Why Pricing Requires CEO and Csuite Backing   Aidan: In today’s episode, we want to dig a bit deeper into a topic we’ve covered a couple of times in previous episodes. And that it’s vital, it’s so important that a pricing transformation or a major pricing project has CEO, C-suite backing.   And I suppose today we’re going to dig into that. We’re gonna do a bit of a question-and-answer format. Cause it works quite well. So we’ll be asking our resident pricing expert, Joanna, these questions. I suppose then she’s smiling at that suggestion. So the first one is, I suppose an open-ended question.   Why is it important to have CEO and Csuite backing?   Joanna: Well, let’s start with the simple truths and facts about pricing. The importance of CEO and C-Suite backing comes down to the returns that you can get from pricing. They’re more than substantial and very impressive when you compare a change in price to changes in cost volume, a mix for instance.   So you can say if you were going for a 2% increase in prices, versus not increasing prices, can lead to an impressive and direct flow to the bottom line of 20 to 30%. Obviously, here I’m thinking, volume is the same and constant and we’ve got our supply chain and costs in control.   But I think you can hear the message here if you just make very small improvements and changes to pricing. You can get a lot of money for it. So that’s why number one, it’s very important that the the C-suite understand how much monetary leverage they have with pricing.   And equally, if they do pricing incorrectly, how much margin they could potentially lose?    Aidan: Okay, so I think we understand, that’s clear that it’s important for the business, but does the CEO have to be involved in this project? Does the Csuite have to be involved? Can they not just delegate it down to a finance manager or someone like that?   Joanna: I like how you mentioned delegating down. It’s always about, I hear this a lot and look, I agree with delegating to the right people, but if that in itself can be a problem. I think initially it’s very important for the executive team. A) to understand the importance of it as I’ve already stressed, and B) to get behind it and to be shown as a consistent voice on the topic of pricing.   Even if their areas of expertise are in supply chain sales, and product pricing. They still need to get behind the pricing project because pricing often touches all of those areas inadvertently. And what we also find, if the executive team, you know, they’re role models for change.   What we commonly see within our clients, if they’re not really behind it, they don’t understand it, they’re not committed, and they’re just more focused on their area, almost this siloed culture. And they’re sort of paying lip service to the role of pricing.   Yes, it’s important we get that. But that really isn’t what I call sponsorship, that’s just lip service to sponsorship. You’ve really gotta take an active role because if the executives don’t do that, then it sends a clear message to anyone, that they’re gonna delegate the responsibility of pricing to that. It’s really not that serious, and they can just tack it on at the end of the normal day job and nothing really gets done. Or if it gets done, it gets done poorly.    Aidan: You know, that makes sense to me. I think we’ve covered also some other podcasts, and how pricing often slips between the gaps. Which function does it fit into? Is it finance? Is it marketing? Or is it sales? Or is it the commercial function, which some companies, let’s be honest, don’t really have?   So, I completely understand that it needs to be for a real pricing project to really work, it needs to work across multiple functions. So I completely understand that. The other thing I think is if, just on this point, if people do what they’re incentivised to do, and I th