Author of The Membership Economy and The Forever Transaction. She is also the Host of Subscription Stories Podcast.
In this episode, Robbie discusses the significance of upholding ethical standards when implementing a subscription business model, as it greatly affects the company’s long-term viability.
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Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
- Learn about the unethical practices in subscription pricing and their long-term implications for your business
- Find out effective price segmentation strategies that can be applied to your subscription-based business model
- Know why these companies are the best models when it comes to subscription pricing
“Have a rationale for your pricing structure that you would be comfortable showing to a loved one who is a customer.”
– Robbie Kellman Baxter
Topics Covered:
01:49 – What drove her entry into Pricing
04:28 – Why some companies make it hard for subscribers to cancel and what is it’s negative implication in the long run
08:12 – Bad karma as a consequence of hiding a cancellation button
09:20 – Discussion around an advancing legislation on making it easier to cancel subscriptions anytime
11:11 – Understanding price segmentation in a subscription pricing
17:20 – How she negotiates when buying a car, for instance, knowing someone else paid a different price for that
19:20 – Price segmentation discussion around Everyday-Low Price[EDLP] versus High-low Price
21:09 – Discussing pricing segmentation used by Netflix and news organizations
23:25 – Another price segmentation point of discussion [based on where you live and how busy these areas are]
26:06 – Case in point at Macy’s on price differential as the topic of discussion
27:51 – What makes her price sensitive even when she’s non-price sensitive
29:20 – Robbie’s best pricing advice
Key Takeaways:
“I tried to explain to them how [putting some friction into your cancellation process] in the short-term does work, in the long term, it kills your business. It kills your reputation, it ruins the trust.” – Robbie Kellman Baxter
“Whatever it took to get you in there, it should take you out. If you can sign up any day of the week, any time of day, you shouldn’t be required to cancel Tuesdays between two and four.” – Robbie Kellman Baxter
“Where I come down on differentiated pricing or segmented pricing is if you can explain it to somebody. If your mother would be okay with being on the high end of that pricing and understanding why you’re doing it, then I’m okay with it.” – Robbie Kellman Baxter
People / Resources Mentioned:
- SiriusXM: https://www.siriusxm.com/
- Wells Fargo: https://www.wellsfargo.com/
- Suzi Watford: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzi-watford-18547817/
- Dow Jones Wall Street Journal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_Jones_%26_Company
- Booz Allen: https://www.boozallen.com/
- Macy’s:https://www.macys.com
- JCPenney: https://www.jcpenney.com/
- Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/
Connect with Robbie Kellman Baxter:
- Website: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbiekellmanbaxter/
- Email:[email protected]
Connect with Mark Stiving:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/
- Email: [email protected]
Full Interview Transcript
(Note: This transcript was created with an AI transcription service. Please forgive any transcription or grammatical errors. We probably sounded better in real life.)
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Have a rationale for your pricing structure that you would be comfortable showing to a loved one who is a customer.
[Intro]
Mark Stiving
Today’s podcast is sponsored by Jennings Executive Search. I had a great conversation with John Jennings about the skills needed in different pricing roles. He and I think a lot alike. If you’re looking for a new pricing role, or if you’re trying to hire just the right pricing person, I strongly suggest you reach out to Jennings Executive Search. They specialize in placing pricing people. Say that three times fast.
Mark Stiving
Welcome to Impact Pricing, the podcast where we discuss pricing, value, and the important relationship between them. I’m MarK Stiving, and our guest today is Robbie Kellman Baxter. And here are three things you want to know about Robbie before we start. She is absolutely a subscription expert, the author of two books, The Membership Economy, and The Forever Transaction. She hosts the podcast Subscription Stories, True Tales from the Trenches, and for fun, she likes to work. So I’m almost a huge fan for that reason. Welcome Robbie!
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Oh, thanks, Mark. It’s good to be here.
Mark Stiving
I should also mention that you have been a girl scout leader for 12 years, so it isn’t like you only work, you have other things, but you know, I get the love to work thing.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Yeah, I think we share that.
Mark Stiving
I’m going to ask the question that I always ask, even though it doesn’t fit you. How did you get into pricing?
Robbie Kellman Baxter
I got into pricing through my interest in what drove forever transactions with customers, which was subscriptions. So I would say I kind of backdoored or side doored my way into the world of pricing. A reluctant pricing expert, maybe, or an accidental one. But I was always interested in subscriptions for the last 20 years as a pricing tactic that supports a mindset of membership, a mindset where the organization wants a long-term relationship. If you want a long-term relationship with your customers, you know, think about whether your product offering justifies subscription pricing, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of whether you’re on the right track or not. So that’s kind of my side door into pricing.
