How do you make an internal business case for product marketing to own pricing?

The transition to PMM leading pricing occured before I joined, and led to my hire (yay!) At Intercom, pricing had been a shared responsibility without a clear owner for quite a while. It was a collaboration between product, finance, bizops, and sales. While the collaboration model remains, having PMM lead the effort (and having a clear driver and DACI) has been hugely beneficial.The biggest reason is that PMM sits at the intersection of Product and GTM (Sales and Marketing) and is thus ideally p ...Read More

I’ve worked in orgs where product marketing owned pricing and in others where it was owned by product management. Both models work and it really depends on the DNA of the org - product-led or sales-led. In any situation or setup, product marketing plays a critical role in: Defining and quantifying the business problem and pain points Building the marketecture and the packaging that goes with it - what we sell and how it all works together. Especially in situations where you have more than one pr ...Read More

If Product Marketing doesn't own pricing in your organization today, here are some things you can include in a proposal to get it moved: Competitor knowledge - PMM is often closest to the competitors and can bring this knowledge into the pricing conversation. While you should never price a certain way just because a competitor does, the fact that PMM knows the competitors the best is often key to making the case to own pricing. Industry analyst access - you've usually got the ear of analysts lik ...Read More

Not to get too philosophical but I find there’s often too much focus on who is the “decider” on pricing and often not enough alignment across product, finance, data, product marketing, and sales around how we all work together on pricing. At this point, I don’t feel strongly that my team needs to own pricing, so long as my team is part of the core pricing working group and leadership team that weighs in on pricing. I’ll also say that in much of my experience, whether PM or PMM “owned” pricing, t ...Read More