Why you have to check out today’s podcast:  Learn how to involve stakeholders in making pricing decisions, why it is considered a team effort   Determine the best ways to be influential and stay price competitive despite experiencing business challenges  Find out the key qualities required to rise through the ranks and become a highly qualifies and effective pricing executive   Wendy Johnson started out as an M&A Consultant at Accenture. After she got her MBA, she went to IBM, another big corporation as a pricing and investment specialist. She was at CA Technologies for eight years where she was VP of Global Pricing and is now an executive at FIS.  In this episode, Wendy talks about what skills and characteristics you need to have to function as a key pricing executive effectively, at the same time manage the best pricing team and how being logical is crucial in making pricing decisions.   “I find that we can do the best work in terms of pricing and setting a price that best aligns with your strategy. But the people who have to execute it determines the success of that price.”   - Wendy Johnson     Increase Your Pricing Knowledge: Become a Champions of Value INSIDER! To sign up go to insider.championsofvalue.com   Topics Covered:  01:18 - How did Wendy start her career in Pricing  02:40 - What made her stay in Pricing all these years  03:24 - What made her rise up through the ranks  04:43 - What influence do her mentors have on her  05:41 - Is she a logical or touchy-feely managerial person  06:51 - The important skills needed to be in a pricing team  09:45 - How to set pricing where sales and product management department agree  11:46 - Doing the right thing for the business  12:24 - Pushing the big wall  14:27 - Qualities of a leader that are needed to replace Wendy  15:38 - Wendy’s one big Pricing advice that would impact one’s business  16:53 - How to get people to understand the value of their products    Key Takeaways:  “I think the key is knowing how to build relationships. Pricing is, typically anytime you're making a pricing decision, there's a lot of emotion behind it, whether it's from the product owners, or the salespeople, there's conflict across those different groups. And you have to be able to manage those discussions and not be emotional and come out with an answer that maybe not everybody likes, but everybody can accept, and everybody can support and respect.” - Wendy Johnson  “A lot of times when you have, most of the work that's thrown our way where people want some kind of pricing analysis. The problem is, usually not pricing. People usually think it's pricing because it's the easiest thing to point to.” - Wendy Johnson  “The most valuable use of your time is probably figuring out how to be the most influential within the constraints that you have, and trying to make an incremental change on pushing out those walls at the same time.”  - Wendy Johnson  “Who do you choose to replace you? It's a tough decision and it's usually looking forward in terms of what's next on the docket and who you think would be better aligned to that particular project?”- Wendy Johnson  “You can tell how good your sales team is, if you ask somebody else in the company like an administrative assistant or somebody in operations, what your company sells and what the value is, and if they can answer that. Do you have champions for what you do as a company and do they understand the value?” -  Wendy Johnson    People / Resources Mentioned:  Denise Elias    Connect with Wendy Johnson:  LinkedIn    Connect with Mark Stiving:     Email: mark@impactpricing.com     LinkedIn