Speaker 1Plan early for different types of scenario and play transparently with the customers and the stakeholders so that the trust is really being built. The biggest thing that everybody hates is surprises. Every year, the best pricing
Speaker 2and commercial strategy minds in the world find each other in one place. This November, that place is Amsterdam. EPP is celebrating 20 years by bringing 1,000 pricing and RGM leaders together for its Global Summit, November 17th and 18th. If pricing is your profession, this is where you belong. Register at pricingplatform.com. Welcome to Impact Pricing, the podcast where we discuss pricing, value, and how buyers decide. I'm Mark Stiving. I help companies turn hidden value into willingness to pay. Our guest today is Anna Fostyshevskaya. How'd I do?
Speaker 1Very good, yes.
Speaker 2Thank you. It matters. Here are three things you want to know about Anna before we start. She leads the commercial finance and pricing for Eaton across EMEA. Her career span. expands finance, leadership, commercial strategy, and pricing in complex B2B organizations. And my favorite thing about her is she's a theater actress who brings that perspective to leadership and decision making.
Speaker 1Welcome, Anna. Thank you very much, Mark. Happy to be here with you.
Speaker 2It's going to be a fun. Well, I'm sure it's going to be a fun conversation. How did you get into pricing?
Speaker 1Pricing. I consider myself as an outsider to pricing because I joined pricing community quite recently. Pricing, I consider myself as an outsider to pricing because I joined pricing community quite recently. I joined pricing community quite late in my career, maybe directly leading it just about two years ago. But I don't come unprepared. I have experience in commercial finance, quite broad experience, and as you mentioned earlier, in driving the profitable growth throughout different organizations. So when pricing was added to my portfolio, it was a natural move. For me to go into that direction and to really lead the transformation that we are doing to put pricing in the right place in the organization.
Speaker 2Nice. So when I think about finance, and please, I'm not trying to offend you by any means, but when I think about finance, I tend to think that they are more in the cost plus range. And when I think about product or product managers or marketing or pricing, I think we should be focused on the willingness to pay phase, right? How much. How much is a buyer willing to pay? Did you find you had to shift your thinking? Did you shift your thinking as you move from finance into pricing?
Speaker 1So for me, this was not a challenge, actually. Why? Because I do put myself in the shoes of the customer to start with. So naturally, commercial finance looks at the customer, not so much from the perspective of how much they. The customer pays, but I'm looking into the customer to come back to me, not just place this order today, but do business with me. And for the customer to do that, they want to have a trustful relationship. And that comes from being delivered the value they need, right? So for myself, it was not that much of a challenge. But I do see that people within finance organization who would come from product. Product-based finance background, it would be quite tough for them to make that shift, yes.
Speaker 2Yeah. So typically, when I think about pricing. By the way, I love exactly what you just said. Typically, when I think about pricing is I think the number one thing that matters is what's my buyer willing to pay. But it turns out that I influence that by figuring out how do we deliver value. Yeah. Right? So it's all about value to the customer. And so when you start thinking about relationships, that's part of the value story.
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely. How do we build value?
Speaker 2How do we build value with the customer? And obviously not cheating them or gouging them in pricing, right?
Speaker 1No, no, no. Not at all. Especially that it depends on the industry as well, right? Right now, I work in the B2B industry, as you mentioned, and we are both delivering products and solutions. So you can look at those both business models even very differently. And the value that is created to the customer is different there as well. So putting that into consideration for any. For example, pricing decisions or commercial finance decisions is critical.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Nice. Okay. So now I'm going to ask you the easy question that absolutely nobody knows how to answer. Who should own pricing?
Speaker 1An easy answer to that would be everyone. Oh, good answer. My personal belief is that pricing should be positioned at the highest level in the organization. It doesn't mean CEO for a big multinational. But definitely on the regional level, I would love to see pricing sitting at the table of the president of that specific region or the company. This is my personal opinion.
Speaker 2Well, I love the opinion. I love the thought process. In a lot of companies, we see a chief pricing officer nowadays, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1Yeah. We even start seeing value creation officers, from what I know, which is a step maybe forward or next. So taking pricing, not a way, but embedded in this value notion that we want to see for the customer, right? So, yeah, there are different developments that we can observe in companies today.
Speaker 2Yeah. I like that a lot as well. Chief value officer. And then in SaaS, we see someone called a chief revenue officer often.
Speaker 1Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. In our company today, we're talking about revenue generation approach and how pricing is part of that and that we move away from just. Pricing per se in terms of tactics to thinking broader about revenue generation.
Speaker 2Yeah. And so I find it kind of fascinating that, you know, prior to the most recent times, when you say the word pricing, people think that means I have to put a number on a product.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. Right?
Speaker 2And it is so much bigger than that.
Speaker 1Absolutely. It is bigger and different as well. So pricing used to be limited to that tag on a product. Or some analytics that could be done, right? But now it's completely. It's different in terms of what value pricing can bring, but it is not that far advanced in the number of B2B companies I've worked with in terms of how empowered pricing is still today.
