In the mind of Caroline Lartigolle | Managing Director Fit for Profit

1. What do you see as the most important development currently shaping Pricing, Revenue Growth Management or Commercial Excellence in your industry?

What strikes me most is how much harder commercial decisions have become.

In industrial B2B, a company can serve customers in sectors moving in completely different directions. Some are growing strongly, others are stagnating or facing serious pressure.

Yet these customers may still be managed under the same commercial targets, pricing policies and expectations.

Add reorganisations, cost pressure and limited resources, and you have people working harder while having less time to question what they are doing. I hear this frustration regularly in conversations with people across the industry.

The usual response is to ask for faster execution, more efficiency or better performance against targets. But what if the assumptions behind those targets no longer hold?

A price increase that makes sense for one customer segment may be unrealistic for another. A strategic account may no longer contribute what it did two years ago. And different business units may face very different market realities.

For me, this is where Commercial Excellence needs to evolve. Not away from pricing, analytics or execution. We still need all three.

But towards a stronger ability to recognise when circumstances have changed, question existing assumptions and reconsider decisions before too much value is lost.

Sometimes the most useful question is not how to execute the plan faster, but whether the plan still makes sense.

2. Where do organisations still leave the most commercial value on the table, and what do more mature organisations do differently?

I would start with something I have seen both inside companies and in customer relationships: too much “us versus them”.

Sales versus Finance. Product Management versus Sales. Supplier versus customer. Everyone protects their own position, but that does not necessarily create more value.

I remember a situation before COVID when prices had remained unchanged for years. When increases became necessary, sales teams were reluctant to challenge the largest accounts, fearing volume losses. Smaller customers risked carrying a disproportionate share of the increases. That was neither commercially realistic nor sustainable.

We introduced a traffic-light approach, considering factors such as customer performance, market position, competitive pressure and differentiation, rather than account size alone. The choice and weighting of criteria must reflect the company's strategy and growth objectives. Some large accounts required difficult conversations and much more commercial preparation.

But protecting value is only half the story.

Earlier in my career, we conducted annual reviews with industrial customers to assess the value actually delivered. Had we reduced water or energy consumption? Improved production performance? Reduced maintenance? Made chemical handling safer? Was our service meeting expectations?

We reviewed the evidence together and documented the conclusions, including where improvements were still needed. That became the basis for discussing the following year's business and adapting our offer.

For me, mature commercial organisations know when to defend value, but also how to create more of it together with their customers.

Why spend all our energy fighting over the existing pie when we could find ways to make it bigger?

3. How is AI changing your field in practice?

I have worked with commercial tools for many years, and the improvement in what they can do is remarkable.

But I think we sometimes focus too much on controlling decisions and not enough on helping people make better ones.

Imagine a salesperson preparing an industrial B2B offer. They need the costs of products A, B and C, the customer's contract conditions, freight costs and perhaps some service requirements.

Traditionally, much of that information had to be collected from different people or systems. And of course, there was always someone ready to calculate freight on the back of a napkin. With impressive confidence, if not always impressive accuracy!

Good commercial tools can already remove much of that preparation work, bring the relevant information together and make alternatives easier to compare. That gives the salesperson more time to think.

What are we assuming? What options do we have? What are we promising? What should we challenge before committing?

AI also creates opportunities beyond the individual decision. For example, patterns across commercial exceptions could help management recognise whether a rule no longer fits the market, whether salespeople need additional support or whether customer behaviour is changing.

Some of these capabilities already exist, while others depend on how companies develop and use their systems.

For me, the opportunity is not to replace human judgement. It is to remove unnecessary work, strengthen individual judgement and help the organisation learn from the decisions being made.

4. Why do some Pricing or Commercial Excellence initiatives succeed while others fail?

I think we should first ask what we mean by success.

If we automate a task and reduce the time it takes, that is useful. But what do we do with the time we have saved?

I have worked in organisations where pricing analysts initially spent much of their time collecting information, preparing calculations and processing requests from Sales.

As tools and processes improved, something more interesting became possible. People who had started as relatively inexperienced analysts developed into professionals who could challenge assumptions, discuss alternatives and bring real value to conversations with sales teams.

I saw a similar principle in organisations with centralised analytical support and Business Operations teams working on major accounts.

The goal was not simply to process more requests. It was to use scarce expertise where it mattered most.

Of course, this also revealed differences in how people judged the same deal. A Product Manager might focus on product profitability, while a salesperson considers the economics of the entire customer relationship.

Both perspectives matter. But who brings them together when they point in different directions?

A successful system cannot answer that organisational question on its own.

For me, Commercial Excellence succeeds when the time, information and expertise released by better processes are used to improve the decisions that really matter.

And this has a recruitment implication. Are you hiring someone to improve pricing performance, or someone to help the business make better commercial decisions?

The skills may overlap, but the responsibilities and authority need to match the ambition.

5. What widely accepted belief within Pricing, Revenue Growth Management or Commercial Excellence would you challenge?

I would challenge the idea that a good commercial decision for one customer is necessarily a good decision for the business.

I once saw a relatively small customer being acquired by a much larger group.

The smaller business had historically benefited from favourable commercial conditions. Following the acquisition, those conditions became the reference point for negotiations covering a much larger volume of business.

What had been a local pricing decision suddenly had consequences far beyond the original account.

The impact was several hundred thousand dollars in lost direct profit annually. And the relationship with the customer suffered as both sides tried to resolve the situation.

The original agreement may have made perfect sense when it was negotiated. The problem was that its consequences changed when the circumstances changed.

This is something I have seen repeatedly in industrial B2B. Commercial decisions create precedents, expectations and commitments that may influence future negotiations.

Does that mean every customer decision should be escalated to senior management? Absolutely not. That would make business painfully slow.

But it does mean we need to distinguish decisions that can safely remain local from those that may affect a much wider part of the business.

A good commercial decision is not just about whether the numbers work today. It is also about understanding what we may be committing ourselves to tomorrow.

Is there one final observation, lesson or practical recommendation you would like readers to remember?

Before committing to an important commercial decision, I would ask three simple questions.

Does the economics make sense for the business?

Are we clear about the value we promise the customer?

And can our organisation actually deliver what we have promised?

The interesting part is that these questions are often answered by different people, who don't necessarily see the same reality.

And when circumstances change, the answers may change too.

That is why I believe protecting value is not about controlling every decision. It is about knowing when a decision needs a second look, before the consequences become difficult to reverse.