How to Build a World-Class Pricing Team

It is no secret that pricing is one of the most powerful levers for improving profitability, yet it remains one of the most underutilised.

In fact, Simon-Kucher’s founder Hermann Simon has shown that even a small 1% increase in price can boost operating profit by as much as 10%, provided volumes remain steady.

This powerful statistic highlights just how critical pricing is as a profit lever, often more influential than cost-cutting or volume increases. When managed strategically, pricing can be the most direct and effective way to improve a company’s bottom line.

And yet, in our experience, pricing is often treated as an afterthought, noticed immediately in companies recently acquired by Private Equity firms.

Too often, there is no dedicated pricing function. Pricing decisions are buried within sales, tools are outdated, and accountability is unclear. When you are managing a portfolio, this represents a significant missed opportunity for value creation.

At Pretium, we help PE firms and their portfolio companies tackle this challenge directly. Whether it is a carve-out, turnaround, or growth-phase investment, we have learnt what works – and what does not – when building pricing functions that truly drive results.

Here is what we have found.

1. Start at the Top: Executive Sponsorship Is Essential

One of the most common reasons pricing initiatives fail is a lack of support from the executive team.

Without backing from the CEO, CFO, CCO or CRO, pricing efforts tend to remain siloed. They lack visibility, influence, and sufficient resourcing, and are often deprioritised during difficult decisions.

This is why we always begin by ensuring the pricing function is positioned at the appropriate level. At a minimum, your Head of Pricing should have direct access to senior leadership and even a dotted line to the PE fund.

This kind of alignment sends a strong internal signal: pricing is a strategic growth lever, not just an operational task.

Insights from Ibbaka reinforce this approach. Their work shows that organisations where pricing is owned at the top are significantly more likely to achieve cross-functional alignment and sustainable margin improvements.

In one client case, a European B2B distributor aimed to build a pricing team from the ground up. Ensuring their new Head of Pricing had executive sponsorship and visibility across functions enabled the team to shift from being a cost centre to a genuine performance driver.

A recent Teneo study reinforces how critical leadership selection is here. According to interviews with 25 PE firms and recruiters, 75% of the deals that go wrong do so because the wrong management team was put in place. This striking figure underlines that leadership isn’t just a supporting function, it’s a primary driver of success, particularly in pricing where strategic clarity and executional strength must coexist.

2. Hire the Right Leader: Blending Commercial and Analytical Expertise

It depends on the position, but pricing roles given to individuals who are only technically capable but lighter on commercial acumen can fail in PE backed environments. These individuals might excel at building models but often struggle to influence outcomes or lead change across the business.

The ideal pricing leader should bring together consulting discipline, industry experience, and commercial insight. They must feel equally at home working on excel / technical tools, leading strategic discussions and presenting to the board.

We look for candidates who have worked in both consulting and corporate environments, can translate analytics into business impact, and understand that pricing is about connecting value to results. In corporate environments it’s essential that they have worked in a transformation framework, with a clear change management mindset, to ensure success within the 3-5 year asset lifecycle.

3. Define the Right Structure: There Is No One-Size-Fits-All Model

Should pricing be centralised at headquarters? Should it sit within each business unit? Or should it be managed through a Centre of Excellence?

The answer depends on your operating model, product complexity, and growth trajectory.

Our preferred structure is usually a hybrid:

• A centralised team to define pricing frameworks, tools, and governance
• Embedded pricing managers to drive local execution and business responsiveness
• A Centre of Excellence to share best practice and support capability development

Vendavo’s research supports this perspective, highlighting that pricing structures should reflect a company’s maturity and transformation stage. For PE-owned firms, hybrid models often balance the need for strategic alignment with the flexibility to move quickly in local markets.

4. Align Pricing with Business Units

One of the fastest ways to weaken a pricing function is to isolate it from the business.

Pricing should be integrated within the units that drive revenue – whether that means product categories, regional teams or customer segments. This integration ensures pricing is relevant, timely, and tailored to market realities.

For example:

• In FMCG, pricing teams need to navigate elasticity, discount ladders and promotional calendars
• In SaaS, they must consider customer lifetime value, usage tiers, and retention metrics
• In industrial B2B, focus turns to segmentation, rebate structures, and strategic negotiation support

Boston Consulting Group has shown that organisations which align pricing with business units achieve faster adoption, clearer accountability, and stronger commercial outcomes. In PE-backed environments where time is compressed and pressure is high, that alignment becomes even more critical.

5. Establish Governance from Day One

Governance is not glamorous, but it is essential. Without clear decision-making frameworks, pricing becomes reactive. Decisions are made ad hoc, discounting spirals out of control, and teams start pointing fingers.

Effective governance includes:

• Defined ownership and roles
• Pricing steering committees or councils
• Clear KPIs and escalation paths
• Recurring performance reviews

Vendavo has repeatedly emphasised that for PE firms, governance should be a non-negotiable part of the 100-day plan. Early structure prevents misalignment and gives leadership a reliable view of pricing’s contribution to value creation.

6. Invest in Capability Building, Not Just Hiring

A single hire will not transform your pricing culture.

To succeed, you need to embed pricing capability across sales, finance, marketing, and product. Your entire commercial organisation must speak the same language when it comes to value, margin, and price strategy.

The Professional Pricing Society notes that organisations that invest in continuous pricing education outperform their peers in terms of profitability and speed to market.

We have helped clients build internal pricing academies, onboarding tools, and microlearning programmes to scale knowledge without delay. This investment pays off when teams start owning pricing decisions rather than defaulting to discounting.

7. Give the Team Tools and Data – Not Just Targets

You cannot manage what you cannot measure. And you definitely cannot price effectively if you are relying on outdated spreadsheets and incomplete data.

Start with the basics:

• Clean your transactional data
• Build dashboards around realised price, discounting patterns, and volume/margin mix
• Track performance by segment, not just SKU

As the team matures, layer in:

• CPQ systems
• Elasticity models
• AI-powered pricing engines

One of our clients, a global pharma company, lacked even basic visibility into pricing decisions. By introducing the right consulting partner and team, we helped them define their system roadmap, select implementation partners, and build internal pricing governance. Six months later, pricing was embedded into their broader transformation initiative, helping to drive both top-line growth and EBITDA margin.

Pricing Is the Competitive Advantage Most Firms Ignore

Multiple studies show that companies using value based pricing and maintaining strong price discipline consistently outperform in terms of profit margin and valuation.

If you are planning an acquisition or preparing a 100-day plan, pricing should be one of the first functions you implement. It is a force multiplier for both revenue and margin, and when it is owned, governed, and equipped properly, it can unlock significant value within a short timeframe.

Sincerely,

Eren Alan, Founder at Pretium

Eda Nicole Özkardeşler, Growth Consultant at İstanbul Office