Speaker 2Yeah. Nice. Nice. So Eaton tends to build hardware products, right? Yeah. You guys mostly hardware. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have any examples? And by the way, you're allowed to say, Mark, I don't want to answer that question. But do you have any examples of products where you've moved away from selling the actual product? So let me give you a couple examples real quickly. So truck tires are often sold by the mile. Yeah. Or jet engines are sold by the hour of execution. Yeah. And so it's no longer selling the product. We're selling by a different. In SaaS, we call this a pricing metric. I don't know if you use that word or not at Eaton.
Speaker 1Yeah. I see what you mean. So we are. We are not there yet, which means that we would love to move to sell that quantified value, but we're not there yet. We're still very much manufacturing company and we are selling the products. We have the ambition to sell the value to the customer, but that's work in progress.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. And it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of creativity and then you're going to have to change your billing and you have to change your thinking. It's a huge thing to do.
Speaker 1Yeah. You need to identify the value for the customer that can be monetized. Right. And this is big work and it is not a journey that can be done just by the manufacturer itself. This is something where we need to take our customers with us as well.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. It feels like a big bet and a big challenge. So I was just very curious.
Speaker 1And an opportunity as well. Because once you can lead that on the market, there is definitely something to do and to get value both for the customer and for the company. Especially within our volatility and dependency on the inflation or, you know, any type of recent headwinds that we have.
Speaker 2Yeah. Right. And that's why these companies do it is because it's good for both them and for their customers.
Speaker 1Yeah. So absolutely. Yes. Yeah. That's awesome.
Speaker 2Okay. Let's talk about, do you want to talk about leadership or do you want to talk about theater or do you want to talk about both at the same time?
Speaker 1Yeah, we can, we can combine that because it's a. Yeah. We cannot separate both. Let's talk about leadership and how theater helps with that.
Speaker 2Yeah. Please, please. So how, first off, do you have a leadership philosophy that we're going to follow and then, and then we'll see how theater plays a role.
Speaker 1So we definitely have the change in leadership expectations. Let's put it that way towards pricing. And as I mentioned, the expectations are. extremely high to deliver yesterday on very big numbers, let's put it that way. At the same time, the speed of change did not evolve at the same pace as the expectations. What I want to say there is that we are still humans and people cannot just wake up in the morning and become somebody very different. So this is where taking any type of action or any type of communication, making those personal and targeted to the emotions of either people on the leadership team or broader teams that we have in the organization to go with us on the pricing transformation is extremely important. This is where I get the help from the theater because this, we call it-
Speaker 2Hang on one second, Anna.
Speaker 1Hang on one second.
Speaker 2I want to come back to the theater in just a second, but I want to add something to what you just said. Anybody who has become a leader in a large organization- Yeah. And so now you're saying to them, I need you to change, right? And so that's really, really hard because what they are is what's driven their success.
Speaker 1Yeah. This is a hundred percent right. And actually we just discussed it earlier within the leadership team here as well. So people who come to a play and say, I am who I am, and that made me successful, will not make success for the future because within the changing world that we live in, it is this adaptability to change that makes us evolve and become better and better leader, right? So that openness, that willingness to change is part of the leadership skills. I would say, personal opinion, that this is one of the most important things that we have to have in the future, coupled with critical thinking and curiosity.
Speaker 2Nice. I actually think that's really insightful. I love that. And just to add on, I work with a bunch of different companies and I don't work with companies who don't want to change. Yeah. Right. It's like, why am I doing this? It just makes no sense to me. Yeah. Exactly. And it's always the leadership that has to say, hey, we want to go do something different. How do we learn?
Speaker 1Yeah. But those are, I don't want, I don't want to say that it's easy. Those are difficult conversations that we have. And on my own example, one of the top requests from my own team of commercial finance and pricing people used to be, Anna, we have so much change ongoing everywhere. We just want a little bit of stability. And this is where I come as a leader and I'm like, what do I do with that request, right? Because I know very well that any stability, is actually going backwards today. So for us, even only to keep me the pace of change, we need to move fast. And if we want to be on top of that, we need to move even faster. And this mindset shift to go from the request for stability into accepting and even enjoying the change is something that is critical and that I see leadership playing very important role in that engaging broader. teams that we have yeah nice okay and
Speaker 2so now let's talk specifically since you mentioned a pricing transformation and how is it that theater helps in a pricing transformation
Speaker 1yeah so this is a personal journey I started theater formally around five or six years ago I was looking for an activity for my children actually and then I realized I insist so much maybe I need it for myself so this is how it all started and the performance on stage where you can see people's reaction immediately to what you're saying or acting is like direct feedback that can be received it is very valuable as a competency because that feedback can be something that you like and can be something that you don't like but definitely you cannot ignore it so what happens is that with experience the story that is being told from stage becomes crisp becomes clear and targeted to the audience as well and those are all the techniques that can be taught so it is not yes there are talents there are like spectacular people who know how to do that naturally but my purpose at work is to demystify some of those techniques so that people in my organization can take them because I can translate these acting techniques to the business world and just play with them so that people feel better especially I started introducing that to my finance community who would come from mainly accounting background so less so exposed to external customers etc and they felt the need but did not have that easy access to those techniques with pricing it was much easier for me because usually people within pricing community they already come with some marketing background or sales or so it's much more diverse and open for experimentation yeah
