Facilitating value-based pricing transformation - What hinders sales force buy-in?

Background: Today, many companies use a cost-based and sometimes competition-based pricing approach. Since academia agrees that value based pricing is superior for creating profit, the problem is not in identifying an ideal pricing strategy, but to understand and facilitate the transformation process towards value-based pricing. Only a limited amount of research has so far been put on understanding the sales force; the part of the organization which will ultimately carry out the operational changes. The authors argue that it is of great importance to get their buy-in, and therefore aim to understand what obstacles the members of the sales force perceive in value-based pricing. Purpose: To refine and further develop existing knowledge on how to facilitate value-based pricing transformation. Method: The study was performed using triangulation by combining qualitative and quantitative research methods. First, members of the sales force at Informatikka were interviewed in order to produce proposals and hypotheses on what would hinder sales force buy-in. These were then tested in a questionnaire sent out to a larger share of the total population. Conclusions: The interviews found eight obstacles perceived by the sales force at Informatikka. The perceived severity of the obstacles seemed to be dependent on previous experience of value-based pricing, which was confirmed by the questionnaires