Mark Stiving
Yeah. So just so you know, everybody falls into pricing. Nobody goes there intentionally, but I love the answer. I actually got there the other way where I started in pricing, and then I said, well, how does this apply to subscriptions? And I found subscriptions so fascinating. Oh my gosh, I don’t know how you could do subscriptions without thinking about pricing, the business model value, all of that combined. So I get that completely. Okay. I got a quick story and you were on here on the podcast a couple years ago, and it was fabulous, but I had an experience a month ago, and it just ticked me off so much that I said, I’ve got to have Robbie back on. I want to talk about my experience. I want to see if we can figure out what best practices are around here.
So here’s the experience. I’ve had a Lexus, I have a 10-year old Lexus. I had SiriusXM when I first got the Lexus. I never listened to Sirius XM. So the bill came due, and I said, ‘Okay, I’m just going to finally cancel it. I’m not going to use it anymore.’ And I couldn’t cancel online. I had to make a phone call. Turns out it was on a Sunday. I made this decision. So I picked up the phone, I called their number, by the way, I’m unhappy. I called the number and they only take calls Monday to Friday. Now I’m super unhappy. And so I asked myself, what could I do to tick off Sirius XM? So I canceled the credit card that they were billing. And so now they have to go deal with the fact that they have a canceled credit card on a subscriber. But that was the only thing I could think of. And I had the hassle now finishing all of the other places where that credit card was being used. I had to renew it. It was worth it to me. Okay, I’m just going to let you blather. What is it that I did wrong or right? What did they do wrong or right? And how are we going to solve this?
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Yeah. So my heart is with you, you know, these bad actors in the world of subscriptions make it really hard for the good ones to thrive. And there’s a huge problem right now, which, I know you, we’ve talked about before, subscription fatigue. And one of the reasons is because companies hide the cancel button. They hide the cancel button because they know that most people aren’t as committed to canceling as you were. And they might be able to get another month or two or six out of somebody if they make it just a little harder to cancel. And in fact, one of my early experiences with this problem, you know, I live, as you mentioned, in Silicon Valley, I was spending the day with a group of CEOs of SaaS company software as a service, subscription businesses.
And they were sharing best practices. And one of the CEOs very proudly stood up and said, one of the things that we found is if we create more steps in our cancellation process, we get two to three more periods of payment. So I recommend to you that you put some friction into your cancellation process. I tried to explain to them how in the short-term that does work, in the long term, it kills your business, it kills your reputation, it ruins the trust. And so, you know, it’s still hard for a lot of short-term oriented organizations to understand. You know, subscriptions are all about long-term relationships. This kills the long-term relationship once you’re out. And it was very hard for you to get out. The likelihood of you ever coming back is low. And the likelihood of you telling at least a few of your friends, including your listener friends about your experience, it’s going to make a lot of people think twice about signing up for SiriusXM.
And a lot of them say, maybe I should start canceling now because it’s probably going to take me a while and I’m not ready to cancel my credit cards to protect myself. I think, you know, now you’ve got me really going. I think a couple of other really interesting things. One of them is by canceling your credit card, a lot of the credit card companies are now touting subscription management as one of the benefits of their credit cards. So, you know, we’ll, you know, Watchtower, as an example. I think Wells Fargo and then there’s a lot of independent apps that say, you know, we’ll tell you what your subscriptions are, we’ll help you cancel them, we’ll cancel them on your behalf, because it’s just such a yucky problem. And then the last thing I’ll say, which is maybe good news for you, although it’s a little late for you, is that the new chief growth officer of Sirius XM is Susie Watford, who was the CMO at Dow Jones Wall Street Journal, who knows a tremendous amount about the right way to behave with subscriptions. So, you know, my fingers are crossed and I fully expect SiriusXM to change their wicked ways.