Speaker 2nice nice okay so let me ask first of all I just want to talk about theater I didn't expect an actor to be watching the audience and adjusting to the audience I expect the audience to be watching the audience and adjusting to the the actor to be responding to what the director tells them to do so I was actually surprised that
Speaker 1you said that okay maybe that belongs to different acting philosophies I have
Speaker 2none so don't worry yeah
Speaker 1because in my case I'm not imposed to do things that I don't believe into or you know like to take on a role that would not fit my personality I'm creating my own stories as well that I can tell so that it is a kind of co-creation with the theater directors I work with and within any type of play or performance that we are staging there is space for that personal touch to make it mine so that it remains authentic and that is important to work as well in the pricing journeys and leadership conversations and I think that is one of the things that I think is really important to do is remain authentic to yourself even if today I take the pricing leader a role tomorrow commercial finance leader role and there may be some conflicts but still there are those underlying values that are important to stay consistent with so that's a mask if you see what I mean yeah I understand exactly what you mean and so now let's bring this back to leadership or business for a second yeah I don't want to diminish what you said but it's important to keep that in mind and I think it's important to keep that in mind and I think it's important
Speaker 2but it seems to me like what you said was we need to have empathy and we need to have
Speaker 1emotional intelligence as a minimum okay yes all types of intelligence but yeah those minimum requirements let's put it that way to the pricing teams that I have and actually while interviewing for different roles that we would have in the company I see that theme coming across very often and naturally from experienced pricing professionals which they put different words to that right they don't necessarily say empathy or emotional intelligence but like stakeholder alignment or leadership engagement making sure that our story is heard and that we have the necessary sponsorship so all of that is around the same that we listen to our external customers and internal stakeholders as well to come up with the best solution within and naturally from experienced pricing organizations we need to have empathy and we need to have emotional intelligence but
Speaker 2yeah those minimum requirements let's put it that way to the pricing teams that I have and actually while interviewing for different roles that we would have in the company I see that theme coming across very often
Speaker 1trick to start the conversation.
Speaker 2Okay. So now I'm playing back the conversation we just had. Yep. I just told you, you're now my coach, right? I just told you a story about me being an engineer and not caring about other people. Yeah. Is that exactly what you're talking about or is it something else? I would
Speaker 1ask you to go a little bit deeper in that, but that's a good start because here you, in a way, you open yourself already with the vulnerability of acknowledging that you don't care about people, right? It's not something that people would easily put up. So I can already relate to your story. I would just ask you to go a little bit with details around it, to bring up a case from the past where you experienced it and how it turned out. So to have some techniques to evolve, to get to some culmination point where I could feel really comfortable. Connected to that instead of just a couple of words, but absolutely.
Speaker 2Yes. Okay. I do have stories for you, but I'm not going to share them today.
Speaker 1That's for another conversation.
Speaker 2And I do want the audience to know I actually care about people now, so it's okay. Yeah. So Ana, this is fast. I am having so much fun talking to you, but we're going to run out of time. Can I ask you the final question? Sure. And maybe you don't like it, but I don't really care. What is one piece of pricing advice you'd give our listeners that you think could have a big impact on their business?
Speaker 1Pricing advice would be to plan early for different types of scenario and play transparently with the customers and the stakeholders so that the trust is really being built. The biggest thing that everybody hates is surprises, so playing transparently is important in pricing.
Speaker 2Nice. I find that trusting and transparency thing, take it one step further. If you think I'm actually looking out for you and not looking out for myself, then you really build that trust. And, or looking out for you while I'm looking out for myself, I guess would be a better way to say it, right? Because then it would be truly trustworthy. This is fascinating. I do actually have to ask you one more question. What are you going to talk about at EPP20? I know you're going to be at EPP20, so what are we doing?
Speaker 1So I'll be joining the team there. We'll be talking about the pricing transformation, and I will be actually sharing my journey there, both some challenges that I faced personally as a leader, as an individual coming as an outsider and within companies, and the early successes as well, because that's important to share how those challenges can be overcome or not. How do we live with that, but still consider there's a learning opportunity and a success.
Speaker 2Nice. And I understand you're also going to give your best Hamlet delivery from the stage too, is that right?
Speaker 1Not a Hamlet, but something different, yes. Yes, definitely it will be fun.
Speaker 2Ana, thank you so much for your time today. If anybody wants to contact you, how can they do that?
Speaker 1Yeah, they can definitely check my profile on LinkedIn, and I'll be happy to engage in conversations and yeah, have further discussions around pricing and theater.
Speaker 2Excellent. And theater. And we'll have your URL in the show notes so people can find you relatively easily. Good. To our listeners, thank you for your time today. If you enjoyed this, would you please leave us a rating and a review? And finally, if you have any questions or comments about the podcast, or if you want to see value through your buyer's eyes, email me, mark at impactpricing.com. Now, go make an impact.
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