Frank Frohmann, author and pricing expert, talks about digital pricing and associated challenges, his innovative ideas and techniques, and his keynote presentation which is based on his book “Digitales Pricing”.
You have more than 23 years of leadership experience in marketing, sales, and pricing. Which was the most challenging part of your career and why?
The main challenge is to learn, grow and be adaptive to changes. I cannot imagine myself working at the same job for 20 years. My CV shows that I always wanted to grow personally. The combination of job profiles and companies that I worked for (e.g. Simon-Kucher & Partners, Lufthansa, Bosch and Evonik) is really an asset that I can rely on.
Your first book “Digitales Pricing” combines digitalization (as the most important megatrend) and “Pricing” (as the most effective profit lever). What was the most difficult part of writing this book?
Writing a book is always a challenge. Writing a book parallel to your job means that you have to sacrifice, more or less, everything apart from your job. My competitive advantage was the fact that I collected insights on pricing for over 2 decades which means that I did not start from scratch. The same logic applies to my own idea on how to describe pricing.
Your book provides new solutions and starting points on pricing in the age of digitization. What do you hope your readers will take away from this book?
The book is based on the following main principles:
- To be as creative as possible in the way I explain and describe pricing.
- To combine pricing basics with the latest insights on Digitalisation.
Hopefully, readers will notice the new and innovative elements of pricing that are based on my ideas. For example, “the 7 C of Pricing”, “the linkage of Business model, Revenue model and Pricing process”, my comprehensive “Definition of Price models” or “the linkage of Pricing psychology and Pricing process” to name just a few.
What was your biggest inspiration?
That would be my former university professor, Hermann Simon – for sure the greatest pricing expert- and as a boss, Georg Tacke, today’s CEO of Simon-Kucher & Partners. I am very grateful for all the insights both provided to me.
What should our attendees expect from your keynote presentation?
First and foremost: Creativity! My biggest goal is to come up with new ways and methodologies to describe economical insights. The foundation of my keynote has been laid with the content of my book. But the examples and techniques I show are updated continuously. Even more important: I love to customize the examples that I describe based on the audience and the feedback I get from the participants. I never show the same content over and over again. Every keynote is different, and it is always based on my interaction with participants.