Mark Stiving
Well, let’s hope so for their sake.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Hahaha
Mark Stiving
Now. So when I think about the problem that we’re facing, I look at it from multiple different perspectives. The idea that says I can get one or two more periods by adding friction to the cancellation, I think that’s a very true statement. And it does hurt the relationship. And maybe I was never going to go buy SiriusXM again anyway, just cuz I stopped using it. Right? There was no real reason for it. And so maybe it makes sense for them to do that. But on the other hand, it feels like they’re stealing from their customers, right? And I say that in the following sense. I want to deliver value for money. And if someone stops getting value but keeps delivering money, then we’re essentially taking from them. I mean, it feels really unethical to me, not just business wise.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Yeah. From a karma perspective, nobody, you know, hopefully nobody wants to make money by tricking people into paying for something that they don’t want or need. And it feels terrible to be on that side. I think you also bring up an important point that, you know, it does work in the short term. It doesn’t work in the long term. And I guess my advice would be to board directors and owners of businesses. If your leadership team is coming to you and saying, we’re growing by hiding the cancel button, whatever flavor that is, that you should raise a red flag and say, that is not a sustainable solution and we’re going to pay for that later. Plus, it’s bad karma.
Mark Stiving
Definitely bad karma. So, as I was thinking about a solution to this, it seems to me that we, maybe it exists, and you could tell me where there ought to be a social reporting of who makes it hard to cancel, who makes it easy to cancel. And it seems to me that any company that I can sign up for online, I should be able to cancel online. And that should just be a rule.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
It’s going to be a rule. There’s legislation underway to make that rule that, I forget what it’s called exactly, but the implication is whatever got you on, you should be able to get off. So if you can get on with a phone call, you should be able to get off with a phone call. If you got on with click one time, you need to get off with a click one time. And that’s something I think that the FTC is working on. You know, they’re kind of the watchdogs for this space. And I’ve heard several people there speak at different times, including Leslie Fare, who oversees the subscription space. One of the things that they say is, we don’t want to, like, we’re not going after you because you use a slightly, you know, great out font or because your writing is not quite clear enough. We’re going after massive bad actors that are doing dishonest, unethical things. And there’s, it’s not the shades of gray, it’s the black and white that we’re really trying to solve for. And your point about, you know, whatever it took to get you in there, it should take you out, if you can sign up, you know, any day of the week, any time of day, you shouldn’t be required to cancel Tuesdays between two and four.
Mark Stiving
Yep, absolutely right. Absolutely right. Okay, so now I want to push back against that brilliant idea that I just had.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Pressure testing on both sides.
Mark Stiving
I know I love this, but in the B2B world, I often think that, let’s assume that I raised your price for some reason. And a lot of people are raising prices right now. And someone calls me to say, ‘Hey, I don’t like the fact you raised my price.’ I want to have the conversation so that I can bring their price back down, and do something nice for them. So I don’t want to make it too easy to cancel. I want to talk to them in that respect. And so now tell me that I just talked out both sides of my mouth.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Mark, you just talked outta both sides of your mouth. But that’s what makes you a good analyst is that you look at things from both sides, that is what most companies would say when you say, when I say to them, you’re being borderline unethical, and it’s bad karma, which of course goes over like a lead balloon. What they will often say is, but I don’t think they understand, you know, what they’re giving up and I’m open to negotiation. I’m flexible. Right? And so there’s a couple of problems with this. The biggest problem for me is that you’re teaching your customers to threaten to cancel as a way of getting a fair price. And in, especially in a subscription business where the whole point is to set it and forget it, you can trust me, the vendor, to give you ongoing value and adjust that value over time to give you the best I can do.
As new technologies become available, new content comes available, new features become available. But by saying, if they call me, I’ll give them the old price. I’m educating them that they have to keep their wits about them when they deal with me. That they can’t just trust that I’ll treat them fairly or, or ideally that they’ll reward me for my loyalty. And in a lot of cases, it’s the opposite. The most loyal members end up paying the most. So, you know, calling, you know, I recently called the New York Times too, because they were raising the prices by a lot. We just get the Sunday paper. And they’d raised the price by a lot and I was sort of shocked by it, by how much they’re raising. And so I was all angry. I called them and I said, I can’t believe you’re raising the price by so much.
And they said, ‘Oh, so are you saying that you don’t want the price increase? I was like, is this a trick? Like, I mean, I’m a subscription professional. I was like, what, you’re asking me if I don’t, of course I don’t want to pay the price increase. They’re like, would you rather pay a lower price ? I said, yes, yes. I would rather pay a lower price. They actually gave me a lower price. Like it wasn’t just back to back to where I was, but they actually lowered the price for the six-month period as an apology or as a ‘We love you.’ So had I not called, right, my price would’ve gone up because I called. Not only it didn’t go up, but it actually went down. And of course I tell people about that and I hope they’ll call and get the same great deal that I got. But wouldn’t it be better if all the loyal subscribers just got the best price?
