Brian Sharp is an Innovative Sales, Marketing & Pricing leader with a track record of driving step-change improvement in the enterprise’s financials through institutionalization of value-led disciplines. His expertise is integrating pricing and value disciplines across Sales, Marketing, Innovation, Supply Chain, Technology and Finance functions in large or complex organizations.   In this episode, Brian talks about value over cost and contract packaging pricing in the petrochemical and personal care industries. He shares how Velo provides service that prepares you for negotiation readiness and places you on the advantage against other negotiators.  Why you have to check out today’s podcast:  Learn and understand negotiation readiness as a process to save you worth millions of dollars Find out why companies need the best relationship managers more than the best negotiators Learn how you price value over cost    “What we find consistently is less than 4% of customers almost always drive more than 64% of margins and revenues. And if you really want to change pricing in your business, figure out how to impact that concentrated mix and those monumental episodic negotiations.”   - Brian Sharp    Topics Covered:  01:16 - How Brian’s Pricing career started  02:23 - Why does he stay in pricing and why he shuns the pricing title  04:05 - How people define pricing  05:22 - What is a rise-fall mechanism in pricing  06:33 - Thinking in terms of value over cost in the petrochemical industry  07:43 - Pricing in contract packaging  08:46 - How businesses in commodities are invested in the value chain  10:16 - How incumbent transactional relationships are often shaped by context  13:01 - Understanding negotiation readiness as a process  15:57 - Effective relationship managers versus savvy negotiators  21:00 - Why wouldn't we go sell to the committee, and then pass the negotiations off to procurement  22:44 - Why process beats individual skill in large complex transactions  24:31 - The training you do when you purchase the Velo software  26:23 - How the Velo service works a deal from the minute the clients engage them  Key Takeaways:  “The way to think about it [petrochemical pricing] is its value over cost. So, it's easy to sell, it's cost-plus pricing. But really that base price, especially the base price, at the beginning of the contract period, is where value pricing manifests itself in these kinds of deals.” - Brian Sharp  “One of the things that we do in Velo is, we deliver an outcome that is driven by negotiation readiness as a process and part of that process is telling our clients, and in many cases, pulling our clients executives out of the foxhole, we're getting them off the front line.” - Brian Sharp  “Many companies have their best relationship managers, not their best negotiators. Because they're managing three- and four-year relationship cycles against the contract.” - Brian Sharp  “In large complex transactions, process beats individual skill, and it's not even close. There are several irrefutable fact basis. And what does that say? It says preparation, and structured process to get ready. The negotiator that's better prepared is going to win.”  - Brian Sharp  “Our Velo service is, from the first minute our client engages us we're working a deal. There's a name, we're looking at stakeholder, who are the stakeholders who's going to be in the room.” - Brian Sharp  Resources / People Mentioned:  Vendavo Pricefx Zilliant A.T. Kearney Castor Oil Lubricants Connect with Brian Sharp:  E: brian.sharp@profitvelocity.com  hellovelo.com LinkedIn Connect with Mark Stiving:    Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn