Ayon Bhattacharyya is an experienced business leader with significant success in revenue growth through commercial problem-solving. He is implementing innovative pricing solutions, fact-based analysis, and market research, drawing upon his stakeholder management and influencing skills to gain the support of other senior leaders. In this episode, Ayon shares the need to understand your customers, so you can segment without merging them and you gauge their willingness to pay and set the best pricing.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Learn about customer segmentation and how to go about defining it to arrive at optimal pricing for a particular segment Find out how customer segmentation helps articulate your value proposition to solve different problems Learn how to categorize your buyers best so you lead with value and not pricing   "Do your research and know your customers. Identify your customer segments and, where feasible, perform price experiments to validate willingness to pay. And don't be afraid to experiment with subsets of your customer base and try to innovate your approach." - Ayon Bhattacharyya   Topics Covered: 01:37 - What sparked his interest in pricing 03:27 - Price fencing in the airline industry 04:50 - Why do airlines have the best price offering for direct customers 05:56 - Reason why airline fare price increases as the plane nears take-off 06:30 - Differentiating between a business traveler and a leisure traveler 07:02 - How could they possibly created fare rules around business and leisure travelers 08:16 - Ayon sharing his thoughts on customer segmentation 09:09 - What are those customer attributes 11:47 - Defining customer segments 13:49 - How to find out who's going to travel for a particular attribute to be met 14:42 - Would it be better to actually differentiate the proposition by having a premium and a cheaper price 15:53 - All about customers' choice of greater or cheaper value 17:58 - Preventing segments from merging 20:25 - Differentiating pricing in UK, Australia, and New Zealand 22:56 - Categorizing buyers 24:21 - People's surprising attitude on getting rich many years ago 26:20 - Reacting to Mark's funny New Zealand experience 26:56 - Ayon's pricing advice that would greatly impact one's business 27:54 - Why be careful in lifting anchor when experimenting with your market   Key Takeaways: "It's all about choice at the end of the day. The customer gets to choose a greater value or less value, and they pay the price based on value." - Ayon Bhattacharyya "The best way to counter this is differentiating your value proposition. If you're solving different problems, then you're able to customize that value proposition to the segment, and that helps to mitigate that risk of segments merging." - Ayon Bhattacharyya "One of the guests on your podcast has referred to the importance of not leading with price, and I absolutely 100% stand by that. Always lead with value." - Ayon Bhattacharyya "There is a fear often around raising prices. But if you're able to support that with additional value, then usually your customers are quite receptive to that." - Ayon Bhattacharyya   Resources/People Mentioned: Westpac Negotiating with Backbone: Eight Sales Strategies to Defend Your Price by Reed Holden   Connect with Ayon Bhattacharyya: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayon-bhattacharyya-a84ba615/# Website: https://bizgrowthspurt.com/   Connect with Mark Stiving:  Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/