Mark Stiving
Okay, so let’s talk about that for a second. I understand completely what you just said. On the other hand, a concept I teach constantly, not necessarily in subscriptions is price segmentation. And price segmentation says different customers pay different prices based on their willingness to pay. And what you demonstrated with that phone call was that you had a lower willingness to pay than other people who aren’t willing to make that phone call. And so, in a way I like it, even though it doesn’t feel right.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Who don’t have perfect, I would say it’s not the people who aren’t willing to make the phone call. I would say it’s people who don’t have perfect information and don’t know the value of that phone call. I mean, another example, , I travel a lot and I had a couple of flights canceled. And you know, I’ve learned that what you’re supposed to do is after the flight is completed, you call them and you say, you inconvenienced me. How can you compensate me? What’s the best you can do? And they give you money, right? You go to the counter while you’re waiting and you say, my flight was delayed or my flight was canceled. What can you give me? And they’ll tell you and you say, can you give me any more? And then they give you a little more. I think the issues that most people don’t know are that historically it was hard to find out and very few people would find out, it’s now much easier because that’s posted on every travel site, you know, online, right? Here’s what to do if your flight is canceled, here’s what to do. If your flight’s delayed, here’s the keywords to listen for. Operational issue versus, you know, weather issue. So I hear what you’re saying about price discrimination or you called it pricing segmentation. I think it’s becoming harder to do because information is getting better, people have better information. And making those changes is cleaner. And I think specifically in the world of subscriptions where a big part of your promise as a company is ‘I’m going to continue giving you this value, the best value that I can give you at this fixed price.’ And the assumption is you can trust me.
And by letting people know that there’s a better price to be had, I think people feel like, ‘Oh, I get it. It’s on, let’s figure this out.’ And then you have what we’re having right now into all these people trying to game the system, right? Trying to do a bunch of free trials, use a different email address, use a different credit card, do a second trial, sharing your password, pushing up to the limit. And that’s exactly the opposite of the kind of relationship that I think most vendors want to have with their customers.
Mark Stiving
Oh, I hate it when you make me think.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
You’re so smart and you know, people do make more money by segmenting on price and willingness to pay. So this is not easy.
Mark Stiving
Yeah. So it’s absolutely a reputational thing. And I think just to make it super clear, I think in the world of B2C subscriptions, possibly the single best way to do price segmentation is by offering different versions of your product. And letting people choose the different versions of your product. Cuz everybody sees that as fair and nobody sees that as we’re excluding one group or helping another group or something to that effect. So I see that a lot, but I still struggle with the other part. Cause I like price segmentation. Let me ask you a question, let’s step away from subscriptions for a second. When you go buy a new car, you know you’re going to go negotiate, you know that the price you paid is different than the price the guy before you paid. Does that bother you?
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Yeah, I mean, it bothers me for a bunch of reasons. You know, first of all, as a person who doesn’t love to negotiate, I would love to just pay a fair price, give them a fair margin and, you know, be on my way. I understand that that’s how it works. So I do my homework. You know, side note about negotiation, women, there’s data that shows that women tend to negotiate less aggressively when they’re negotiating on their own behalf. So it’s very valuable to negotiate. There’s two things that put women on par with men for negotiating. One of them is when they feel like they’re negotiating on behalf of someone else. Even as simple as I’m negotiating to protect my family as opposed to protecting myself. And also if they have good data.
So I lean on both of those. So I go get good data and I say, you know, it looks like the best price that people are getting on this car is this, and the average price is that. And so that’s what I want. And if not, I’m going to walk away, but I prepare myself and I gerd myself for battle. And you know, I think what you’ll say is not everybody does that. So they get some margins on people that don’t make the effort. But you know, back to your point about ethics and karma, saying, you know, people who just want to have a nice exchange and don’t want to push and be greedy and argue, which is how a lot of people see it, we’re going to take their money, make more than they really have to.
Mark Stiving
You make me sound so horrible.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
This is, I mean this is really important and sometimes I sound a little Pollyanna-ish, I think people say, you know, yeah. Easy for you to say you’re taking money out of my pocket, right?
Mark Stiving
Do you remember Saturn a long time ago, the car company Saturn was exactly that, right? But then after haggle for five years or so, they started haggling and so it just went away. Tesla today doesn’t haggle, do they? I think Tesla’s is a, here’s the feat.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Tesla’s no haggle and Tesla’s also all direct, right? There’s no dealers. So there’s not a lot of this, you know, going to the back, going to check, going to see what we’re allowed to do. Going to find out that this is a manufacturer suggested retail price. But maybe I can do better because our dealership, you know, all of the, you know, the moving cups. But, yeah, it is, there is room, an EDLP also everyday low pricing, right? Like I did early in my career, I didn’t tell you this when, how I got started in pricing, but I worked for Booz Allen. One of my early clients was a supermarket. And they were looking at everyday low pricing versus high low pricing. High low pricing is, you know, today only, you know, eggs are two for one or whatever. And EDLP is every day the prices are the same. And EDLP never works as well with high-low pricing. It just doesn’t, the sales and the specials make people behave differently. So there is something to be said for the psychology. And also the fact that there’s some people who are like, you know, I need mustard today and I don’t really care if it’s not on sale.
Mark Stiving
Yeah. And that’s a fabulous example of price segmentation again, right, where different people are paying different prices based on whatever. And you do recall that JCPenney almost went bankrupt because Ron Johnson decided to go from high low pricing to EDLP pricing. Yeah. And just about put the company under. So that was, that’s pretty fair. So I’m sitting here as you’re talking, I’m trying to think of a good example in a subscription product that’s consumer that we would all know where they do price segmentation and obviously the example of the New York Times was one, or we’ve all heard the charter cable company phone calls where they don’t let you cancel.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Yeah, I mean, I think, so on the one hand, the best actor in this space in my opinion is Netflix. Generally one price, monthly only. They don’t have monthly versus annual. So there’s no confusion. Everybody pays the same thing. And if you haven’t used the product in a year, they turn you off without you asking them. At the other end, I think, you know, I love news organizations and you know, I’ve collaborated with them, I’ve consulted to them, some really, really smart pricing people. But I do think that they do some crazy pricing segmentation. You know, one of the examples I got in a big argument with somebody about was, you know, two people live next door to each other they both get the physical newspaper delivered. You and I, we live next door. We have the same income more or less.
We live in the same kind of priced home, same neighborhood, same demographics, and you’re paying triple what I’m paying. And you’re the one that’s been a subscriber longer, right? Because it’s six months, for $1 followed by $5 a year, followed by $179 for the next year, right? And then every year after that it goes up, let’s say by 20%. And that kind of discriminatory pricing, I think, encourages people to call and complain. It encourages people to, you know, play the game, switch back and forth between the local papers, not be loyal. But I think they’re the most, depending on how you feel about it, the most either sophisticated or devious about their pricing structure. They really understand how to maximize revenue and profitability.
Mark Stiving
Can I tell you, I like that.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Yeah.
Mark Stiving:
You probably knew that.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Yeah.
Mark Stiving
I was just going to say, so the one example that I saw the other day was Starlink set out a price change notice. And so Starlink is Elon Musk’s internet satellite stuff. And what they did was they said in busy areas, they’re raising the price and in non-busy areas they’re lowering the price. And they told everybody they’re doing this, which is pretty fascinating because they just said, we are doing price segmentation
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. I mean, I guess where I come down on differentiated pricing or segmented pricing is if you can explain it to somebody. If your mother would be okay with being on the high end of that pricing and understanding why you’re doing it, then I’m okay with it. If you say, look, it costs us more to serve you in your market, it costs us more to deliver to you in your market. You know we’re trying to establish ourselves in this market, so we’re offering better pricing to build our reputation. Those are all things that I think the average person can understand, saying, we’re going to charge you more because you didn’t ask for a discount. I think that most people, if you said that to them, would either respond with something that feels really unfair, or better pick up my phone and call.
Right? Like, back to the example of the travel, I didn’t even call my husband did and I’m much more aggressive on these things. But I said to my husband, look, this is not going to be an uncomfortable negotiation because they have a script. So use these words, say, ‘My flight was canceled for operational reasons, I was inconvenienced. Is there anything you can do for me?’ And then they’ll tell you something and then say, can you do any better? Are you allowed to do any better? I was like, it’s not even, you know, a lot of people don’t want to call because they don’t want the hassle, but a lot of the hassle is gone. All you have to do is just know the script.
Mark Stiving
Well that was just like the New York Times person who was essentially giving you the answers.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Yeah.
Mark Stiving
As they were asking you the questions.
Right. I just didn’t know. I mean, that one I felt like I just fell into it, like, all I really, I mean all I really wanted, honestly was for them to, I wanted them to apologize. I really was planning to cancel or just give me my old price back. But the whole, ”Would you like a discount? I mean, it was great, but it was, you know, as a pricing person, I thought, wow, I can’t imagine this is what you intended. And probably there’s some person from the New York Times right now listening to this podcast saying, let’s figure out who Robbie talked to and let’s retrain them that they don’t, you know, they don’t offer the whole store on the, you know, in the first, you know, in the first five minutes. You know, make them work for it.
Mark Stiving
It’s sad to say I had a great story. Oh no, I got it. Okay. So one more example I want to give you that you might hate, but I think is pretty fascinating. Do you know that if you walk into Macy’s and take something that’s full price to the cash register and say, may I have a discount? They will give you one.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
I did not know that
Mark Stiving
They have a coupon somewhere back there that they will pull out and scan a coupon.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
That is a great tip. But again, you know, the thing about that, two things, one of them is that as a company, you’re making a decision to train your customers to behave in a certain way. And you have to ask yourself, is this how we want our customers to behave? And the second thing is, you know, it’s becoming easier and easier for customers to behave that way. So, you know, 10, 15 years ago, if you and I lived next door to each other and we both walked out and, you know, in our bathrooms in the morning to pick up our newspapers, it’s very unlikely that I’d say to you, how much are you paying a month for your newspaper? Right? So otherwise, if I don’t ask that, I don’t know. But now I can go online and see what it costs to subscribe and put that against what I’m paying. So the information is much better now. It’s making it harder for companies to maintain their differential pricing. I think, I don’t know if, are you finding that like these strategies make sense if there’s not perfect information, but are you finding that, you know these loopholes are being identified more quickly by consumers?
Mark Stiving
So let’s break the world up into two types of consumers for a second. I’m going to call them price sensitive and not price sensitive. And so the people who are price sensitive are online figuring out how much a subscription to the New York Times really is. And the people who are not price sensitive are saying, ‘Oh, they raised my price again. Damn it.’ And they write the check. And so I think because of that, there’s tons of information out there, but I don’t know the last time I asked someone how much they paid for something, or the last time someone asked me how much I paid for something. Obviously I’m not in the price sensitive category. I shouldn’t confess that to any of my vendors.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Yeah. Well here, okay, here’s the thing. I don’t ask people what they’re paying for their New York Times or, you know, what their rates are on their phone service or any of that, because that’s uncomfortable and I don’t care that much. But when it’s right there in front of me, and I know right? This is back to this issue of the women in particular, you don’t negotiate. Women won’t, you know, the things that will make women negotiate, one of them is if they’re negotiating on behalf of someone else cuz they have, you know, tremendous sense of responsibility. And two is when they know they’re being screwed, right? They know, you know, how come you’re giving me a salary of, you know, X, you know, I’m getting 50K, but I know you just paid , Mark 60 and we’re the same. Why are you paying him more for the same job and suddenly you’re much more confident. And it feels less like negotiation and more like just fixing a problem. I don’t care if I pay a dollar, a dollar or $52 for my Diet Coke, but if the Diet Coke says $1 on the can and they charge me $2, I’m not price sensitive, but I am going to say something. Yep. Right? I’m not so price insensitive that I’m willing to pay more than I’m supposed to.
Mark Stiving
Well, and all of us hate paying too much. Right? Hate getting, taking advantage of. So, Robbie, this has been so much fun. I have really enjoyed this conversation. We’re going to have to wrap it up. But, got to ask you the final question. What’s one piece of pricing advice you would give our listeners that you think could have a big impact on their business?
Robbie Kellman Baxter
Have a rationale for your pricing structure that you would be comfortable showing to a loved one who is a customer.
Mark Stiving
I think that is a great answer. One of the things that I often talk about is fairness and what does fairness look like? And I always say fairness is in the minds of your buyer. Doesn’t matter what you think.
Robbie Kellman Baxter
I love that.
Mark Stiving
So awesome. Robbie, thank you so much for your time today. If anybody wants to contact you, how can they do that?
Robbie Kellman Baxter
robbiekellmanbaxter.com. or you can find me on LinkedIn where I try to post almost every day about something relating to pricing and subscriptions.
Mark Stiving
Nice. Or you can just buy her books. And to our listeners, thank you so much for your time. If you enjoyed this, would you please leave us a rating and a review? You can get instructions by going to ratethispodcast.com/impactpricing. And finally, if you have any questions or comments about this podcast or pricing in general, feel free to email me [email protected]. Now, go make an impact!
Mark Stiving
Thanks again to Jennings Executive Search for sponsoring our podcast. If you’re looking to hire someone in pricing, I suggest you contact someone who knows pricing people contact Jennings Executive Search.
